How I Lost Hope in My Writing and Found It in an Unlikely Place
The summer I was 25 I dreamed of tiaras. That was the summer I made the shortlist for The Robertson Davies First Novel Prize, sponsored by the Canadian company Chapters Books. The winner was to be announced at a televised event in Chapters’ flagship Toronto store, and the grand prize was a publishing contract with my dream publisher, McClelland and Stewart.
To say I was insufferably excited that summer is an understatement. Not only did I dream my book would be published, but I envisioned myself on TV holding a dozen long-stem red roses and wearing a sash that read Ms. Chapters. A tiara would crown my head.
And then in August of that year, the Canadian book seller Indigo bought out Chapters, canceled the prize and dashed my tiara dreams. I was disappointed, but I’d had a whole summer of big hopes and I quickly became wrapped up in my next project, a Harlequin featuring a very sexy organic farmer. That didn’t pan out either—organic farmers weren’t a hot commodity in the late 90s—but I had so many projects and writing dreams. I was in for the long haul, and I was full of hope.
To me, writing has always been a hopeful act, especially the early moments of creative optimism and excitement. When I begin a new project, I am reminded of how I felt as a child when I once made an origami village. The realization that I could make something from nothing was awe-inspiring. The flow-state focus made me feel God-like and powerful. I was hooked on creating.
As an adult, I still love the excitement of a new idea. In the beginning, no agents or publishers have rejected the project. Goodreads reviewers haven’t panned my efforts. Even my inner critic is silent. I prefer the writing process over the final hard copy—a messy draft on my computer is endlessly more interesting than a finished novel in my hands. I love the hope, the endless possibilities of creating something new.
This excitement fueled me through years of writing. I published several YA books and my sense of accomplishment and craft grew. Yet I was also swamped in rejection letters. Several adult novels that I worked on for years came to nothing. By the time I turned 40, a bitterness about publishing began to eat away at my hope. I had always known it was unlikely my books were going to bring me fame or fortune—I was more likely to win the lottery than become an Oprah or Reese’s pick—but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that my writing career hadn’t become something more.
For my 40th birthday, my friend Aileen gave me a print of a woman holding a book with the caption, “I turned my life upside down and a book fell out.” I hated this gift so much I quietly hid it in my basement. I had been turning my life upside down for books for years—working less teaching hours, sending my toddlers off to pre-school so I could write. I felt so little had come from it.
John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist, a book I had devoured in my 20s, had warned me about this: You could give up years of your life and never arrive. Being a writer meant you’d likely be poor and sleeping on a mattress in a loft while your friends had real jobs and financial security. At 25, I embraced this challenge. Lofts and mattresses sounded sexy and bohemian. Now, 15 years later, I was exhausted. My friends were professionals, and while I had a real bed in a real house alongside a solid teaching career, I was still struggling to be the writer I wanted. When my publisher stopped releasing YA books, a low fugue of depression settled over me.
My early 40s were tough writing years. I began to think of writing as an expensive hobby. I moped and emoted, but miserable as I was, I still wrote because I didn’t know what else to do. I had given up on hope, but not on writing. And then something unexpected happened: I stopped trying to pretend that art was going to sustain me financially and a pressure lifted.
Reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic was transformative. She reminded me of the beauty and fascination of writing for the sake of living a creative life. I stopped applying for grants and went back to work full-time. I stopped fantasizing about my rags-to-riches discovery via Modern Love that would propel my memoir from my hard drive to The New York Times bestseller list and Hollywood screens. I just wrote stories. And suddenly, writing became hopeful again.
These days I have less time to write, but also less time to agonize. My younger dreams of movie deals and multi-digit book deals have given away to more middle-aged satisfactions: the child who tells me they read my book and liked it, the student who says they saw me in a local magazine. Small things—that my dad will like an essay about his unusual name, that I can communicate what it’s like to be a Jewish parent—are a new kind of hope.
As my life tips from my youthful years to its second half, it’s easy to feel bitter about writing and life. A sticky note on my computer reminds me of a poem I want to write, “Middle Age is a Bitter Fruit.” I resist these urges as they are a downward slope to inaction, regret, and depression. Instead, I focus on getting up in the pre-dawn darkness for a few minutes of writing because to be hopeful about art is to be hopeful about life. And so I am trying to include more drawing, more writing, and more art in my life. I dream of writing books that teenagers will hug to their chests and say “This!” I want to write novels that make Book Club moms cry.
I never did get crowned Miss Chapters, but recently I did wear a tiara. For my 50th birthday, I went to Japan with my friend Aileen—the same friend who gave me the print about turning my life upside down. I was off work for a few months and could have used this time to write, but I chose traveling and friendship instead. On the day of my birthday, we were in a Japanese thrift shop looking at vintage kimonos when a tiara caught my eye. “Please,” Aileen said, “You don’t need a tiara.”
But I did need a tiara. I bought it for myself, and I wore it for a sushi dinner for my 50th birthday, just for fun.