A month ago, the morning my debut novel was published, I posted a note on here (with the photo above) that has since become maybe the most popular thing I’ve done on the internet. It was a celebration of the book’s release, but more so, it emphasized the long, eleven-year pursuit of publication, starting in my thirties and ending with novel-in-hand at my local bookstore. Turns out, it scratched the itch of the algorithm.

I’m not used to social media flutter so I read every comment, genuinely touched. In doing so, it was quickly apparent how many people on this platform are going through the same grueling, thankless process of trying to publish a book of their own, and how eager we all are for stories from those who somehow made it through the traditional publishing path.

I didn’t consider writing, or even reading fiction seriously until my thirties. I mention this because I’ve recently heard from many people around that age who seem to think they’ve missed the boat on giving writing a real shot?? And so this is me screaming from the Substack rooftops: the boat is still there! The boat is always there! HOP ON THE BOAT! In my twenties, I was heads down on a practical path, studying engineering, a demanding program with no room for liberal arts, then climbing the corporate ladder. Growing up with extreme financial instability, I knew early on that I needed to support myself. I didn’t consider writing until I was able to ask myself what it was I was interested in beyond the all-consuming need for financial safety.

As a result, I was very not well-read when I started scribbling scenes that would eventually become my first (unpublished) novel. A highly autobiographical novel about a woman in tech who discovers her creative self, her actual self beyond other people’s expectations, that I labored over for five years, mostly in the mornings, evenings, and weekends between my actual full-time job in tech. A sacrificial novel that would never be published, but in building it—taking classes, workshopping pages, obsessively reading fiction, and trying, failing, then trying again to make it better—essentially taught me how to write.

That photo with a smile the size of my head, holding my newly published book exudes pure pride and joy. But behind that photo is years of depression, loneliness, and insecurity. I think the post was so popular on Substack specifically because writers understand in a very real and personal way the years of effort behind that smile.

I was 32 when I turned my life upside down and moved from San Francisco to NY to give writing a try, or at least indulge some sort a long-stifled, quickly billowing creative itch, previously only scratched by dating arts-adjacent, bad-for-me men. At the time, most of my friends were also moving, but not because they were blowing up their lives. They were buying homes, cohabitating with partners, and starting families. Meanwhile, I felt like I was moving backwards—literally back to where I grew up, closer to my mom—to pursue what amounted to a pipedream. I told almost no one that I was trying to ~write a novel~. I had just graduated from a top-ten business school, surrounded by practical, achievement-oriented adults, and had no writing experience whatsoever. The idea was ridiculous. But in moving to New York, I could pretend it was possible, take classes and make friends without the weight of my past self haunting me.

Driving all my belongings across the country, I sobbed that entire first day. That night, in my dingy motel room, somewhere in Utah maybe, I called my mom and told her I was making a terrible mistake, that I was turning back the next morning. “My whole life is here, why am I throwing it away?” I weeped.

“You’ve been so unhappy,” she reminded me. “Just try it. You can always go back.”

In so many ways this has been the most important advice of my life, not just for that decision, but everything—just try it, you can always go back. I didn’t go back, though those first few years in NY I considered it constantly, desperate for the smell of Golden Gate park on a run, the crew of friends that knew me like family, the neighborhood I’d grown to call home. Leaving that behind felt like destruction, not movement. But doesn’t any meaningful change feel that way at first?

A few years later, settled in New York with real writer friends I’d met in classes and now, crazily, calling myself a writer, too, I left my full-time job, a job I’d worked hard to get, to work on my novel more seriously, taking up part-time consulting work instead. I was doing exactly what I wanted to, but I had nothing to “report” to colleagues and friends. My days were spent alone with my giant Word Doc and the occasional rejection email. While other people’s lives seemed to be moving forward, I felt like I was digging myself deeper into a hole. But then when I managed to stop comparing myself to everyone else, an exercise that never failed to awake the shame demons, I quite liked my hole.

