I’ve been crazy busy lately, and sadly remiss about hosting guest authors. But I’m delighted to share a post today by debut novelist Jennifer S. Brown, whose Modern Girls is just out this week from NAL. Booklist calls it a “moving debut, portraying the sacrifices a mother and daughter make in order to save face for their family.” I know you’re going to be inspired by the story of how she got into print! And I hope you’ll have a look at Modern Girls. – Meg
When I was considering applying to an MFA program for creative writing, I spoke with a few recent graduates from different schools to ask about their experiences. Each spoke of the luxury of time to write, of delving into literature, of being surrounded by like-minded people who wanted to spend all of their time creating. What a magical place graduate school sounded like! Yet when I asked each one if she or he were still writing, the answers were vague. “When I can,” I heard, and “I try but my job doesn’t give me much free time,” and “When life lets me.” One woman had graduated three years before and still hadn’t finished her novel! I was going to get my MFA and that was not going to happen to me.
Um, right. Did I mention that I earned my MFA in fiction in 1996? And that this year, 2016, a mere twenty years later, my debut novel is being published?
I’m embarrassed when I look back at my naïve twenty-five-year-old self. To build a writing portfolio to be accepted into graduate school, I woke up at 5 a.m. every morning to write before I had to be at my job at 9 a.m. I had no husband, no kids, no mortgage, and my job was one that didn’t require outside-of-hours work. When I moved to Seattle to attend my writing program, I had the financial assistance of my grandparents. In other words: I was a spoiled brat with time on her hands.
When I finished graduate school, all I wanted to do was write. But I needed shelter and food, so I began to work as a freelancer, writing, editing, and proofreading for anyone who paid me. But the thing about being a freelancer is, it’s difficult to say no to a project. I needed the paycheck. And I needed the employer to think of me each time a job became available. So I said yes to everything. Working from home meant I was never not working. I would write here and there. Flash fiction became my forte because I didn’t have time to do anything else.
This was not sustainable. I decided I’d have more time to write if I had a proper job with proper hours. Yet living in Seattle in the late 1990s, the most exciting jobs were Internet jobs, which had nothing resembling a nine-to-five day. I fully drank the Kool-Aid, working long hours and loving it. The job gave me an adrenaline rush, and I did manage to carve out tiny blocks of time to write. My flash fiction became full-length short stories. Essays began to form. I took time to submit and occasionally found myself published. I toyed with NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month that challenges one to write 50,000 words in a month, but never finished a full book’s worth of work.
Life continued to happen. I got married. I had two children. I was still working. The writing plodded along. I joined a writing group. I took on less work as child duties grew. Still I wrote. My first novel was actually finished in 2006, only ten years after my degree. But it sucked. And I knew it. So I wrote another one. And that one I finished in 2011, fifteen years after graduation. I thought this novel had more potential. It found me my amazing agent. But alas, it didn’t sell.
Did the fact that fifteen years had passed stop me from trying again? That I was no longer a naïve young thing, but a middle-aged mother of two? Yes, I was gun shy, but somehow, I dug deep and continued to write. I found a story I was passionate about, characters I loved, and followed them through, with no idea if anyone else would ever get to meet them. When I finished this novel, Modern Girls, I sent it off to my agent, who loved it. But would others? I stress ate gummy bears until my agent finally called me with the words I’d dreamed of hearing: “We’ve got an offer!”
Yes, it took twenty years for me to go from graduate degree to published novel. With each step—from flash fiction to stories and essays to two previous novel attempts—my writing has grown stronger. Modern Girls wouldn’t have happened without those twenty years of experience. I’m confident the novel I’m currently working on will be even better because of all I learned while writing Modern Girls.
Writing and publishing don’t happen on a time table. Yes, it would be nice if we all could make multi-book deals while we’re still wet behind the ears. But we write what we write when we write it. No apologies. No excuses. Because that’s just how it should be. – Jennifer
