January 9th, 2024

2023 in (my) publishing life

I made the usual effort to reflect at the end 2023 and what a year–what a cavalcade of things! There were a lot of personal events for me in 2023–I moved, published a book, lost one job, was freelance for a bit, got another job, and all the more minor bumps and highlights that don’t suit being Timeline Events on Facebook. But what I am mainly thinking about lately is one of the many things that was great and terrible about my 2023 was publishing life. The books, the mags, the sharing, the collabs, the whirlwind opportunities, the ideas, the help and support and endless endless work in support of awesomeness. I’ve never been so deeply in it, and I’ve never been so shocked at how hard it all is, and how cool the best people are, and how smart. I have never had so much help and believed so much in the power of the collective, but also–there’s no other way. I worked my a$$ off at two different jobs, a handful of freelance gigs, and my own book in 2023 and I was both amazed at how much of it was and is a spaghetti of cross-wired grant applications and connections and ideas handed around until they find their best fit. Being over in magazines now is the same song in a different key–I have a tremendous amount to learn, I am highly (highly!) aware of that, but a lot of the basic outlines are familiar.

But there are a lot of challenges. Certainly, a lot of what happened at Inanna was unique to the situation but also there were some things that were universal because publishing is publishing. Nothing could have shocked me more after working for six months in the tiny Inanna office–which, let’s be real, is a repurposed supply closet with a mysterious black ooze hardened on the back wall–than going to the London Book Fair. I had sort of forgotten about capitalism, there in the supply closet with everyone just sort of scrabbling around to give each other a hand however they could, but meanwhile in another part of the forest, a lot of people remembered. I keep thinking I will write about that experience–I keep trying to, the original draft of this post had some thoughts–but it was too wild. TOO WILD. I didn’t craft my wardrobe properly for all the sitting on the floor I had to do. But I was pretty successful at the fair–shockingly so, really–because my Inanna colleagues and the Canadian publishing community painstakingly helped me get ready, step by agonizing step. It takes a village. Also my English friend who taught me to buy meal deals at the Aldi for 5 pounds rather than the expensive food in the fair, that helped me too.

I feel like I’ve seen too much about publishing and whenever anyone asks, “Aren’t you worried your book isn’t getting enough attention, don’t you want to do more promo for it, are you worried about publishing your next book?” I think I AM worried about those things…and then I think about that huge dizzying wonderland/hellscape in London, about all the really good publishers struggling with grant applications written in morse code and runes, about all the hours and hours and hours I spent worried about some “portal” or other logging me out and not saving everything properly and all the people who just never responded to my emails even when it was their actual job to respond to my emails, and the TWO different people who actually had no responsibility to email me back, who responded very politely to say they would prefer I never email them again. I have for the record obeyed. And so yeah, I love my own books, and I want them to be successful but I just…cannot get very fussed about it. Mainly…every now and then I’m still fussed. But really–just what are the odds! If you have seen what I’ve seen–which is actually NOT all the books published in the English-speaking world in a year, but a fair percentage of them–you just can’t get that upset anymore. You still work hard–I still work hard–but like Le Petit Prince on his tiny planet (why are so many things like Le Petit Prince to me?)…it’s an odd perspective.

What am I saying? Maybe I’m saying what I’ve been saying since I started back in 2002–the sky has always been falling. Except I’m older now, and more tired, and it’s hard to keep putting the sky back together. I would like publishing life to be easier for more people, to be a more welcoming environment for a broader range of people who can’t eat a cheap squished sandwich while standing in the gutter in three minutes so they can rush right back to work. A career path like that necessarily leaves a lot of people out, more and more, and it’s sad to see. I can’t begin to describe how generously I’ve been treated and how exhausted I’ve been–even just today, both things.