I also stopped dating, which, in my mid-thirties made me confront the notion head-first that I probably wouldn’t have kids, even though I’d always assumed I would, since I did not want to raise a child alone. I was slowly learning what my priorities were, confronting them in real-time instead of the hypothetical “one day.” To admit the things I thought would make my future self happy, weren’t actually what my present self wanted was not only a bit sad, it was scary. As I’ve written before, pursuing what you love does not always mean you love your life. It can be hard and uncomfortable to trust your decisions in the face of a society that, by and large, chooses the opposite.

In those eleven years, between that first sacrificial novel and my now debut, NOTHING SERIOUS, I got rejected by over 100 agents. There is really no trick to getting an agent (unless your famous). I cold emailed one after the next, doing so in batches, a few at a time, knowing that mere days later I’d re-read my manuscript and see about a million things I wanted to change, cursing myself for having emailed that last batch while at the same time understanding that, in that moment, I had to send it to someone, anyone, if only to feel as if my work was real. I used my nights to search for more agent emails to add to my spreadsheet. Six and a half years from that first query and hundreds of drafts later, I got a YES.

This newsletter has alway been about reinvention. Letting go of the expectations and goals we strap to ourselves from an early age, the ones mostly tied not to our own desires but to societal expectations and superficial notions of “success.” The scary and tedious process of identifying what it is we actually want beyond what we think we should. For me, this goes hand in hand with discovering writing, which was the first thing I pursued not for the external validation it offered (zero at the time, actually negative if you consider the mounting rejection) but for myself. Letting go of the climbing, measuring my worth via corporate titles, miles run, milestones hit, and instead leaning into something much more risky, much less measurable, but true to who I was and how I wanted to spend my time.

I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of publishing for those who want it (finding agents, writing query letters, going on submission, organizing a launch), but for now here are a few things that helped me keep pushing through that decade of trying.

An abundance of time alone.

More than anything, most writers need the discipline to be alone with their thoughts. It is incredibly hard to pursue a goal that flies in the face of our highly visual, capitalist, optimization-at-all-costs society, as novel-writing does, while living in that society without constantly feeling like you’re doing something terrible wrong. And to write a full manuscript, to really buy into an entirely different world, build that world from scratch, then champion that world for as long as needed until its published, you cannot afford to feel like you’re doing something terribly wrong. Solitude allows you to get lost in the dream, and you need to live in that dream as much as possible in order to trick yourself into believing you can make it through.

For me it wasn’t just about the writing. When I was first becoming comfortable with the realization that an ideal day, to me, involved moving from my bed to my couch then back again, reality swapped with the world of my manuscript, hair wild and takeout boxes mounting, it was tremendously helpful—if not imperative—to remove myself from the daily barrage of everyday asks and expectations. I took long trips to Vermont—subletting my place and renting a cabin for cheap—so I could discover who I wanted to be when no one else was watching. I could exist in a space where partnership was not an option, so I could learn who I was without considering who I should be for someone else. I spent the day blissfully, stupidly lost in my writing without lying awake all night wondering if I should have put myself out there instead. Solitude allows you to understand what it was you actually want when no one is around to tell you what’s missing.

Embrace the balance of knowing and not knowing.

I knew nothing about the writing world when I started and in many ways that was a gift. I recklessly submitted essays and stories to publications, searching online for emails, making spreadsheets of editors, and tossing out pitches like one giant A/B test. I mostly got rejected, but I treated those rejections as feedback.

There a few things more helpful to one’s confidence than ignorance. I had no idea how hard this whole endeavor would be, how many days and months writers labored over stories, how many days and months and years I eventually would, too. I was not critical of my overly-written drafts because I didn’t know any better back then. Self-criticism came with time and awareness, as I read and learned more, I upped my expectations. Rejection’s the greatest teacher, but you have to be willing to listen. I wrote NOTHING SERIOUS after my first novel was rejected for years on the grounds that it didn’t have enough plot. NS has the same themes and same main character as my first novel, but it also has a big juicy plot. Taking feedback changed everything.

It’s a challenge to balance the free-spirit and sense of excitement that comes with the not knowing, alongside the critical eye and heightened skill that comes with learning and awareness. To lose sight of either puts us in a sticky position—the egotist who unknowingly thinks everything they write is gold, baffled by rejection, or the hard-at-work writer, afraid to submit a single story because it will never be perfect. Ideally, we maintain a little bit of both and access each as we need it, maintaining the confidence to put ourselves out there, while also having the humility to listen and change.

