1st BOOKS: Writing and Publishing

One of the dearest and most generous writers I know, Amanda Eyre Ward, has a new novel out this week! Jodi Picoult calls The Same Sky “the timeliest book you will read this year,” and Christina Baker Kline calls it “riveting.” Amanda was an early guest here on 1st Books — in April of 2009. And I’m delighted to be resharing her post today to celebrate her new release! – Meg

It took me years to write my first novel, Sleep Toward Heaven. I wrote at night and on the weekends while working all sorts of full-time jobs: receptionist at a country music station, librarian, babysitter, curriculum developer for an internet startup. I went to readings at BookPeople, and tried to figure out how to get from being a babysitter to being a published novelist.

One day, while I was answering the phones at a computer company called Dazel, I got an e-mail saying that my short story, “Miss Montana’s Wedding Day,” had won third prize in the Austin Chronicle short story contest. A few months later, StoryQuarterly took my story “Shakespeare.com.” These first publications gave me faith for another year.

I finally found a wonderful agent, Michelle Tessler, to represent my first novel. But Sleep Toward Heaven was rejected by every publishing house in New York. Undaunted, Michelle sent the book to a small publisher in San Francisco. I still have the e-mail Michelle got from editor Anika Streitfeld. Here it is – the book was called GATES OF BREATH at the time:

From MacAdam/Cage! Will keep you posted.
—–Original Message—–
From: Anika Streitfeld
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 1:45 PM
To: Michelle Tessler
Subject: GATES OF BREATH

Hi Michelle – I just wanted to let you know that I was blown away by this novel. It is intensely moving, insightful, and masterfully written. David Poindexter, our publisher, is going to read it next. Thank you so much for sharing this novel with me. I have my fingers crossed…Talk with you soon, Anika

Shortly after this note, Anika made an offer on the book. I took the entire advance and bought my husband a Big Green Egg, a fancy barbecue grill. I thought life would never be sweeter. Anika was hired by Random House a few years later, and I followed her there.

Of course, there’s no one answer. But I vowed that if I ever sold my novel, I would tell people how hard it was. It’s so hard to keep faith, when you’re writing at night while your friends nap or drink margaritas. It’s so hard believing you have something important to say. It’s hard to work in isolation, in your pajamas. But I love novels. The dream of creating something that could give a reader the hours of pleasure and thought that my favorite books have given me kept me writing, and keeps me here, typing, day after day. – Amanda

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I had the great fortune to read a galley for Ann Mah’s gorgeous memoir, Mastering the Art of French Eating – a lovely mix of travel, food, and personal exploration – and to host her here last year when it first released. It has since then collected so much deserved praise, from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, the Daily Beast, and Elle, which says of it, “Our readers were enraptured by [Mah’s] luscious and detailed descriptions of the meals that became the rich medium for a lonely wife’s tentative socializing in a strange land.” Ann’s story of how her book came about is as bighearted as the book itself – which is now out in paperback. – Meg

One of the first things I bought for our apartment was the picture. It was a photo of Julia Child in her kitchen in Paris and I wanted to hang it in my own, a talisman to inspire my cooking and writing.

Those of us who love Julia are each touched by her story for a different reason: the late bloomers, the kitchen unconfident, the professionally unsatisfied. As a food lover and enthusiastic home cook, I had long appreciated Julia’s cookbooks – but I didn’t begin to truly admire her until I found myself in a situation similar to hers: a trailing spouse, a diplomat’s wife.

A month after we got married, I left my job in New York and moved with my husband to China. I loved being married, but in those early days, newly unemployed, I floundered. I missed my job as an editor so much I felt like I’d lost an internal organ. I wept, I worried, I spent weeks alphabetizing our bookshelves. I wondered how I’d ever adjust to life as a trailing spouse, moving around the world for my husband’s career while lacking my own.

It would be disingenuous to say that Julia Child led me to food writing. She was one among a pack of writers whose work inspired me to strive and to despair. But I had read her biography and I considered the parallels in our lives: her stint in China, her marriage to a Foreign Service officer, her life as a trailing spouse, her career nurtured throughout multiple international moves. In Beijing, I started writing for a local expat magazine, a free monthly that, though littered with typos, burst with energy. I wanted to write about food but they needed stories about everything else so I wrote about orchid care, Chanel knock-offs, men’s seersucker suits. Eventually, when the dining editor left, I leapt at the chance to take her place. I loved reviewing Beijing’s restaurants and writing about Chinese regional cuisine, experiences that would eventually inspire me to write a novel. As the months passed, I slowly built a path in another direction, a new dream to nurture.

The wonderful, terrible thing about diplomatic life is that you move all the time. After four years in China, we moved to Washington, DC, and then Paris, each overseas transfer a reminder of the things that couldn’t be packed into boxes and sent on a transport ship: contacts, friends, ideas, the daily routine that was my life. But I looked at the loving teamwork of Julia’s marriage to Paul — unwavering despite multiple untimely overseas relocations. The self-mocking tone of her letters when she became a little maudlin over professional or personal disappointments. The success that bloomed from her hard work and sheer will, despite the upheavals of diplomatic life. And I felt hopeful.

