Writers’ Anxiety
My friend Ingrid sent me a link to this wonderfully strange meditation on writers’ anxiety by Catherynne M. Valente from the November 2008 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine. She talks about the anxiety of not yet being published and, once published, the anxiety over whether you’ll be published ever again. Valente is the author of several novels, including the recently released Palimpsest. I haven’t read her work, and don’t know anything about her sales or popularity, but she’s won awards for her writing, so she has reason to feel good about her work.
To me, that makes her article all the more interesting. She addresses that middle place–already published, even award-winning, but still receiving rejections, and still not sure she’ll ever make a living off of her writing. This is a part of the writing world many of us, especially those who read the success-story oriented writing magazines, don’t hear about. I suppose that, like me, many writers believe that once you’ve been published for the first time, it comes easier after that. Publishing future books is assured. An audience is yours.
Not so, Valente reminds us. And yet, for all of the real anxiety Valente shares in this piece, her message is, in the end, hopeful. The best part of her hopeful message, though, is that it’s a hard-won, realistic hopefulness, not the boot-strapping success-story hopefulness peddled by the “writers’ self-help” industry.
On a fascinating side note, I found the above “trailer” for Palimpsest on YouTube. This is a trailer for the book, not a film as far as I can tell. Interesting marketing.