How To Make It to the Next Book

On writing ten books

Hi friends.

My tenth book showed up in the mail the other day. It comes out officially on September 24. I made a dorky little unboxing video. Among other pre-pub lists, it is an Amazon Editor’s Pick, a New York Times September pick, and a People Fall pick. Picture me over here holding my breath and with my fingers crossed for the next three weeks. (Pre-order here.)

Here are all the books together:

Allow me to muse on this for a moment.

When I look at this stack, I see the past two decades of my life. One book published every two years.

I see me in my early thirties quitting my full-time job to write (and go broke) and somehow getting that first book deal. Anything that happened with that first book felt special and exhilarating. All I wanted was to make it to the next book.

I see me in my late thirties, after putting out three books very quickly, now chewed up a bit by the system. (And somehow still broke.) But still loving to write more than anything else. Each of those books were just so full of hope that it might be the one to take me somewhere new in my career. But I was also absolutely prepared to go nowhere at all. If only I could just make it to the next book.

I see me in my early forties being surprised and delighted by the success of my fourth book. And noticing how everything shifted at once. I wanted to just hold onto that feeling for a while, of people actually reading and liking my work.

But what stayed with me was the memory of writing the book. How good that felt. I can picture the industrial table I wrote it on, the view from my loft of the Williamsburg Bridge. The commitment I made every day to those pages. How rapidly I wrote that first draft. And how I knew in my gut that I was writing something better than I had before.

I see an entire decade of writing after that. At last, writing had become my full-time job. I sat down and did the work no matter what. Trying to write something fresh and exciting each time. All the books I read for inspiration along the way. All the other writers I met who taught, supported, and exchanged ideas with me. And the places those books took me—all over the world. Readers in new languages, that was exciting. But still what I really desired was the time to just sit still and write. That’s what I continue to do practically every day of my life.

And when I look at that picture, it’s not just about the writing, but also about the energy expended within the publishing industry. I’ve worked with four different editors, and six different publishing houses. Teams of smart, good people. And I see all the labor I have committed to selling those books. All the essays and the interviews and social media posts. Readings I have given. Hello, Zoom. All the talking I did instead of writing. All the stress.

But this is what we must do to manage our addictions, and make no mistake, I'm addicted to the good stuff of writing: the vibes, the energy, the catharsis, the way it makes my brain feel when I'm really in it, playing around, inventing characters and their worlds. I even like it when I'm not “writing” but just walking around daydreaming, and suddenly my brain comes up with a perfect new sentence or solves a problem from five chapters before. It continues to be the most fun thing in my life.

I have never stopped thinking: All I want to do is make it to the next book, and the next after that. When I'm fully ensconced in a book I know that I am alive. I want to feel that way forever.

I am not in this picture, but this is a picture of me.

Hope you have a beautiful week. Fall is here.

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on twitter and instagram.