Julia and Paul arrived in Paris in 1948, when Paul was assigned to a job at the American Embassy. In 2008, my husband began an assignment at the American Embassy in Paris, and, like Julia, I too became a diplomat’s wife in France. In the four years that I lived in Paris, she was never far from my thoughts. I looked for her in all the usual places — her apartment at 81 rue de l’Université, which she dubbed rue de Loo. Her old haunts like E. Dehilleren or Au Pied de Cochon; lesser known spots, too, like the Hôtel de Talleyrand, home of the Marshall Plan and post-war diplomatic cocktail soirées, or Place de la Concorde, where our husbands worked at the Embassy, albeit separated by sixty years. I tried to replicate her culinary curiosity by remaining open, adventurous, passionate — even when faced with a heaping plate of tripe sausage. I used her cookbooks as a guide to eat and travel through France – eventually, they inspired me to write a food memoir called Mastering the Art of French Eating, which I hope honors her enthusiastic spirit.

Julia floundered a bit professionally in her youth. But once she discovered traditional French cuisine, she became committed – deeply, seriously committed – to learning to cook it. Among all her qualities, I strive to replicate this the most: her determination despite discouragement, her dedication despite tedium. Cooking – like writing – isn’t always fun. But at the end of the struggle, the long hours, the loneliness and frustration, sometimes there’s something to share and enjoy. To quote Julia: “That’s what human life is all about – enjoying things.” I keep her photo on my kitchen wall to remind me of the hard work – and the enjoyment. – Ann

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Elizabeth Enslin is a Stanford Ph.D who has done research in Nepal with funding from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She’s received an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Oregon Arts Commission, an Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize, a Notable for Best American Essays and a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Nonfiction to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She spent … well, read to see how long she spent writing her memoir, While the Gods Were Sleeping: A Journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal, which is just out. I hope you’ll enjoy Elizabeth’s story of how it found a publishing home, and look for it in your favorite bookstore. – Meg

While the Gods Were Sleeping: A Journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal—my first book—came out in early October 2014. Depending on how I count, this memoir on marrying into a Brahman (high caste) family, giving birth and working with rebellious women in the plains of Nepal took me somewhere between seven to twenty four years to write. At several points, I pushed to the end of one vision and thought it done. After a few hours or days of basking in satisfaction, I’d decide something wasn’t right and start rewriting it again.

I thought I’d finished one version in the summer of 2001. That version was full of sadness and grief, haunted by divorce and the death of my absentee father. I queried a few agents who asked for partials then turned it down. Soon after, I launched into six years of teaching history at an independent high school in Portland, Oregon. The manuscript disappeared behind notebooks stuffed to overflowing with curriculum materials on the American civil war, the global economy, ancient history. I thought I was just waiting for a break in my hectic schedule to submit my book to more agents. But those breaks rarely came. Also, a part of me must have realized that manuscript was no longer the story I wanted to tell.

I traveled back to Nepal in 2007 for my son’s coming of age ceremony and began to imagine another version of the book. I saw how gratitude, joy and greater maturity might infuse the story. I returned to Oregon, gave up my teaching job and––thanks to the generous support of a loving partner––committed myself to full time writing.

First, I wanted to improve my writing chops. I read fiction, memoir and poetry and did more of what I had advised my high school students to do: cut adverbs and adjectives, make verbs do more work, expand details, play with imagery and metaphor. Meanwhile, I polished some chapters and scenes and submitted to literary journals. I wallowed in pity after the first rejections then revised and submitted again. My first acceptance came from The Gettysburg Review for an essay that would one day form the narrative spine through the book (though I only saw it as a chapter at the time). It went on to win an Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize. Like any writer, I continued to face rejections, but a steady trickle of acceptances boosted my confidence enough to keep going.

In the book itself, I could not move beyond a grand vision of a single volume that would cover every aspect of my complicated relationship with Nepal. And with each passing year, that relationship kept growing and changing. I knew the manuscript––hovering around 600 pages––would be difficult to place, especially for a first time author. But for some reason, I had to continue on with it.

I finished what I considered my masterpiece in December 2012. I was exhilarated. I’d seen it through and arranged all the puzzle pieces, layers and voices in a way that made sense to me.

Around the same time, I noticed a call for a book proposal writing contest sponsored by She Writes––a online networking site for women writers. The prize: a publishing contract with Seal Press. I perused the publisher’s catalog. Topic-wise, I figured my story was a good fit. But the version I’d just finished was far too long. Seal Press books averaged around 300 pages (a good length to aim toward for most first books, I would learn). More than that though, I began to see just how impossible it would be to write a proposal for my unwieldy creation. Clearly, a publisher or agent would see the same problem.

So, within days of completing what I’d been working toward for years, I started revising again. I saw that I had two possible books in the sprawling mess I’d written. I would have to carve out and focus on one. I wanted to make one clean whack down the middle. But the surgery became more delicate. I had to tease tiny nerves and blood vessels apart so that both books could go on to thrive. I put all the bits that might fit in a second book in one file and left them there. Then I began piecing the first book together.

The looming contest deadline gave me motivation and discipline. I tacked back and forth between proposal and a rough draft. Working on the proposal helped me clarify the narrative arc and arrange the chapters. Fleshing out the chapters helped me sharpen key points in the proposal.

No matter what the outcome of the contest, I figured I would have a solid book draft and a proposal in hand. With those, I’d be well-positioned to find a home for the book. But I did win the contest and soon had what had seemed unimaginable four months earlier: a publishing contract with Seal Press.

Another year of working with Seal Press though editing and design work yielded a book I now like better than those earlier versions. Those were just for me. This one is for readers. – Elizabeth

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