In my work as a marketing copy director, I’m always asking myself about The Why. From a writer’s point of view, it can be asked of nearly every good or commodity, from hair care to fiction. Why do they care? Why does it matter? Why bother? Sometimes this question is easy to answer; sometimes it’s as illusive as world peace. In the case of this newsletter, The Why is simple. I am tired of waking up feeling like a failure.
I started writing essays 17 years ago. I don’t have any professional training as a writer; just a few writing classes and a deep-seated southern penchant for storytelling. Writing is how I make sense of the world. It’s one of the few times in which I feel completely at home in my mind. It’s my respite and my only sincere compulsion, necessary to the ecosystem of my emotional wellbeing.
In my 15+ year career as a corporate copywriter, I have always written and published my work on the side, and in publications I feel quite proud of: the New York Times, Glamour, Refinery 29, and more. During my years at Bloomingdales, Bon Appétit, and Vogue magazine, I clacked away during the day, while at night, on weekends, and during my free time, I penned my passion projects: brutally honest essays about life. Some are good, some are shit. Some funny, some pensive. Some get published, some are half-baked ideas that collect dust in the bowels of my hard drive or in the Notes on my phone.
This passion produced enough essays to fill a book. Which was, in fact, the point. These essays have been lovingly edited and ruthlessly ripped apart; read by my writer’s group; received feedback from a professional editor; and striked, backspaced, and expanded upon enough times to wear the letters off of my keyboard. I’ve been pitching them independently for years, though as a collection for a much shorter period of time. I had hoped to see them packaged in print: A tidy memoir-in-essays about a girl from Mississippi coming of age in New York City and all the heartbreak and shenanigans that come along with growing up and, eventually, becoming a mother. But with each pitch, a polite rejection followed. This is standard. To place a piece requires some combination of timing, relevance, patience, persistence, connections, and luck. And unfortunately, these particular pieces, or more accurately, I, have yet to fit that mold.
Now, as a full-time working mother of a toddler, I have found myself at a standstill. To publish my work their way, the traditional way, means hours-long sessions of researching, editing, pitching, waiting, and, more often than not, getting that good ole rejection. Nothing wrong with the system, it simply requires an amount of spare time and superfluous energy I don’t have at this chapter in my life.
Each morning, I wake up with the hope that I’ll steal a few minutes to write something new, to pitch, to research. Each night, depleted from a full day’s work and asking my screaming toddler if she’d like some cheese to calm down, I admonish myself for not having made more time that day. My greatest passion, my writing practice, slips like sand through my fingertips, once again.
A couple of months ago, I was having drinks with two girlfriends, and one of them prodded me about why it was so important to publish my essays the traditional way. Why not start your own thing? she asked. Isn’t it better to have a few dedicated loyalists than a large following of fair-weather fans? I wasn’t so sure. I argued: the credibility of a major publication, the readership, the reach! Plus, after years working as an independent contractor, it has been drilled into me to never give my work away for free. Know your worth is a phrase every freelancer is well-acquainted with.
We agreed to disagree, and I left knowing I would continue to pad along, falsely convincing myself that eventually I’d find more time, more energy; that it was possible for me to play by the game by their rules and win. Until I woke up one morning and realized I was wrong. Their way isn’t working for me right now. I need to do it my way.
Back in 2020, after publishing this piece in Longreads, an agent reached out to ask what I was working on. He graciously gave me a wealth of advice, one piece being his candid take on debut essay collections (no one wants them). Two years later, despite this assessment, I pitched him the essay collection I’d spent the last year polishing. His response included phrases like “next to impossible” and “hard pressed” on whether or not an editor at a publishing house would take any interest in my pitch. Needless to say, he passed. At the time, this response knocked the wind out of me.
But during our conversation in 2020, that same agent gave me a piece of advice that has haunted me since. He told me to never save an essay. Don’t sit on it because I think I can put it into a collection, or because I’m waiting on one very specific place to publish it. Don’t hold onto it for fear that I’ll never write anything as good ever again. He said, “More stories will come. You’ll always have more to say.”
Most of the essays I’m sharing on Blurt are from this very collection of essays. Pieces I have poured over for years. Pockets of my past that are so dear to me. So why share them for free? With the possibility that they’ll live in some No Man’s Land of the Internet? Because I can’t edit them anymore. Because I need to share my work on my terms. Because I have so many more stories to tell. That’s why.
Thanks for reading.
Deenie
There are SO MANY ways to successfully self-publish today, I would really encourage you to do so. Publishing has changed UTTERLY & COMPLETELY since my first book came out in ‘99. Go for it. You have everything you need.
I’m so excited to read your exceptional writing!!