writing | Thornfield Hall

At a writers’ conference, the writer-teacher warned us not to let our families read our work. “They will not like it,” he said. “Your wife won’t like it. Your husband won’t like it. Your mother won’t like it. Your daughters won’t like it. Your stepson won’t like it.”

It was like stand-up. But there was a grain of truth.

I visited My Friend the Novelist. While she was making coffee, I told her family that I loved her latest book. The son said, “Haven’t read it.” Her husband said the same. They said they hadn’t read any of her books. I was astonished.

But actually they are a happy family. Reasonably so. As happy as anybody else! And yet the Love of Her Life and her offspring don’t read her books. And she doesn’t expect them to. She giggles. “They’re not intellectuals.”

In my family everyone writes, unless they’re in a rock band. (I’ve seen the videos!) But the rest of us are stuck with writing. For years aunts, uncles, and distant family members sent me copies of family histories, family cookbooks, genealogies, and memoirs. They self-published them in binders at Kinko’s. I thought it very sweet.

I can’t say they were all supportive of each other. Some were rivals. They tried to out-write each other. I suggested that an aunt’s well-written memoir might be of interest to a historical archive at a university, but another relative thought I should be saying that about her book and so… nothing got done.

Many of the people I know write press releases, articles for newspapers and magazines, blogs or other social media. They write novels on the side. Few get their novels published, but that isn’t the point. They like writing; they write.

There is a writers’ scene at the coffeehouse. Wild-eyed writers in tattered weekend clothes stagger in with their laptops and order giant cappuccinos. “I can’t get anything done at home! They’re watching a football game.” The writer prefers the wobbly table at the coffeehouse to the football game.

These days I am fascinated by the Acknowledgements in books. The Acknowledgements used to fill a paragraph; now they fill two or three pages. The writers thank 50 friends and the “team” at the publishing company. They also thank their mothers, fathers, spouses, and children. It is a product of my naivete that I used to picture all these people reading the manuscript or galleys and saying, “Great job!” Now I realize that at least 40 of the 50 friends were nowhere near that manuscript. They supported her in other ways.

And never let your family read your writing!

Except perhaps your mother…

N.B. Do you share your writing with your family? Every family is different, or are they all alike?

In my last post, “The Writer’s Life: The Summer Writers’ Conference,” I described the culture of a Summer Writers’ Conference. The teaching methods were not perfect, but the conference launched my career as “a literary journalist.”

Me, many years ago, with a writer-ish look.

It began with what I called “an accidental book review.” Snoozing over the reviews in the local Sunday paper, I thought, “I can do this.” And so I reviewed Alice Adams’s collection of short stories, After You’ve Gone, and submitted it to a small literary journal in California. I got an acceptance letter, and the editor gave me another assignment. Oh, by the way, the journal did not pay money, but free books and copies of the magazine. Who cared? It was a joy.

I used to haunt a second-hand bookstore that carried obscure little magazines and journals. I copied down lists of editors and addresses and sent off my queries. Hell, yes, they always said. They were pleased to have an eclectic volunteer who would read anything: one editor called me Nanook of the North because I lived in a cold northern city. “Nanook, it’s me. How do you feel about Frederick Exley?” I was also briefly a “niche” small press reviewer for another literary journal. Nobody wanted to review small press books: they were uneven and often unsatisfactory. But I remember reviewing Nervous Conditions, by the Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, before it was published by a large publishing company and won the Commonwealth Award. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.

I love writing essays, too. I have written about Oprah’s Book Club, reading on mass transit, literary awards, the rising respectability of science fiction, and the career of Elizabeth Wurtzel. And one summer, when my husband and I were in Toronto, we were excited to hear that The Rolling Stones were in town rehearsing for a new tour. The Toronto Star published daily articles about “Mick Jagger sightings”: at midnight or later someone always saw Jagger at a club or restaurant. And so I wrote a goofy essay called “Waiting for Mick Jagger.” My husband and I saw no Stones anywhere: I listed tourist spots where the Stones were not. They were not at World’s Biggest Bookstore, nor at the Market (perhaps The Lawrence Market, I’m no sure), nor at the top of the CN Tower (once the world’s tallest building), nor Cabbagetown, the oldest neighborhood in Toronto, nor at Niagara Falls, which is always nicest on the Canadian side. I wish I still had this essay. Alas, my cat, Zany, shredded it with other papers in a box. But we couldn’t be mad at Zany.

“Clever cat!”

I most often write about bookish subjects. I have written about book prizes, Goodreads, book clubs, and the pros and cons of shopping at Abebooks I have been paid something for most of my essays, or should I say underpaid? Because as Rome falls, or rather, as the newspapers and magazines cut back, and longtime employees trail into into the world to work at low-paying non-union jobs, the newspapers have become what one friend describes as “a blood bath.” It’s like the fall of Rome: The emperors provide less and less for the slaves and freedman (freelancers) even as the cost of living rises and they take more for themselves.

But there’s always fiction…