“Since I wasn’t getting published, I reasoned, and this outcome might be no different, I might as well enjoy the process.” That’s the approach this week’s guest, novelist Kristina Riggle, took to write her “first” novel. At the risk of looking like I’ve begun a new series, Authors Meg Met at the Chicago Tribune Printer’s Row Litfest, Kris was, like last week’s guest, a “Ladies of the Write” co-panelists there. (Can I mention again how much fun we had?) Her latest novel, Things We Didn’t Say, was an Examiner.com book of the week, about which they say “Riggle mesmerizes and enchants with this hope-filled, honest and remarkably raw tour-de-force.” The same could be said of her post. – Meg
A baby swing gently whooshes back and forth, keeping the baby girl asleep for just a bit longer than the flat and firm bassinette possibly could. On the couch next to the swing, a tired, up-twice-or-thrice-a-night mother (who is nowhere near back to her old pants size) types furiously on a laptop. She twitches every time the babe stirs. The muted clicking of the swing marks the passage of precious time.
This is a snapshot from my life in 2007 as I wrote Real Life & Liars, my debut novel. I’d written four other manuscripts. (When I tell audiences that my debut book represents my fifth completed novel manuscript, eyes widen. Writers in the audience sometimes look stricken.) My first manuscript was too ambitious for someone who’d had to Google “length of novel.” The second book found an agent but alas, he was the only one who loved it. The third book got a tepid response as well. The fourth book I never even showed my agent. After mixed reviews from my early readers – and by then well into my second pregnancy –I rejected it myself.
That Fourth Book seemed strained, overworked. I was trying to cram in the elements of commercial fiction that would make it sell, dammit. For once. Our financial situation was getting difficult. I couldn’t keep this up forever. A punch-clock job was calling my name.
I birthed that baby, and some weeks later went back to a manuscript idea I’d been playing with. It seemed audacious, really. I was writing a character almost twice my age. She was a hippie and a free spirit. She was the total opposite of me, in fact. I have a hopeless need to be liked (I may be in the wrong business for that) but Mira couldn’t give a goddamn.
I wrote this audacious book anyway, because it was fun. Since I wasn’t getting published, I reasoned, and this outcome might be no different, I might as well enjoy the process.
That’s when I was writing with my baby in a swing when my son was in preschool. That’s when I escaped on Tuesday nights to write at Kava House and eat my wrap sandwich and kettle chips over the keyboard.
The fall of 2007 came and I sent out letters to literary agents, having parted amicably with my earlier agent. I faced down a Christmas season that meant sinking into more debt. I resigned myself to getting a temporary job to help out. After a brush with a mall Gymboree store (picking up that application had made me cry with despair) I tried my local independent bookstore. As it turned out, Schuler Books was happy to hire me as a holiday temp.
On a December afternoon, I simultaneously saw an email and listened to a voice mail from agent Kristin Nelson. She loved my manuscript and wanted to offer representation. It startled me so badly I broke my son’s candy cane by dropping it on the floor, and was glad I hadn’t given her my cell phone number. If I’d gotten that call in the car I might have driven off the road.
On February 22, 2008, Real Life & Liars, that audacious fifth manuscript completed with my baby daughter snoozing in her swing, sold at auction to Lucia Macro at HarperCollins (and I’m still with her today I’m happy to report. Lucia, that is. Well, the baby, too. My baby is now four and going to preschool in the fall.)
Was it crazy to try to write a novel while still filled with postpartum hormones? Was it crazy to write a novel with a protagonist nothing like me, twice my age, in a book that had four shifting points of view (one in first person and the others in third?) Of course it was. But apparently, crazy finally worked. It only happened when I stopped trying so damn hard to get published, and wrote – once again, like I had in the beginning — for the love of writing. – Kris Riggle
