Moby Bytes: Behind the book scenes...
Letter #7: For the writers, and the readers (of essays), and the people who like peeking behind the book-writing curtain...
(Where Are You? I’m Christina Rivera, debut author of MY OCEANS: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women and Moby Bytes is my series of newlettery notes deep-diving the oceanic kinship of bodies of water and beings. Thanks for signing up for this irregular email in your inbox!)
It’s been bumpy—this journey as a writer of essays. Toward an author of a book of essays soon to be gallivanting on real shelves in the real world.
I want to share some things I’ve learned from the mistakes I’ve made. Because they are the kind of things I would have liked to have known as I packed my backpack for my adventures in the literary (under)world. So I’ve compiled a list and tried to stop myself at sixteen small points of reflection…
But first! My daughter and I sat at the big table—with kid scissors and purple glue sticks and art clippings and photos of Humpback whale eyes and old journals and manuscript drafts pulled from the trash—to collage a MY OCEANS bookmark. We lost track of time. We made a mess. It was fun. And isn’t that the most important point? (Especially amidst the current greater & global messes over which we lack control?)
Onward with some of the things I’ve learned in the process of writing a book of essays:
There's a difference between perfect and done. In my experience, an essay needs so much TIME to breathe and unravel its own mysteries. Too much time. Never-see-the-light-of-publication time if you allow it. My book—though far from perfect—is done. Mostly because it was sent to the printer and sometimes we need a well-placed wall in our lives. Sometimes, also, your best is exactly enough.
There isn’t only one way to organize a book of essays. Sections help. Calling it a “book of essays” instead of a “collection” helps. Accepting the fact of infinite ordering possibilities, of which you can only choose one, doesn’t help—but is true. See also point #1 again.
Less is more. But expand before you cut. If you think you might be writing a book of essays, but you’re unsure of your themes, just keep writing until crystals form. Clusters. Look for your patterns and group them. Then work backwards, sloughing off what doesn’t fit into THIS book. Ps. What you cut probably has a home in another book in you. Yep, a whole other book, trying to trojan-horse its way into this one. Just reassure those outlier themes that they will have their day. Pss. I went on submission with a book of way TOO MANY essays. For my second round of submissions, I cut 35% of them (and received three offers). It was a painful lesson.
Subtitle is important. Just “essays” or “linked essays” doesn’t say enough to carry a collection. Or so I was smartly advised by an industry professional after I tried to make the opposite argument for a year. But now I agree. People need a few words to latch on to, especially with a cute but ambiguous title. When people ask me what my book is about, I share my subtitle and they cut me off with, “Oh, cool…” and dear god(s) it’s a relief to stop trying to explain my book after three words.
Essays have more memoir in them than you might know (or want to realize). Readers like the memoir bits. Personal narrative just turns pages. But you’ll forget you wrote them. Until your book goes to print and you’re like, “Wait, what did I put in there for not only the generalized “world” to read, but also my Catholic aunt, my Republican neighbor, my kid’s English teacher, and all my ex-boyfriends? See the sleepless nights of point #6.
I’m drowning in the choppy waves of over-exposure anxiety and imposter syndrome. An (esteemed!) friend recently wrote, “Even you have imposter syndrome?!” and I nearly choked on the regurgitated self-doubt that catches up to me every night when I lie down. OK, maybe I am caught in a system of “value” as defined by the old white guys who gave us the yardstick. Measurements by which I can only fall short—by institutional design. So I cling to what Terry Tempest Williams told me at a retreat in November: “By whose standards are you measuring yourself, Christina?” OK, she didn’t call me Christina because she didn’t know my name when she answered my question. But she did sign her book with this critical reminder (to both me and to you):
Your non-literary friends have never read an essay collection. Even my friends/family who are avid readers have never read an essay collection! No one dies in the first chapter. The pages don’t turn themselves. Most of my essays pose more questions than answers. These are the disclaimers I offer to my creative nonfiction newbies. My book briefings include permission to dabble, to jump around, to read when the mood hits, or to let the book collect a year of dust on a night table. That is, after all, how I read books of essays. No shame.
Make and celebrate your own milestones. Pub day? I’m not getting my hopes up. First day I saw my ISBN number? I ate cake. Book reviews? I don’t know, as I haven’t seen any yet. But the DMs from a best girlfriend as she read the book from cover to cover? Made me cry. And then I ate cake. Maybe I’m inclined toward defiance (and maybe that’s where my son gets it from?), but I prefer to skip the timing of feelings I’m told to have and celebrate surprise delights. In short: Don’t wait for any pub days to celebrate and eat lots of cake along the way.
It’s hard to debut with a book of essays (never mind “selling” it, a story too long and twisted to share here). But I don’t regret it. I feel such relief that MY OCEANS is my first book—the one I can point to and be like, “Well, if you really want to see the world I’ve constructed in my head…” I can’t imagine MY OCEANS as anywhere but the silty sea foundation of my literary path.
