One of the fun parts of being an acquisitions editor at Oxford University Press was, if I’m being honest, having an expense account in New York City. It was especially fun in the late 80s, when excess was a way of life.
I worked in publishing at the end of the three-martini-lunch era. My boss, a silverback of the industry, would take his authors to some of the best restaurants in Manhattan. Sometimes he would bring me along. I watched as he imbibed heartily, charmed and impressed his companions, and offered smart advice and sanguine cheer. Many afternoons when I needed to ask him questions, I’d find him asleep at his desk. It seemed to me, then so young and filled with ambition, that this was not, perhaps, the best use of his time. But later I came to see how important his connection with authors was—that he understood how much they needed from him. Taking the time to linger over drinks and good food, and more drinks, made them feel important and valued.
Even so, when I became an editor it surprised me when authors would make a special trip to see me. I didn’t dare take them to the same kind of places for lunch, and I didn’t have the chops to hold forth over a groaning table. Nor did I have the metabolism to negotiate even one noontime martini. Most business could be conducted on the phone, or later, by email, so meeting in person just didn’t seem necessary. It was always nice, of course, to have a face-to-face with someone you’d spent a lot of time working with and had come to see as something like, but not quite, a friend. Going to conferences was an efficient way to check in with lots of people, and having an office in New York City, as I did at Oxford, meant that authors were frequently in the ’hood, so I got to meet a lot of them, but there were plenty more I never set eyes on.
I knew, as an editor, that authors were delicate creatures and demanded care and feeding. I knew that if you didn’t return their calls fast enough they would think that it meant something and they might descend to unplumbed depths of depression and self-doubt. I knew that a reader’s report that was generally positive but contained a few suggested corrections could crush certain kinds of writers who would then need to be reassured that both baby and bathwater were fine.
By the time I left publishing, I’d been so tapped out by the demands of the job that I could be heard saying things like, “The only good author is a dead author.” I didn’t mean that, of course, but I was weary from spending so much time attending to the needs of people who acted, in many ways, like toddlers.
And now? Quick, someone cover the electrical plugs and childproof the cabinets. As an author myself now, I am toddling, wailing, and demanding. I’m needy. So very needy.
When I was an editor I was a confident, self-sufficient, capable person. Where did she go? Now that part of me lasts for about 11 minutes after something I’ve written is published. I take pleasure in seeing my byline on an essay or my name on a book jacket. The act of keyboarding another publication into my CV list is always fun, and posting new pieces on my website has become a cherished ritual.
Then I start rereading what I’ve written and find a sentence I wish I could change. The immediate response from online anonymous readers who are generous with criticism and personal attacks—and not always completely in control of their own prose or rage—takes a toll. I want the attention; I can’t stand the attention. Where are my Likes? I need more Likes! Twelve minutes after I’ve published something I’m back to struggling with whatever I’m currently working on, thinking it’s not good enough, picking at the sentences, scrapping entire drafts, and starting with a new document. But those first 11 minutes of feeling at home in the world are divine.
Having something published—including a book—has become in many ways more a relief than a pleasure. A friend of mine pointed out that he thinks it feels much worse to fail than it feels good to succeed, that somehow the negative carries greater emotional valence. I’m not sure if that is true, but the pain of rejection and criticism does seem to linger.
Writing is an exhausting struggle. It makes you tired, and crazy, and needy as all get-out. Writing a book is no longer something I did once, but something I am expected—and expect myself—to do. And if it takes too long between books, I get twitchy. I can cruise for a while on something that’s been published, but for how long? What’s the statute of limitations for giving a public reading or talk from a book? It’s not like anyone’s shouting out “Play Free Bird, man,” to academic authors (though poets do sometimes get requests).
I think about authors like Philip Roth, Alice Munro, and even, for a while back in 2002, Stephen King, who announced their retirement from writing, as if it were a career like any other. As if you could stop wearing a suit and showing up at an office and start playing golf all day. Writers, and many academics, seem to have more of a calling than a career. What we do is so threaded into who we are that it would be like me saying I’m going to stop being a short, green-eyed animal lover.
A friend from graduate school announced a few years after we’d finished our degrees that he’d become that saddest of all creatures: a writer who doesn’t write. I admired his self-awareness, and wondered what would become of him. Sure enough, a few years later, he was writing again—and publishing—productively. He’d just needed something to take hold.
For me, it’s having clear deadlines and regular assignments. And it’s also having an agent and editors who respond to ideas and nudge me along when I get stuck. I’ve written here before about the usefulness of having others keep you accountable, about the value of writing dates and writing groups to keep at it.
But there’s something else. There’s some great urgency in doing the work itself, and needing to have it out there in the world, that drives me. That would be fine if it didn’t attach itself like a remora to the shark that is my neediness for approval and attention. I’ve learned that the woman I was, who confidently edited other people’s books, is still there when I’m asked to read and edit the work of students and friends. My strength and self-assurance evaporates, however, whenever it comes to my own work. That’s just the way it is.
A writer friend and I like to talk about how we don’t want much; we’d just like our work to tap the spigot of universal love. There is, of course, no such plumbing, but it’s what we seek, and what keeps us going, even when keeping going seems unimaginable.
My old boss understood that. And even if he couldn’t provide universal love for his authors, he could encourage them to order a nice osso buco or cassoulet and wash it down with another martini.
Rachel Toor is an associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University’s writing program in Spokane. Her website is http://www.racheltoor.com. She welcomes comments and questions directed to careers@chronicle.com. Her first novel, On the Road to Find Out, was recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
