A Year of Writing

IN MY EARLY TWENTIES,

I put on my big girl pants and made my way to Boston for an unpaid internship in children’s publishing.

Before I left Pittsburgh, a handful of people looked at me with pity in their eyes and uttered some variation of, “Oh…you know it’s difficult to get into publishing, right?” (After much research, I did know that it was a notoriously difficult industry to break into.) “You have to know someone.” (I did not know anyone in the industry.)

But I did it. I found my way in, navigated multiple avenues of publishing, including textbook, magazine, and trade, and I stayed for 13 years.

Eventually, we had to leave Massachusetts. I grieved. Leaving my career was like losing a partner. Because despite the industry’s many promises in 2020, most houses were not truly willing to make publishing accessible to employees outside of New York City and eastern Massachusetts.

And then! A kiss from the universe. I managed to find a children’s publishing job that allowed me to work remotely. So, for two years I worked full-time hours during the day, cooked dinner, and then spent my evenings writing, sometimes well into the wee hours of the morning. Then I would wake up, rinse, and repeat.

On weekends, in between household chores and errands, I generated marketing and promo content for my books. Also a full-time job.

The work of writing and marketing was exhausting and expensive, but I did it because I was so excited to publish my first book.

But with 4 books scheduled to release within a 2-year period, I was fraying at the edges, and I was very close to crashing out (as the kids say).

My husband and I talked about what I would need to do to bring in roughly the same income as my regular job. While Pennsylvania is cheaper than Massachusetts, we still had to contend with capitalism and rising costs of everything.

I thought about my next steps a lot. The number one question I had for myself was: “What if it doesn’t work out?” My brain and anxiety always had a quick response: “That’s why you shouldn’t leave your job.”

For months, I asked myself this question multiple times a day. The answer was always the same, so I went about my regular job of responding to emails, attending meetings, and marketing other authors’ books.

But one day, something strange happened.

I asked and received a different answer.

Me probably: “What if it doesn’t work out?”

A LOUDER VOICE: “BUT WHAT IF IT DOES?”

To this day, I don’t know where that voice came from. It certainly wasn’t mine, and because it wasn’t my self-reproachful voice, I decided to listen to it.

Moreover, I felt like I owed it to the younger, less jaded and cynical version of myself to try writing.

Even if it meant I might not succeed. Even if it meant I might have to return to a corporate job that didn’t involve books or literacy.

I understood that leaving my publishing job meant that I might never again work in the industry that I had managed to successfully enter and navigate for more than a decade, and that was painful.

You probably think I felt a mild sense of relief after making this difficult decision. No more emails or meetings. No work travel. No more corporate politics.

On the contrary, I worried even more—about the gap in my resume, the state of the world, the state of publishing, and money, both earning it and depleting my savings with a pet, medical, or home emergency.

But I did it anyway, because when I worried that things might not work out, a voice that wasn’t mine said, “But what if it does?”

This week marks one year since I left my fulltime publishing job to pursue writing. It would be cool if I had a list of “Three Things I Learned While…”

That would probably be informative and fun to read. Something like that might even inspire you to write.

But I don’t have that. I have only scribbles and random thoughts strung together with punctuation.

TAKE WHAT LESSONS YOU WILL.

However hard you think you will have to work, set aside more hours in the day to work even harder. Unless you are already famous or have a high-level personal cheerleader at a publishing house, you’re going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to shouting about your book. You have strong sales after a year? Great. But they’re not New-York-Times-bestseller sales, so work harder.

Because one of my pet peeves is the glorification of the publishing industry, I’m going to be frank with you. Sometimes, hard work won’t cut it…and that’s not your fault.

Over the last year, I thought I would write a lot more than I have.

But it’s not easy to do something as free-spirited and fun as creative writing while being bombarded with news and updates about a government that actively hates its people and wants them to die—or at least keep those people financially depressed, uneducated, and unhappy.

There’s also the rampant book banning by people who have not bothered to read the things they “hate,” and instead of interrogating their feelings and/or making the logical adult choice to read other books, they spend their time trying to control what information others have access to.

There are also constant cries about how sales for middle grade and YA and horror and books in general are down, so in an effort to keep up with salaries and six-figure advances, many publishers are pushing out more of the same. You’d like to write something new and fresh or strange and unfamiliar? Good luck.

