Be Published

“For me the low point came two months after publication, at a playground a few blocks from my house. I sobbed on the phone with my sister, eking out incomprehensible sentences about my career this, my life expectations that, writing this, the publishing industry that, until finally my sister said, “Maybe you should look for a different job?” and I realized the jig was up — I was doomed to keep doing this ridiculous and often seemingly pointless thing. A few weeks before this, I’d received my first letters from readers telling me how much they’d loved and needed the book, and I’d had another sister-to-sister phone call — just as wrought with emotion — in which I raved about all the deeper meaning and purpose of this milestone and how it wasn’t about the sales and the metrics but about what mattered blah blah blah. I ping-ponged like this for awhile, alternately aglow and despondent, hopeful and wretched, until finally I just started writing again and got on with it.”

“I sold the books to my first choice of publisher, and had visions of glory. The editorial process for the novel was intense but gratifying; the book shed over 25,000 words and became, I think, its best self, or at least a much better self. The book was due to be published in July. In November, my editor resigned amidst accusations of sexual impropriety. The cover was half-designed, the publicity plan nascent, the foreign rights unsold. I was assigned another editor, who I liked very much, but the sense of being damaged goods was palpable. The photographer whose image we wanted to use for the cover refused us the rights to it. The book's publicist grew distant, then quit the day before the book came out. It wasn't reviewed early in Publishers Weekly. Etc. For better or worse (better, in the end, probably), I did a lot advocating for the book myself, getting it into the hands of everyone I'd ever worked with in the publication world, setting up events in places where I knew people, even if there wasn't a budget for travel. I did my best and braced for publication.”

“With zero writing experience, I pitched the editor of a luxury travel site and he replied with a “thanks but no thanks.” I tried again a few weeks later, this got me a, “seriously, it’s still no.” I figured the third time might be a charm. As luck/coincidence/fate would have it, there were four hotel reviews he needed done and something came up with his family, making him unable to do them. To fix his scheduling problem (and probably to get me off his back), he gave me the assignments. Off to Buenos Aires I went to be pampered in Presidential Suites. I got paid $50 a review, but in one week I realistically racked up about $10,000 in comped stays and food and spa treatments. It took a while to process that I basically just got paid to drink great wine, sit in bubble baths and then write some words. Not a bad beginning to a travel writing career. I was hooked (although I still prefer my tent and the open road).”