MFA vs NYC Part II – What Else Can I Do?
- At April 03, 2014
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Remember that scene in the movie The Devil Wears Prada where Andie goes to the Art Director (played by Stanley Tucci) and whines to him about her boss being mean to her, she’s doing everything she can, in essence, she asks him: What else can I Do? And he rolls his eyes and gives a great monologue about everything she’s not doing, starting with not caring, not studying the subject matter enough and thinking herself above the job.
I was thinking about this scene in conjunction with reading the essays in MFA vs NYC, discussed here, because there are bits buried in different essays, not straight-up ingredients to success or a list of must-do’s to be successful, but little hints of what people (publicists, agents, editors, publishers, successful authors) are doing to push books. “Etsy that shit out!” commands a publicist about the packages she sends out, story after story about people working odd hours at odd jobs in order to survive as a writer, people who spend hours of every day serving other people’s writing.
I was thinking of the desperation underlying a lot of the essays, the notion of a book “going big” – lots of not only book sales, but maybe movie and translation rights, notions of a book (or author) suddenly transformed into a cultural icon. They are desperate, but also committed. This is not a side project, a hobby – books are their life. People who “get lucky” with their books have often worked on said books for years with no reward, have had dogged agents, editors, and publicists work hard on their behalf after the book is taken, and then…the world does what it wants with the book. Sometimes the books become stars, sometimes little more than dim reflective glimmerings in obscure shadow.
The MFA vs NYC book is really less about the MFA/NYC debate and more about working as a writer/teacher versus working in the book industry. Yes, putting in the time and money to get an MFA or to move to NYC involves sacrifice with maybe only a little gain. I suspect most successful writers must both study and work with their local communities and book industries (not necessarily NYC, though that probably helps re: the literary party scene – but places like Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and Minneapolis, and numerous other great cities all over the country – all have their own robust literary communities, publishers, agents, editors…) to get where they want to go. But most of all, they have to do the hard work of writing, re-writing, submitting work, getting rejected, submitting again…you get the idea.
So this goes beyond the MFA vs NYC issues – if you really want your book to make it, you have to work for it, you have to care about these weird cultural eddies, how people read, what they want to read, what you want to read, how your sentences are crafted, who your target audience is, how will you reach said audience, and before that, how will you reach, say, a book buyer, reviewer or a magazine editor who might then lend a hand to making your book a success? The answer, if you’re a poet and realistic is, even if you do all the right stuff, your book is unlikely to sell more than a thousand copies. Ten thousand is considered super successful in the poetry world, although it’s considered a huge flop in, say, technical publishing or even fiction. Selling even a thousand copies means lots of work on your part: traveling for readings, probably on your own dime, asking people for blurbs and reviews, and still, of course, you must get lucky (say, a feature on a big radio program or a moment in the spotlight of one of the bigger media web sites.) But before you roll your eyes and complain about how hard you’re working and how few books you’ve sold, think: What else can I do?
I want to really do everything I can for The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, because it’s a personal book to me, about my own childhood, the environmental issues I care about, about family, but also I think it’s the best thing I’ve written yet. I want to work for this book to make it the best it can be, so as I finish polishing up the MS for Mayapple I’m already thinking: what else can I do? Snip a poem here, write another line there. Send it to a few trusted friends to look it over. Then, the next steps: reach out to bloggers, contacts at literary magazines, librarians? Spend a bit of my own money on advertising or publicity? Whether it’s making better marketing material (as per the command of the publicist…) or spending more time in advance planning readings, updating your web site or dipping your toes into a new social media network, ask yourself what you’re willing to do, not for yourself or your own career, but in service of your book. Poets, what else can we do? (Suggestions welcome in comments!)