This, however, is a problem that plagues all media and art. The silver screen belongs to the same handful of actors because for some, the promise of money is > their appetite for art.

Finally, there is not enough space on the internet for me to write about the perils of AI and the threat it poses to authors (and human beings and the planet), so I will simply quote Joe Hill: “You can be for humans or for AI but not for both. And remember that you are a human.”

I have joked about this, but it’s not actually a joke—not really. Trying to write in this current hellscape can leave an author feeling like they’ve made a Faustian bargain of sorts. Each day, it feels increasingly like the Crypt Keeper is narrating my life story. “Kiddies, tonight’s frightening feast of fiction is about an author who is about to discover that the pen isn’t mightier than the sword.”

An author friend of mine once said, “Sometimes publishing makes me feel like a similar frustration to home buying. Like ‘why weren't you publishing in the 80s/90s as non-existent or a fetus? Then you could have been successful now!’” Many authors resonate with this sentiment.

It’s my fault and no one else’s if I am not successful at this writing endeavor. It has nothing to do with publishers or big chain bookstores and online retail or the monopolization of social media or the political climate or the chaos and capitalism of the world. It’s me. I am the problem…

Which brings me to my final thought.

If you have not seen the show The Bear, you should. In one of the later episodes, Carmy’s sister, Nat, says to him: “You found something that you love…and it’s completely one hundred percent okay if…if you don’t love it anymore, because the most special part about it is that you were capable of that love.”

Before my first book was published, I loved writing. A lot. The proof is in my history. From the way I told my parents stories before I could read. In the way that I pounded the keys and printed each piece of fiction after we got our first computer in the ‘90s. In the way that I decided to pursue an MFA in writing for children so that I could try to become a better writer.

I WAS CAPABLE OF LOVING WRITING

enough to publish four books.

So, when the sourness started to creep in, I dragged myself around the house for months, worried that I had wasted the last 25 years of my life chasing a career I no longer wanted. Wondering if I was, in fact, the problem because I wasn’t satisfied.

Nat’s words stayed with me. It felt like she was speaking directly to me and telling me that it was okay to abandon writing.

But when you spend a lot of time alone and you’re anxious and unmedicated, you overthink everything. And I did. However, I eventually came to understand Nat’s words in a different way.

I did the thing. I wrote and published the books, and now I don’t have to do it ever again if I don’t love it enough to continue.

That thought sits on my shoulder whenever I feel like I am torturing myself with the marketing and business side of publishing.

For these reasons, throughout 2025 I’ve written only what I’ve needed to write. The words have come out feverishly and desperately when I simply couldn’t stall anymore. Over the last year I have taken little pleasure in writing. It feels like a chore for which I will not see a reward. Will children read and enjoy the books? That is my deepest hope. But I do not often get to see the reward of a child eagerly turning the page or clutching a book to their chest.

I could go back to a corporate job—if I can find one in this economy—but that would mean setting writing to the side for a while so that I can play the world’s worst game.

Nothing has worked out the way it was supposed to, or at least the way I thought it would.

BUT.

I will keep asking the universe what’s next? It’s the entity with the grand plan—not me—so I’m trying to trust that old adage: When one door closes, another one opens.

And not just any door—I’m hoping for fancy French doors with nice curtains instead of the Twilight Zone door I seem to have stepped through.

It's been one year, and I have very little writing to show, but I have a lot of thoughts about how I would like to move forward in this world and industry over the next year. Despite my 2025 writing and publishing experience…this old skeleton still loves storytelling.

I still get excited about the prospect and promise of a new narrator and their shenanigans. If I sit at my computer and type, I can be distracted long enough to ignore the business side of publishing.

THIS BLOG POST COULD HAVE BEEN A JOURNAL ENTRY.

I am a big supporter of angry scribbling and tear-stained pages. (Social media is not a good substitute for a journal.) However, as Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

So I write this in case other authors have lost their spirit and are feeling morose about writing and the state of publishing and books. I don’t know if things will get better, but let’s keep writing and cross our fingers and hope for a booming book world.

P.S. I don’t have an actuALLY scary moment for you this newsletter. The world is scary enough.