Why It’s Community Above All Else for Me

When I was 23, my best friend from college invited me to a networking mixer at the headquarters of a top publishing house in New York City. I was in graduate school at The New School at the time, and already working on the manuscript of what would become my first book, Born to Be Public. Besides being an avid reader and keeping abreast of new and upcoming books, my knowledge of the publishing world was limited. Real limited. As in, I just learned what a query letter was. 

My friend, who worked at an academic press at the time, was my only connection to publishing. I learned how to write a book proposal because she sent me a few from her imprint that had already sold or were already published for me to reference while I wrote my own. When she asked me if I wanted to be her plus one to this networking mixer, I said yes. I wanted to connect with folks in the industry. Most of all, I wanted to make new friends. 

Something I know how to do quite well is stand out, so I put my twist on business casual, which was: a bright yellow blazer with no shirt underneath, black, skin-tight skinny jeans, and a pair of red, patent leather pointed-toe boots with a leopard-print bandana tied around one ankle. Something I learned from my days as an active participant in New York City nightlife is how to conjure curiosity. My friends from the world below Fourteenth Street sauntered the streets with the conviction of a superstar until, eventually, many of them would go on to achieve global stardom in some capacity—from Broadway to performing for 50,000 people at a stadium in London and everything in between and beyond. I was determined to enter that mixer and make everyone in the room—and every room thereafter—want to know who I was until I was someone to know.

Well, I did stand out at that mixer, but the only people who wanted to know who I was were two marketing assistants in their early twenties who wanted to know where the “weird, but fun” places to party in the Lower East Side were, and the server handing out cheeseburger sliders who slipped me his number on a cocktail napkin as I left. There were some modest attempts at making meaningful connections, but besides a few well-intentioned compliments—“I like your shoes”; “I love the color of your blazer”; “Wow, is that your real hair?”—I didn’t leave with plans to grab coffee with anyone. The server never even texted me back! These are things I laugh about now, but the memory that still haunts me to this day is meeting A Very Well-Known Writer who looked at me like I was a nuisance, like they needed a spray bottle to get me away from them.

“What is someone like you doing here?” they asked, giving me a glance up and down after I went up and introduced myself. “Uh, isn’t it obvious? There’s cheese,” I replied, joking.

They let out a suggestion of a chortle; I thought I was killing it.

“I’m here with my friend who works in publishing, but I’m a writer, too. I’m writing a book right now!” I told them. “I really loved your first one. I keep it close by when I work on my own.” 

After a mildly awkward pause, they looked at me and smiled. “That’s so nice,” they said. “Well, it was nice meeting you!” And with that, they stopped, dropped and rolled away. 

I left that night feeling disheartened. I did not feel welcomed like I did when I walked into my first dive bar on Rivington Street when I was 18. I wanted to meet people who loved books and could maybe offer me a little guidance, but all I got was acid reflux from the nine burger sliders I ate. That night, I made a promise to myself: If I ever published a book and attained any modicum of success, I would always hold space for other writers—established or not. I vowed to make sure anyone who crossed my path felt like they belonged, even if—and especially if—they were just starting on their path to publication. There’s room for everyone, even if you’re made to feel like there isn’t. 

I have since gone on to publish my first book, which has sold thousands of copies, which is thousands of copies more than I ever thought it would sell; I’ve been published in my dream publications; I’ve met (and befriended) so many of my heroes; I run my own reading series; I teach; I organize; and I’m working on, like, three books right now. All of the dreams I had when I was 23 came true and then some, and that is something I forget all too often after more than a decade of working my ass off and putting work before everything else and constantly trying to outdo myself. But this endless grind, this self-imposed urgency, is not what keeps me going anymore. 

The success of my memoir—and the success I’ve achieved since—has less to do with my promotional efforts, and more to do with the writers who lifted me up along the way. These are the folks who have been there, and understand that it’s hard to break out in this industry without name recognition or a massive platform. The folks who pledge to support newcomers as they navigate the literary landscape—which, in the beginning, can feel like being the new kid at school—because they wish they’d had someone to turn to for guidance when they debuted. These are the authors who blurbed my book, said yes or offered to be my conversation partner at events, or even just posted a photo of my book along with some kind words about it. Now, they are friends who I call when I get frustrated or feel like I want to give up, but remind me the feeling will pass; it always does. 

My literary ambitions remain grand, if not bigger than when I decided to pursue writing as a career. And I still contend with fear, doubt, and anxiety; I still struggle with insecurity. There’s also being mired by life in general: heartbreak, health issues, familial discord, job insecurity—you name it. The only difference is I’m not alone. I am constantly uplifted, both in times of achievement and duress, by those who also believe in the promise of the page. This has been especially true for the past year, when my agent started pitching my second book to editors. After getting my hopes up twice, my proposal died on submission months later. Feeling unmotivated and discouraged—and trying to swat away thoughts of failure and the fear that I would never publish another book again—I struggled to devote time and attention to my projects. Every time I felt pulled to the page, I felt like I kept striking matches that wouldn’t light. Instead of giving in to the urge to fling my computer into the sea and start over as a maple tree farm laborer, I let myself lean on my writer friends. Before long, I felt a renewed sense of purpose, which feeds my art and vice versa. 

