Publication Day
The day my first book published, I sat in my apartment, lightly sweating, waiting for something to happen. Like, when did the parade start? Or, when would I start lurching like a cicada and violently shrug off my skin to emerge with a new body, green and iridescent? Neither happened. Bookstores simply tucked my book among the others on their shelves and life went on. Some nice things happened in the weeks that followed, but the most dramatic outcome of publishing a book was my realization that I would be exactly the same person I had been before I ever published a book.
This has held true for every book and I know it will for this one, my fifth. Publishing a book does not change me, but writing a book does. Back in 2010, I met this epiphany with disappointment. I hadn’t realized that I expected to be instantly changed until I felt crestfallen that I wasn’t. Now, I am relieved in my certainty that life will go on as it has been.
Every year, I meet a new group of graduate students, and I tell them the same thing my teachers told me: that the reward for making art is the work, and the practice of building a life around art. That publishing won’t complete them, because they are already complete. That the best thing they can do for their art is to separate their relationship to it from the concerns of publication, reception, reputation—all the places where the ego creeps in to do its dubious work. (Obviously, it’s a privilege to be able to separate your art from your income, and one of the reasons that I chose to seek out a full-time job.)
All of that said, it is still exciting to publish a book! I pinch myself all the time, shocked that I get to keep doing it. I love spending years alone, having a conversation with myself, chiseling away at the puzzle of a book until it becomes beautiful to me and as true as I can make it. I also love heading out into the world and talking to folks about that book, which I started doing last night, in Iowa City. What a lucky, beautiful thing, to get to share my art with my community, a community that loves art and artists. I went to sleep with a brimming heart. Today, I head to Chicago, then about 12 other cities.
If you read this newsletter than you know about my back issues, so packing has been a project. I had to fit three weeks of clothes in a carry-on. I ordered two suits to wear to all of my events, so my suitcase is mostly full of white t-shirts and shoes and underwear. If you see me on the road, ask me about the monogram inside my suit lining! I’m super corny, so I got commemorative monograms for each suit.
The Dry Season is in stores today, and I would love it if you picked up a copy for yourself and one for your friend who is always falling in love and/or breaking up with someone. Support your local independent bookstore, or, if you like, mine, where you can order a personalized signed copy.
There has been some great early press for The Dry Season, like this conversation with the amazing Emily Ratajkowski for Interview, as well as this profile by the great Thessaly La Force in the New York Times Style section, and this excerpt in the New York Times Magazine (both in last Sunday’s paper).
My tour in the graphic below, and up on my website, with links to RSVP to the ticketed events. I hope I see you on the road, in June or some other time. I won’t write to you here again until after tour, but you can always keep up with me on Instagram. Thank you for reading.
For me, one of the coolest things about publishing my first book is that when my body becomes just a pile of ash in a jar and the "I" of this body is relegated to oblivion, my words will speak from the dead if the book doesn't wind up in a landfill somewhere...Hopefully the book will TALK to people in a future I cannot imagine. What exactly is oblivion anyway?
Congratulations! And thank you for the realistic reflections on pub day vs. the process that leads to it. THIS: "Publishing a book does not change me, but writing a book does." I can't wait to read The Dry Season.