'I Published a Novel and No One Cares!'

Blaming yourself for not selling books is like blaming yourself for aging.

Door 84 (1984) by Dorothea Tanning

Hi Polly,

I've been an admirer of your column for over a decade, and today I am writing to you with a problem that I have tried to fix with relentless amounts of positive thinking, self-pep talks, and marijuana. But I just can't seem to shake it off, so here I go.

I feel like an utter and complete failure. I published a novel this year with a big publishing house, but it's not sold many copies and has gotten minimal press. I have tried my best to hustle, emailing bookstores to ask if they want to do events with me, reaching out to influencers myself, checking in with the book's publicity team, but none of it has helped. I have tried building my own audience on Substack, but the numbers are low and will not budge. I worked so hard on my book. I stand by it as a work of art; I know it's good. But I am scared that with these low numbers, I will never be able to publish a book again. And there is nothing I want to do more than write books.

I feel humiliated. I feel isolated — because when I try to tell others how I feel, their responses tend to be “You're lucky to have been published at all. Stop complaining.” They have a point, but I'm still struggling. Most of all, I feel paralyzed. I worked so hard, and put my heart and soul into that book. I tell myself that even if two people read my book, that's enough. The most important thing is that I believe in my writing. And I do. But some days, it's just so hard to motivate myself to keep going. Being on social media, seeing my peers collect accolades... however well-deserved, it just kills me. The paperback of my book is coming out this year, and I don't feel motivated to promote it at all. One part of me is telling me to look at this as an opportunity, a second life for the book. But another part of me is saying, why endure another round of humiliation? Just accept that the book is a failure.

I am working on another book now, and I like working on it. I love writing and always will. But there is a voice in my head that just keeps saying: Don't bother sharing it. Just give up. People don't get you; never have, never will.

How do I move on – with my next book, and my life? How do I stop feeling like I have failed? How do I fail better?

With gratitude,

Author Down

Dear Author Down,

People who write books have a lot in common. They’re people who are willing to work very, very hard in isolation in order to feed the notion that they’re special and soon the world will recognize it. They’re also people who feel like failures when they start a book but don’t finish it, finish it but don’t publish it, publish it but it’s not publicized, it’s publicized but it doesn’t sell, it sells but it’s not optioned, it’s optioned but it doesn’t win awards, it wins awards but no one on social media seems to know / remember / care.

But that’s not all. People who write books live in their own heads and construct their own private reality there. They escaped into books as children and they’re still escaping. They formulate narratives that make them feel loved and safe, but they also inadvertently write narratives that make them feel doomed.

And crucially, people who write books are people who believe that other people don’t get them — never have, never will. Because why would any human spend hours, weeks, months, and years writing in isolation, without an audience, without encouragement, if they weren’t obsessed with fixing this problem and being understood, adored, praised, celebrated, and LOVED FOR EXACTLY WHO THEY ARE, AT LONG LAST?

Writing is a quest for love. It’s compulsive. It’s a form of self-soothing and also a form of self-punishment. It’s an escape and also an attempt to face reality. It’s a way of broadcasting “I’m still here!” and also a way of hiding from everyone, among words that will give you love when no one else will.

All of this sounds negative but I’m also saying that I understand you and I respect how hard you’ve worked. I relate to you because I’m just like you. I also feel like a failure regularly, for any of the reasons listed above and hundreds of others. I also care about being special, even when I don’t fucking want to care, even when I think I’m finally over it, even when my mood turns sour and echoes Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics:

“FUCK EVERYBODY. THAT’S ON MY BODY.”

When I heard those words for the first time a few weeks ago, I was working out in my mom’s cramped living room to an old P90X3 DVD, in which extremely popular physical trainer Tony Horton blurts out, “AGING IS FOR IDIOTS!” I’ve listened to that motherfucker tell me that aging is for idiots for a full decade now, and I’ve been aging the whole time and blaming myself for being an idiot the whole time because I continue to age in spite of my best efforts not to.

I didn’t hear those ridiculous words that day, though, because now I turn the volume down on Tony Horton and I turn the volume up on Kendrick Lamar. And look, sometimes it feels much healthier to replace blaming yourself for everything with FUCK EVERYBODY. Because the world is filled with bad noises, sounds that erode our spirits, and we swim through them every day. Eventually we’re ingesting bad noises and regurgitating bad noises until we don’t even know the difference between the bad noises and our own bodies. FUCK EVERYBODY is the sound of one artist saying, “I will not eat this shit you’re serving me anymore.”