When I flew to Los Angeles last summer, in 2023, to host a reading, I thought it would be a one-off event. I pitched a concept called “Spring Cleaning” to my friend, fellow author, and co-host, Jen Winston, earlier that year when we were in Seattle for the AWP conference. The idea was for writers to read work that was cut, killed, unpublished, or otherwise rotting in the bowels of their hard drives. “Spring Cleaning” turned into “Empty Trash,” and a few months later, we booked 12 LA literary luminaries to read at a local theater. Afterwards, milling about outside under the marquee, writer after writer came up to me. “Thank you for doing this. We don’t have a lot of readings like this out here,” one told me. “It’s one of the things I miss about living in New York.” “We’ve been waiting for something like this,” another said. I had already been flirting with the idea of moving to LA, but after hearing comments like this, I pretty much decided to move then and there. The opportunity to build community stood out to me.

Writing is a solitary job, and the industry in which we work is almost invariably brutal. Not only is it an endless buffet of rejection, but, now more than ever, it is a business trying to tread water amidst constantly shifting tides. There are mergers, acquisitions, a starkly evident mismanagement of resources (don’t get me started, girl), and an overall disconnect between those whom I like to call the check-signers and the often overworked, underpaid folks who are employed by these corporate overlords, a lot of whom work just as hard as their authors to advocate for the voices and stories that have historically been, at best, relegated to the sidelines, and at worst, entirely invisible. 

Not only does this pose an obstacle for emerging writers to get their foot in the door—especially writers from marginalized backgrounds—but creates distinct challenges for established writers, too. Those who have already broken in can also find themselves bereft. I have two friends who’ve both recently been orphaned by their respective editors. This is the second time this has happened for one of them. Another friend recently had their contract for their third book killed. Writers at any stage of their career—sometimes even blockbuster names—still struggle to make a living writing full-time. Many of us have other jobs, sometimes more than one, and still live paycheck-to-paycheck. I don’t know where your Aunt Joyce got the impression that we get rich from publishing a book, but please tell her that I overdrafted at Walgreens just the other day.

We’re all just trying to successfully string our words together and stay afloat so we can pay our damn bills, but, oftentimes, it feels like an uphill battle. It’s easy to feel discouraged when all you want to do is share your work with readers, but the route to doing so is an obstacle course. Why navigate this treacherous terrain alone when you can do it together? (Preferably over a strong cocktail.)

I used to sometimes feel dejected after seeing a handful of screenshots from Publisher’s Marketplace announcing book deals scattered across my various social media feeds, feeling like a flop because my second book seems to have stalled in submission purgatory. Don’t get me wrong; I’m thrilled when I see my friends and peers sell their books, and celebrate every win that comes their way. But there used to be a part of me—the part that’s hypercritical and mean to me for no reason—that reframed everyone’s success as my personal failure to keep up. That part of me still exists, but its volume is drowned by the voices of those with whom I am in community. Even if it’s a ping from my group chat—which is comprised of authors in all different stages of our careers—I know I am not alone, which is critical when you’re confronted with the same difficulties in a business that treats us like literary factories. 

More deals, more acquisitions, more options. Most of this industry focuses solely on the writing and trying to manipulate the sentences into a direction that will yield profit. I want to work in a world where the people underneath the writing are honored and treated well. We are not machines that can produce an endless supply of content without detriment to our health and wellbeing; we are real people with real experiences and real problems and real challenges and real emotions whose job is to metabolize all of these things and create something that we hope will impact at least one person out there. We are already tasked with the writing, but most of us are also tasked with publicizing that writing, and, more times than not, that includes dipping into our personal finances to fund things, like travel to conferences, festivals, and other events. Or the labor is emotional, like being asked to plunge into our wounds for the sake of generating buzz. There’s a scene in the second season of Special on Netflix where Ryan O’Connell’s character, also named Ryan, tells his editor during a meeting that he’s dealing with writer’s block, and she glibly responds with, “Why don’t you just write about your disability again?” Are you picking up what I’m putting down?

Who knows what the future of publishing looks like (or doesn’t), but one thing is for certain: We can count on each other. Whether starting a massive online movement like #PublishingPaidMe to expose the stark disparities in equity and promote transparency going forward or complaining about a publicist dropping a ball over coffee, we will find each other, again and again and again. Across cities, states, and countries. What a blessing it is to find one’s people, one’s cherished community beyond family and close friends. What a felicity it is to spend so much of your efforts in a solitary way, and then find your people and emerge and grow alongside them. 

My dream has always been to walk into a bookstore and see my book on a shelf. Now imagine walking into a bookstore and seeing your friends’ books alongside your own. It never gets old for me. It’s a constant reminder that magic exists—you just have to know where to look. And what a gift it is to look no further.