You give away a LOT of your rights when you “sell” a book to a traditional press (such as book cover final calls, serial pub payments, marketing copy, etc.) THANK GOD I worked with a small press who listened—or at least pretended to read—all my emailed “dissertations.” I would have NEVER survived a big press steamrolling my many opinions and ideas. And that is going to factor enormously into all my book publishing decisions and negotiations (if I get more).
“Selling” books doesn’t make money. Hence all my dramatic air quotes every time I write the word, “sell.” I am deeply in debt on this book project and probably never climbing out. My (newish) career as a writer feels full of meaning and, yes, that is priceless. But it also doesn’t contribute toward vet bills and summer camps and the fair financial partnership I expected at this age of my professional pursuits. Every day, I feel guilt for the privileges I needed to get here, and also lament all the stories untold, books unpublished, in cataclysmal institutional unfairness.
Like having a baby/toddler, I’ve begun to forget all the bad and hard parts of writing a book: the constant rejections (publications, residencies, agents/editors), the sleepless nights, the anxiety of not knowing, ever, what I’m doing. You, too, might emerge weathered and creakier and baffled as to how you survived and also shocked by the thing you created—mystified by the concept of a day when you have to let it go and live its own life without you. (Check back with me, as I’m still wandering this stage of mystification).
Writing by hand was critical in helping me find my voice. Every sentence in MY OCEANS was written, first, by sloppy script into a journal. This may be my own silly theory, but I think voice comes from the subconscious and the subconscious refuses to work with keyboards. I imagine “voice” as a diva who demands that little rolling ball at the tip of pen, or that smooth undulation of pencil lead on paper, something—anything—to slide down. And I think Voice (if we’re going to personify, she needs a capital letter) also insists on fields of white paper-y space in which to unfurl without the pressure of a blinking-cursor. Ps. I built this theory by my own monstrous error: I wrote an entire novel by type and do you know what it lacks? VOICE. So now I’m re-writing every chapter of that book by hand. Learn from my mistakes.
Writing nonfiction was such an excavation of self that I’ve turned to fiction for my next two book projects. Frankly, it’s a HUGE relief not to use the blood of my own life as the color palette for my art. I’m also really feeling into this sentiment by Susan Sontag from the Paris Review in 1995:
“I was having a kind of slow-motion, asymptomatic nervous breakdown writing essays. I was so full of feeling and ideas and fantasies that I was still trying to cram into the essay mode. In other words, I’d come to the end of what the essay form could do for me.”
This list is getting too long, but it was fun. I’ll roll over the rest of my points into a (forthcoming) Part 2: Lessons I’ve Learned from Publishing A Book, that I’ll share after my book is actually out in the world. Stay tuned, subscribe if you haven’t already, and/or forward this to your favorite writer/reader of essays?
Final lesson from this stage? Begging people to pre-order your book is EXCRUCIATING. Please don’t make me do it. But please also pre-order my book. If you’re an essayist, I promise I’ll do the same for you one day. And if you click on one of these links and actually hit purchase, please send me a note so that I can say THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY DEEP SEA HEART.
The pre-order links:
Bookshop.org (every purchase supports independent bookstores & artists)
The Bookworm of Edwards (*book mail includes signed & stamped copies with a whale-pun pencil and a Humpback-eye-moon-selkie bookmark!).
Till next time,
Christina
Where Are You?
If you’re new to Moby Bytes, I’m Christina Rivera and MY OCEANS: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women is my debut book of sea-linked essays deep-diving the oceanic kinship of bodies of water and beings. MY OCEANS is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books in March of 2025 and is now available for pre-order at your favorite booksellers. Please share Moby Bytes with a friend who might want more pod in their life?
(Please) Pre-order MY OCEANS :)
Read some published essays & excerpts from MY OCEANS
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Visit my new author website: www.christinarivera.com
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First of all - you met TTW? Amazing. Second: I’m guessing (hoping) you’ve read some Anne Lamott books- especially Bird by Bird.
I read nearly everything now on my paperwhite kindle because I live in Nairobi and it’s hard to get books, especially some more “fringe” stuff I want. Whenever people are stateside, I ask them to mule books back for me.
I can’t figure out how to share an image in these comments, but the quote I would have underlined a gazillion times had I not been reading on my kindle (instead I “highlighted” and then took a picture of my kindle with my phone - WTAF?) is this:
“Being enough was going to have to be an inside job.”
And: “Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting anymore time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.”
You got your writing done. 💃🏻
I understand how asking for preorders felt excruciating — and I wish for your sake (and mine when I actually finish a book) that you know people want to know how they can support other people. You. As soon as I figure out the right pre-order address to have the book muled back, I’m ordering from the Edwards store. I love the bookmarks.
Your themes intrigue me, what a trio of Sirens you invoke! I'm going to be looking for this book. Your voice, by the way, has such an endearing reluctance to shill, but your writing really shines when you talk about the subject matter itself. That's the convincing reason to buy this book--um yes pre-order Christina Rivera's book!