Jotham Burrello's Blog - Posts Tagged "burrello"
Debut Novel in Covid-Age
Measure of Success
I remember sitting in the basement of the Fall River Historical Society ten years ago reading program for the 1911 Cotton Centennial and thumbing through photographs of President William Howard Taft addressing the crowd in his black top hat. I read everything about the event and made photocopies, as it would play a key role in my novel. Weeks later at my writing desk, I recalled the cinematic opening of Don DeLillo’s Underworld while I struggled with how to reimagine the Cotton Centennial week into a single day for my novel, Spindle City. I learned from DeLillo how to mix imagined and real characters into short scenes and jump cut between actual speech and fiction. At my desk, I figured out how to structure the opening of my book.
It’s exciting to be a debut writer. Once the novel is sold, there is suddenly a team of professionals to assist. Agents and editors talk about discovering a new voice. There is no sales trail of previous books to estimate success or failure—you may indeed sell a million. The more sobering angle, one that I tell debut writers at my indie press, is while this is all true, debut writers are unknowns publishing a book no one—bookstores, critics or readers—is waiting to read.
Given I’ve been publishing other writers and teaching for twenty years, I knew the deal prior to the forthcoming release of my book and was uniquely prepared for the marketing. Then six months ago, the publishing ecosystem collapsed. And not just for debut writers. An arts editor at a regional newspaper contacted me about an interview with the caveat that we needed to get the interview done before June 22 because she was being furloughed. Another arts reporter emailed that she couldn’t write about the book because all reporters were pulled to do the vital work of covering COVID-19 and the protests for racial justice. Arts coverage became slim in the dailies and on the radio. The indie bookstores, those beloved institutions that had made a comeback from the big-box store invasion of the ’90s, a usual hive of activity, are fighting for their survival. Many have made a smooth transition to virtual programming, but now readers are showing signs of fatigue. Recently, a bookstore emailed to cancel my reading at their store: “Unfortunately, we will not be able to host your event as planned on July 23. The bookstores will not host in-store events and as mentioned, the virtual calendar then becomes extremely limited across three stores. At this time, I will not be rescheduling.”
Writers now rely on screen presence. We utilize social media to the max, but we’re all battling for screen time. Readers are distracted—heck, we’re all distracted. And regrettably, the biggest publishing event of the summer is by a writer with the last name Trump.
As Billy Pilgrim would say, “So it goes.”
I’m reminded of an article published in Poets & Writers Magazine in 2009 that I still share with my students. It’s called, “Measures of Success: What Publishing Your Book Really Means” by Duncan Murrell. He wrote, “If you put the writing first, and you have something new to say, your work will be found.” Murrell reminds us that the process is what we’ll remember because the advances will eventually run out, and we’ll forget about the readings and the reviews. Rather writers, “Remember the day you figured out how to open that chapter you wrestled with for half a year, that time the words came.... You’ll one day realize that you miss that book, and that you’ll never get to write it again.”
Ten days out from the release date of Spindle City and I’m already nostalgic about the writing process. (Debut novelists have a lifetime to write their first book, so there is plenty to be nostalgic about.) I’ve been rereading chapters for an outdoor event I’m throwing in my backyard. It will be one of the few public readings around the launch, and I plan to make the most of it.
I remember sitting in the basement of the Fall River Historical Society ten years ago reading program for the 1911 Cotton Centennial and thumbing through photographs of President William Howard Taft addressing the crowd in his black top hat. I read everything about the event and made photocopies, as it would play a key role in my novel. Weeks later at my writing desk, I recalled the cinematic opening of Don DeLillo’s Underworld while I struggled with how to reimagine the Cotton Centennial week into a single day for my novel, Spindle City. I learned from DeLillo how to mix imagined and real characters into short scenes and jump cut between actual speech and fiction. At my desk, I figured out how to structure the opening of my book.
It’s exciting to be a debut writer. Once the novel is sold, there is suddenly a team of professionals to assist. Agents and editors talk about discovering a new voice. There is no sales trail of previous books to estimate success or failure—you may indeed sell a million. The more sobering angle, one that I tell debut writers at my indie press, is while this is all true, debut writers are unknowns publishing a book no one—bookstores, critics or readers—is waiting to read.
Given I’ve been publishing other writers and teaching for twenty years, I knew the deal prior to the forthcoming release of my book and was uniquely prepared for the marketing. Then six months ago, the publishing ecosystem collapsed. And not just for debut writers. An arts editor at a regional newspaper contacted me about an interview with the caveat that we needed to get the interview done before June 22 because she was being furloughed. Another arts reporter emailed that she couldn’t write about the book because all reporters were pulled to do the vital work of covering COVID-19 and the protests for racial justice. Arts coverage became slim in the dailies and on the radio. The indie bookstores, those beloved institutions that had made a comeback from the big-box store invasion of the ’90s, a usual hive of activity, are fighting for their survival. Many have made a smooth transition to virtual programming, but now readers are showing signs of fatigue. Recently, a bookstore emailed to cancel my reading at their store: “Unfortunately, we will not be able to host your event as planned on July 23. The bookstores will not host in-store events and as mentioned, the virtual calendar then becomes extremely limited across three stores. At this time, I will not be rescheduling.”
Writers now rely on screen presence. We utilize social media to the max, but we’re all battling for screen time. Readers are distracted—heck, we’re all distracted. And regrettably, the biggest publishing event of the summer is by a writer with the last name Trump.
As Billy Pilgrim would say, “So it goes.”
I’m reminded of an article published in Poets & Writers Magazine in 2009 that I still share with my students. It’s called, “Measures of Success: What Publishing Your Book Really Means” by Duncan Murrell. He wrote, “If you put the writing first, and you have something new to say, your work will be found.” Murrell reminds us that the process is what we’ll remember because the advances will eventually run out, and we’ll forget about the readings and the reviews. Rather writers, “Remember the day you figured out how to open that chapter you wrestled with for half a year, that time the words came.... You’ll one day realize that you miss that book, and that you’ll never get to write it again.”
Ten days out from the release date of Spindle City and I’m already nostalgic about the writing process. (Debut novelists have a lifetime to write their first book, so there is plenty to be nostalgic about.) I’ve been rereading chapters for an outdoor event I’m throwing in my backyard. It will be one of the few public readings around the launch, and I plan to make the most of it.
