Sarah Pinneo celebrates the publication of her debut novel, Julia’s Child, this week, missing her self-imposed 40th birthday deadline by a few months. Jenny Nelson, author of Georgia’s Kitchen, calls it “a savory read packed with humor and heart” – which might also describe Sarah’s post below. Enjoy them both! – Meg
When I sat down to write my first novel in 2007, I had notes for it stretching back to 1994. That book was about Wall Street—it was a disaster story of greed gone wrong. The timing might have been perfect.
As it happened, that was not the case.
The book took over a year to write, and then querying agents took another six months. The very week my book went out on submission, the Bear Sterns near bankruptcy and fire sale hit. Suddenly, the news was papered over with stories of failing investment banks, each one bigger than the last. And my funny book about a minor scandal was all wrong. The disaster was too small, the actors too quirky. A novel which would have fit logically into New York’s landscape for a decade was instantly dated.
Never mind that I’d spent twelve years on a trading floor, collecting character sketches and fragments of traderspeak. The book smacked of authenticity—only one year too late. My new agent failed to sell it, as I knew he would. I bemoaned this fate to other writers, one of whom confessed that he’d finished a major piece about Afghanistan in August of 2001. Oops.
So I’m not the only one who has ever produced an ill-timed book. Even before I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I sat down to write another novel. This one was also about business, but only on the face of it. Julia’s Child is a comedy about food obsessed moms, and about burning with ambition for the thing you most want. In the book, crunchy mom Julia Bailey lives for the day when her organic toddler meals will be stocked on the shelves of Whole Foods. It doesn’t take a genius to notice how closely Julia’s grocery store shelf longings mirror my bookstore shelf desires. I poured all of my misfired ambition into the new storyline.
Unsurprisingly, Julia’s Child was a much better book than my first effort. The themes wove themselves together on the page with what seemed like magic. The tangled web of motherhood, fear, and ambition that I’d been caught inside came out quickly as a fun ride of a novel. By the time I finished it, a year later, I knew I had something even better than my Wall Street story. Not only was I proud of the story, I knew it to be topical and more marketable than its predecessor.
I printed it out on bright white paper, packed it in a box and delivered it to my agent.
Immediately after reading it, he fired me. By email.
That was, as they say, the low point. I felt like crawling under my bed and staying there. But since I also craved vindication, I started sending out query letters. I’d queried before, and I felt confident about my letter. So I queried broadly. And sixty days later, I had three offers of representation.
Soon after, I went to hear multi-bestselling novelist Alice Hoffman speak. During the Q&A, someone asked her what she was working on next. “I don’t like to say,” she shrugged “because sometimes things don’t pan out.”
Ms. Hoffman has, by my count, 29 published works of fiction. And if even Alice Hoffman cannot be sure that number thirty will be a keeper, then I should probably find away to let go of my potential future failures, even before they happen.
This time, things worked out. Julia’s Child was sold to a publisher I adore, becoming my lucky number one. I’m grateful to Julia for proving to me that it can be done—and I’ll try not to be too hard on myself if her successor gives me the run around. – Sarah
