And Just Like That...

Reflections on Carrie Bradshaw, Erica Jong, and twenty-five years in the business

If I could give writers one piece of advice, it would be this: don’t quit your day job.

Publishing is a tenuous business. Talent and hard work are not enough to guarantee success. If you end up being able to support yourself with your writing, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And if you treat writing like something between a calling and a cherished hobby that might, someday, bring in a little extra income, you won’t be disappointed.

If I could give newly-published writers two pieces of advice, I would tell them not to quit their day job, and that other peoples’ opinions of them and their work are none of their business.

You write the absolute best book that you can. You send that book into the world with all good wishes, knowing that it’s still not going to please or delight everyone who comes across it. You hope it finds its audience, that it delights them or comforts them or makes them laugh or cry. And you know that reading every review, every comment, every tweet and Instagram post, isn’t going to allow you to turn back the clock and write a book that would have made all of your critics happy.

You also know that – at least for me – having those voices in your head won’t be helpful when you sit down to write the next thing, and the next thing, and then the thing after that.

These are both pieces of advice I’ve tried to live by.

But, every once in a while, I’ll just be minding my own business when I’ll accidentally stumble across some piece of critique.

So it was, the other day. I was reading a Vulture story about Emily Henry by Allison P. Davis, when I came upon this paragraph:

The current iteration of contemporary romance, specifically the rom-com Henry writes, is reminiscent of a genre that fell out of favor in the early aughts: chick lit. Those big paperback books with high heels and knocked-over cocktail glasses on the cover and women who fight at sample sales and publicists who flirt with their domineering bosses. Books by Jane Green and Jennifer Weiner and Sophie Kinsella that were in lockstep with a feminism that just loved to take pole-dancing classes at Crunch Fitness (but kind of looked down on sex workers). There was very little explicit sex, but you knew everyone was getting laid.

My first, honest reaction to this was huh? Because, chat, I did not recognize my work in this description.

My novels eventually become “big paperbacks,” but they start off as hardcovers. Their covers have featured zero knocked-over cocktail glasses and two pairs of shoes. On the cover of a book called IN HER SHOES. Pole-dancing classes at Crunch Fitness? We don’t have Crunch Fitness in Philadelphia, and I guarantee you that none of my heroines would have taken a pole-dancing class, unless they were sent on a dare. Very little explicit sex? My books have plenty of explicit sex, much to the horror and dismay of my children. Kind of looked down on sex workers? Maybe? I guess? Who knows what kind of stupid things we believed twenty-five years ago?

Eventually, I got past feeling puzzled, and pissed, and slightly aghast.

At which point, I felt the sting of recognition.

I’ve been rewatching “Sex and the City,” (which is, BTW, a primer for stupid things we believed and said twenty-five-plus years ago), and I’ve made it to the season 3 episode where we learn that Carrie, age 34, is not a registered voter. “Politics had always felt as relevant to me as the new Erica Jong novel” she snarks.

Oof.

I was thirty years old when that episode aired, in 2000. Fear of Flying, Jong’s debut novel, had been published twenty-seven years previously. It was one of the books that made me want to be a writer. I read Erica Jong novels! I looked forward to Erica Jong novels! How did Erica Jong end up being shorthand for could not be any less relevant to a young woman at this moment?

The very relevant Erica Jong, in her heyday.

And how is it that I’m there now?

Fear of Flying came out in 1972, and was immediately scandalous. Henry Miller endorsed it. Paul Theroux despised it (he called Jong a ‘mammoth pudenda.” It’s the story of a nice Jewish girl who ditches her loyal but boring psychiatrist husband and goes off on an adventure with a Brit named Adrian Goodlove. It sold more than 20 million copies. It spoke to women who felt trapped in unfulfilling marriages, women who were figuring out how to be more than just wives and mothers, women who were searching for their identities and their place in the world.

The critics were not impressed. As Jane Kamensky’s recent essay in the New York Times wrote, “a young Martin Amis damned the book as mere autobiography and declared, “I neither know nor care whether all the horrible and embarrassing things in this book have actually happened to Miss Jong.” Paul Theroux compared the “witless” Isadora to “a mammoth pudenda, as roomy as Carlsbad Caverns.”

And, says the Kamensky, “bitter but true, (Jong’s) writing is not much taught or studied. A couple dozen dissertations center on her work, about a tenth as many as those analyzing Roth.”

