How to Bring Light to the Shadows

When things fell apart with my literary agent in 1999, I wallowed for a couple of months. I had left a six-figure salary, a great NYC apartment and everything that had been familiar for a decade to live the dream of being an author. Watching it crumble before me was more than I could bear, and I made the impulsive choice, rooted in ego indignation, to publish it myself.

My internal lens has two views of this decision.

The piece of me that clings to disappointment and shame chides me at the thought of trying to find an agent for the latest book I’ve written: It was a disaster! Not only did you lose a ton of money, but the rose tint was stripped from your glasses around the people you thought were friends.  

You were so excited at the idea of offering $100 advanced signed copies to help fund the printing and send handwritten letters out by mail. But not one of the people you worked with for ten years even responded, except for one person, who sent an e-mail saying she wouldn’t send a check because you’d “masterfully disguised self-sabotage as your dream.”

You ran yourself ragged for two years and sold less than 3,000 copies. It broke you – physically, financially, and emotionally. It literally drove you to bankruptcy. All because your agent lied to you. Why would you even consider trying that again?

The empowered soul who knows her worth says: You knew you could figure it out and you did. You took a risk when no one else was self-publishing fiction. You sent that offer letter to several celebrities you admire, and Kathy Najimy sent you a check for $100!

You managed the whole thing – from hiring a cover designer and editor to researching and getting quotes from litho printers. You found a typesetter who did a fabulous job and dedicated hours to learning the ins and outs of the book business.

With no on-demand presses, you lived with over 100 boxes lined up against the railing of your dining room. You schlepped 25-pound cartons to the post office to send to distributors and packaged up individual copies for those who bought one from your website.

When you got pushback from bookstores and reviewers, you invented a PR person, had business cards printed and sent all correspondence for publicity from her. It got you a good number of reviews.

You peddled the book to every independent bookstore you could find in New Jersey and NYC, and even got it into Barnes & Noble, who scheduled book signings complete with posters displayed on easels at the front of each store. The determination you had drove you to hard sell the buyer at Coliseum Books on 57^th Street, who ended up putting it in the store after looking you in the eye and saying, ‘no’ multiple times.

Tower Books in the East Village carried it right next to Rob Brezny’s novel. On an end cap!

Pulling from the themes in the book, you developed curriculum for a goddess workshop that The Learning Annex and other venues hired you to facilitate. You attended the National Booksellers Association show in Chicago and got to meet Louise Hay, along with participating in multiple book shows and literary festivals. You pushed past the fear that the book, and you, weren’t enough and convinced strangers to buy it.

Then there was that time you created enormous gift baskets, complete with a copy of the book, for Penny Marshall and Drew Barrymore and crashed the set of Riding in Cars with Boys in Orange, NJ.  You didn’t know the precise location, so you ventured into a local diner dressed like a delivery person and told them you had gift baskets for someone on the set. The waitress told you exactly where they were filming and gave you directions.

Maybe it didn’t become a best seller, but you gave it everything you had. Plus, you donated the copies that didn’t sell to women’s prisons. And you ended up with some pretty good stories. Right?

The truth is all of these are facts. And sometimes the dissonance is so loud, I fear I’ll go deaf.

What I try to remember is that the self I was then didn’t make conscious decisions most of the time. She had trauma responses and practiced magical thinking. I knew little of the impact trauma had on my life then, the way it threaded through my belief system, how it drove virtually every choice I made.

I remind myself that I’m not that person now. My nervous system feels safe a lot of the time. I don’t have the need to create chaos or set myself up to be the one who knows how to “figure” everything out because I believe that’s the only way I have value. I now understand that making that book a best seller would have been a lightning strike, and those are rare.

So, despite the hangers on, the voices that still want to make that experience mean something that makes me feel bad, I’m querying agents. I know what it takes to self-publish and I don’t want to do that this time. I will trust the people I choose to trust because I trust my ability to choose. Whatever happens will teach me more than I could ever dream. And hopefully, I’ll have some fun.

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