Listen to podcasts and read stories from fellow creatives.

If you’ve spent seven years toiling away on your book and you still can’t seem to break through, I’m very sad to report that is absolutely, totally normal. Almost every writer I know has at least a decade-long story behind their first published book. Turns out, it is really, really hard to make it in the arts… for almost everyone.

When I first started writing seriously, I had podcasts with other creatives and writers streaming in my ears at all times. WTF and Otherppl were huge for me at the time, now there are infinite options. It was invaluable to hear other people’s struggles. Specifically to realize that if someone was rejected for years on end, or actually found the process of writing excruciating most of the time (like I did), it didn’t mean they (I) should give up immediately. It was normal, most writers hate writing most of the time. It made me feel like I wasn’t crazy, like rejection and self-loathing were all part of the process and all I had to do was keep going, that there was a light somewhere at the end of the tunnel.

Take classes + make writer friends.

While podcasts are great, real actual human people can be even better! I won’t belabor it again here, but, as I detail in the post below, writing friends changed my life!!! I can’t emphasize how important it is to find a community. And it doesn’t come magically, it takes work to build and maintain these friendships and courage to put yourself out there. The post below details specific advice on how to make and keep writer friends and why their so important.

The Most Valuable Part of My Writing Life

Emily J. Smith

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November 21, 2024

To continue striving to for any shred of publishing success in the present day, and certainly to write an entire book, one needs a community strong enough to establish an alternative reality. You must cultivate a world in which it is essential to keep going, a world where the possibility of “success” (however one defines it) is ever looming, and where s…

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Save money and make sacrifices.

It is very hard to be a writer without money. Many writers identify as broke because writing pays next-to-nothing. But most writers are not truly poor. If they were, they would likely be busy trying to survive—not writing. Most writers (not all) have some backup money, whether that be financially comfortable parents (who may not give them income directly but would, for example, cover a hospital bill in an emergency), a partner (even if partnership simply offers health insurance and shared living expenses—that helps!), and/or a day job.

Most people need money, or at least the knowledge that their life will not completely crumble if they get a parking ticket or come down with Covid or can’t pay the rent, to write a book. Because more than anything, writing a book takes time. And, sadly, time costs money. The number one thing I did to help my writing career was allow myself long stretches of time between full-time jobs so I could focus on my novel. I do not have parents or a partner who can support me if I need cash or health insurance. I did this by leaving my nonprofit job to work a corporate job that paid more money when I knew I wanted to try writing seriously, then saving as much money as possible (a privilege, no doubt) and keeping my living expenses to a minimum (including ultimately deciding not to have children) so I could afford these breaks.

Not everyone can quit their job to write a novel—I certainly couldn’t for a long time—but some people can if they’re willing to. I’ve spoken to many people in the past few weeks who tell me they want to leave their job and write a book. Most of these people are very financially comfortable and I have to ask: “So, why don’t you?” To which they laugh, as if the idea is insane. And like I said, it kind of is in the context of our hyper-capitalist culture. But objectively, it’s not. Reduce your living expenses, dip into savings, and, if you end up hating it… find another job. Not to say it won’t be challenging, it will, but it’s possible.

I think the hardest part of this shift for many is detaching our identities from our careers—enduring the long, quiet period where you have no external badges of progress to show for yourself and have to rely on self-motivation, a somewhat delusional belief in your abilities, and the simple satisfaction of the doing to keep going. But if you’re truly feeling the urge, maybe just try it… you can always go back.

Back to the book! At its core, NOTHING SERIOUS, is a very personal story about a single 35-year-old woman uncovering who she is and what she wants beyond societal expectations and male approval. (There’s also a mysterious death and subtle psychological thriller elements in there, too!!) If you haven’t read it yet, please consider grabbing a copy from your local bookstore, or online here ❤️

One of the very best parts of this whole process has been hearing from readers. HUUUUGE thank you to everyone who reached out, the messages are so unbelievably thoughtful and absolutely make my day every time 🥹 ❤️