Fear of Flying was very much a book of its time….the same way the late ‘90’s/early aughts ‘chick lit’ probably feels like books of their time. The same way the books that are hot and trendy right now will, twenty-five years from now, feel like books of their time. Erica Jong was the Helen Fielding of Emily Henrys. Even though I doubt that any of those women ever sat down with the intention of being the avatar of a trend, or the voice of a generation (or a voice of a generation).

Nobody sits down and thinks I am going to write chick lit, or I am going to write a sex-positive feminist battle cry, or I am going to write a book that will speak to an entire generation of women. It’s more likely that an author sits down and thinks, I’m going to tell a story that is interesting and engaging and feels true to me and my life.

It’s the world – not the writer – that slaps on the labels, and puts the books in boxes, and declares hot or not.

And it typically happens to women’s work much more than it does to books by men.

Thinking about that episode, and that Vulture piece, I couldn’t help but wonder…why is it that male authors never seem to get grouped and boxed and bundled into the same kind of trends that women do? Can you imagine Carrie announcing that politics were as relevant as the new John Cheever or Philip Roth novel? Why are men granted the gift of timelessness, while women’s work get stamped with an expiration date?

And is it better to be a has-been, or a never-was?

That question, at least, is easy to answer.

There’s only a handful of the OG chick-lit litter hanging on, and nobody calls us ‘chicks’ any more. These days, we write women’s fiction, thank you very much. Brand-new label, same great taste.

Labels aside, I feel lucky to have been able to publish for this long and to have found an audience that’s stayed with me for lo, these twenty-five years. I might not be the hot new thing, but I’m still, you know, a thing. Even as one of the faces of a genre that has “fallen out of favor,” I’m grateful, every day, that I still get to make my living doing the thing that I love.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about my own luck, and privilege, my own place in the publishing ecosystem, which has changed so much since I got started. As hard as it was to find an agent, sell a debut novel, and launch an actual, bona fide career in 2000, I think it’s much, much harder now. Which is why I’m doing the fellowship with Blue Stoop, giving new authors some money and mentorship and support. And it’s why I’m trying to show you, on here, with my own work and other people’s work, how a draft becomes a publishable novel. And why I am going to try, in 2025, to do a better job of answering questions about writing and the publishing industry.

So here’s the first one!

A reader asks:

I’m wondering what your thoughts are on 1., submitting writing (and money) to enter competitions and 2., paying for various classes/workshops/mentorships, etc.?

I’m focused on getting my two completed novels to professional level, and I’m constantly receiving newsletters about competitions and class offerings. Some are very expensive but offer “time with an industry professional who will critique my writing” or the opportunity to submit work for a contest that could land me an agent/publishing deal.

My editor says these are great ways to separate authors from their money. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Short answer: I’m with your editor.

There is no shortage of writers who will do anything to be published. Pay a $50 entry fee? Drop $100 for an hourlong Zoom with an agent or an editor? Spend $2000 on a weeklong workshop? Some people would give up a kidney if it would give them a shot at getting published. I know – once upon a time, I was one of those writers.

Now that I’m on the other side of the fence, it’s disheartening to see my peers participating in the separating-aspiring-authors-from-their-money racket. Published authors should, ideally, want to help the next generation. At the very least, they should not be looking to the next generation to underwrite their dream vacations, or to fulfil their extramarital desires.

And yet. Have I heard horror stories about male writers who treat workshop attendees as their personal harems? Yes. Have I heard writers gossiping about their all-expenses-paid sojourn in to insert-fabulous-destination-here, all for the price of a morning or two entertaining the dreams of delulu amateurs who have zero hope of ever getting published? Again, yes.

In the publishing world, the money should flow in one direction: into the writer’s pockets.

And if you’re going to spend money, I’d advise you to be conservative with your investments, to ask lots of questions (such as, Has anyone who’s participated in this weekend or workshop or retreat ever gotten an agent or a publishing deal?) or to spend on something with a guaranteed return. Dropping $50 to enter a contest is akin to buying an expensive lottery ticket – not hard to justify. Spending thousands on a weeklong retreat that’s been running for years and has yet to produce a published author? That’s another story. But paying for a developmental editor who will give you back a marked-up manuscript that you can improve?

That’s money well spent.

Leave your writing questions in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer!

Am reading: Family, Family by Laurie Frankel and The Favorites by Layne Fargo, and I recommend both.

Am watching: Slow Horses with my husband and Doctor Who, with my daughter.

Am lifting: weights, three times a week. Just trying to get strong enough to survive the next four years and/or the zombie apocalypse.