So when I decided to micropublish my book (I’ll write a post on that later!) I knew I was gaining a lot of control in exchange for doing a lot of work. I’ve never met an insurmountable task that didn’t seem like it could be fun, so this seemed like a great trade to me.
I decided to distribute pre-orders myself because it meant I could send bookplates and stickers and fun swag as thank yous to people who ordered it early. But what I hadn’t thought through was that this meant they would send me a few hundred copies of my book, turning our tiny New York apartment into a postal sorting facility the day before a federal holiday.
This turned packaging the books into a family affair, with all of us frantically sliding books into envelopes and affixing labels and then rushing across Brooklyn to the only post office open until 6 pm so we could get them in the mail before the Juneteenth holiday (who does this? No one does this). So I double parked out front at 6:01, and my daughter on rollerblades and my son in bare feet and my superhero of a husband staggering under the weight of multiple tubs of books burst out of the car and rushed into the post office…and Tracey, the nicest postal clerk this side of the Mississippi, let us mail them, even though they were one minute late. Thank you, Tracey of Nostrand Ave.
To be clear, I love the fact that my book is in the world. I love holding it in my hands, and imagining it winding its way through the US Postal Service, Miracle on 34th Street style, makings its way to readers who hopefully will love it enough to pass it along or tell their friends about it. But when things take this much time and energy, it’s worth seriously asking the question…
Why are we doing this anyway?
When I come across the phrase “find your why,” I tend to find something new to read instead. Not that I don’t think it’s important to know why we’re doing things or to have a vision or a motivating theory, but because no one tells C-street executives or astronauts or Taylor Swift to find their whys—it’s something that we tell mostly women, mostly minoritized folk about doing labor for less than they are worth. Teachers, nurses, parents are told to “dig deep” and “practice self-care” and “find your why” as they’re struggling to work too many hours without enough resources or compensation.
To me, the better question is simply a slightly skeptical “why?” spoken in your best sassy sixteen-year-old voice. And if you can’t find a good answer to that question, it’s worth pausing until you can figure out the answer. Here are a few questions that can help you either craft a writer’s manifesto—or let yourself off the hook and try new, non-writing things.
Do you need to write?
This is a fundamental question worth asking yourself: what is the minimum amount of writing you’re under obligation to produce in order not to get fired/to get tenure/to get promoted? That is your baseline, and the writing that has to get done for instrumental purposes. You should do this writing, even if it’s hard.
Some of you need to do very little writing. Some of you are thriving in institutions where scholarship can look like innovative pedagogy, creative performance, conference presentations, etc. You may be happy in an administrative position, looking fondly at the days when you did publish, but have neither the time nor expectation to do so. Or, you may have a job with high expectations of writing and productivity.
Why write more than you need to?
Writing, on its own, is almost always a money-losing endeavor. As academics we know this—we don’t make much money off of our books, especially taking into account what it might cost to hire editors and indexers, and we write our journal articles for free (or even pay for them to be published if they’re open-access!) (Of course, professors at research-producing institutions get paid to write in the form of salaries and grants.) So whenever we write more than we need to, it’s worth figuring out why.
Possibly great reasons:
A sense of creation: Just like people dance, paint, sculpt, or play the bassoon, some of us write because the act of creating things feels urgent to us. The process of writing itself is fulfilling.
Spite: You know.
Fame: lol I don’t know how you become Taylor Jenkins Reid or Robert Caro. Alma told me the other day, “Mama, you’ll know you’re actually famous when you can find your book in the library!” Lofty goals!
You’ve got important shit to say: All of you are doing some kind of work that makes the world a marginally better place to live. It’s a worthy reason to put those ideas into the world.
Professional identity: Maybe you want to call yourself a writer, or maybe writing and doing research is how you stay connected to your identity as a scholar. Some people use writing to avoid administration-creep, or to have an identity beyond teaching.
Not-so-great reasons:
Inertia and guilt: Some people write out of a sense of inertia. What else would you do with this time? I talk to writers in this camp sometimes, and they are often burned out and resentful of the process: they don’t have clear expectations of what they need to do to be successful, and they don’t have a clear sense of themselves either as researchers or outside of research, so they just keep plodding along, and it feels unfulfilling. Maybe they have co-authors they don’t want to let down, but the project has dragged on past its useful lifespan.
Narcissism or saviorism: One of the greatest gifts academia ever gave me was the realization there is a whole universe of people smarter than me who were already saying things I found important. I don’t need to save the world, the weight of the intellectual kingdom doesn’t rest on my shoulders, and the same is true for you.
My suggestion:
If you don’t have to write, and you don’t want to write, then pause! In that space, you might ask yourself some hard questions, but you’ll emerge on the other side with either a clearer idea of why you want to write or a sense of what you want to do instead.
My answer to “why.”
Right now, I live in a world where there would be no professional ramifications if I never wrote another word (except maybe this newsletter, which connects me with all of you lovely folks). Writing at this point is a time-, and perhaps money-, losing endeavor for me.
My book project has affirmed two things for me. First, I am, in my heart, an editor. The great editor Bob Gottlieb, who was the editor for the great Bob Caro, had this to say about the whole thing: “First of all, I dislike writing. I was never the editor who wanted to be a writer. Writing is hard.”
Second, even though I find writing infinitely harder than editing (bless all of you who write words so I can edit them), I need to write: it’s a core part of my identity in a way I didn’t fully appreciate until I gave myself the option of walking away from the book…and then coming back (“if you love something, set it free…” and all that jazz). Unlike Bob, I like to write. It’s the way that I want to communicate with the world. Which means writing only things I want to write, in the voice I want to write it in, for reasons that feel urgent to me.
So, my friends, your homework is this: next time you sit down to write, ask yourself the question “why am I writing?” And make sure you have a good answer.
Write all the things, but only if you have a good reason,
Kelly
Housekeeping
New! Academic publicity services: As I wrote about last week, we now offer academic publicity services. Let us design a publicity strategy that will get your book in front of readers, so you don’t have to!
You can order my book! It’s in the world!
Write with me! - The Book Workshop quarter one is underway, and it’s a blast! If you feel like you’d benefit from a writing community during the semester, there will be a few seats open for new folks to join us in August. I’ll also have information about the fall writers’ circles soon, so keep an eye out for that.
Editing/coaching - We have no more coaching spots for the summer, and only very limited editing availability for short articles and job materials. If you’d like to work together in the fall, this is a good time to reach out!
As always, I feel so lucky to have all of you as part of my community—thanks for doing what you do!