Blaming yourself for not selling books is like blaming yourself for aging. It’s irrational. Books don’t sell, period. Have you ever skimmed the best seller list? If a book is truly great, it’s almost guaranteed not to sell. You’re calling yourself a failure for things that are out of your control. That’s the kind of unreasonable position you start to take when you eat bad noises for way too long without noticing it.

Ironically, one of the reasons you became a writer in the first place was that you wanted to push back against those bad noises. Remember? You wanted to construct a world that dramatized those insidious, fucked up sounds, and you wanted to create a protagonist that struggled to overcome them. You wanted to bring your internal battles into the world and make them colorful, unnerving, unforgettable, maybe even devastating.

You did what you set out to do. You were successful. You even got paid for it. You even published it. You even worked your ass off to promote it. These are all huge, rare successes. People who write books often feel too humiliated to publicize their books. They get scared and upset and they avoid the whole thing in the home stretch before publication, because they are PREEMPTIVELY ASHAMED OF FAILURE.

But you aren’t a failure. Using that word is absurd, it’s comical. You’ve succeeded beyond reason. So instead of continuing to ingest and spit out the world’s bad noises — writing is for idiots, promoting unpopular books is for idiots — you need to stick to the same convictions that helped you finish your novel and struggle to promote it.

Not only are all of these supposedly gross traits shared by book writers relatable and understandable, they’re NECESSARY. So stop shaming yourself and lean the fuck in to allllllll of that weird, deluded author nonsense. Get up in the morning and tell yourself, “No one will ever get me but it doesn’t fucking matter. Fuck everybody. I’m special. If I’m the one person alive who knows it, so be it. I will keep making arresting, beautiful things. I will keep sharing my thoughts. I will keep humiliating myself, but I will call it triumphant, I will call it seductive, I will call it magnificent.’

Or as Kendrick Lamar puts it, “I deserve it all.”

Feel free to tell me that many people who write books — and many people who write rap lyrics and make workout videos! — are arrogant, aggressive, vainglorious motherfuckers who deserve a kick in the teeth. That’s not how I feel about it. I love arrogant, aggressive, vainglorious motherfuckers because I know they’re on a desperate quest for love. They sell millions of records and they still feel like failures, they still hate themselves, they still wonder if anything is worth it. That’s how it is when you want to stay driven and you want to create but you also want to look directly at the truth of who you are, where you are, and how you feel. The struggle is real, motherfucker. Being a true artist, being a true writer? The struggle is realer than real deal Holyfield.

Your drive to write books is delusional. Embrace that, for fuck’s sake! It’s compulsive. It’s a form of self-soothing and also a form of self-punishment. It’s an escape and also an attempt to reckon with the truth. It’s a way of broadcasting “I’m still here!” and also a way of hiding from everyone. In a writer’s world, in an artist’s universe, I LOVE EVERYBODY and FUCK EVERYBODY are like the sun and the north star. You navigate with one when the world is shiny and beautiful and you use the other one when everything turns dark.

You’re special and you’re also an idiot. That’s how it feels to be a writer. That’s how it feels to be an artist. You willingly humiliate yourself, over and over again. That’s even how it feels to be Tony Horton, who was diagnosed with a rare form of shingles with debilitating symptoms in 2017, after which he told Self magazine, “Now it’s time for me to look at how I suppress my emotions and try to fight through everything with exercise alone.”

Is Tony Horton’s sickness karma for crowing about how aging is for idiots? My disturbed, former-Catholic brain is tempted to think so! And my resentful, fuck-everybody brain is likely to agree. But the truth is that we are ALL humbled every day, often in the exact ways we fear the most. Life was designed to humble us. It’s that simple. And if we want to create, to soar, to reach for greatness, to touch the sublime, we are also going to crawl, and suffer, and feel pure despair. We are going to cry into our hands in our mother’s cramped living rooms because we just heard something sad and pure and true, and because we don’t fucking know what the point of writing is anymore but we still want to feel that magic again. We want to believe. We want to reach for something divine in spite of the mandatory humiliation involved.

Now obviously, you have options. You can sidestep that whole thing if you want to keep yourself safe from such extremes. But bitch? That ain’t you.

So instead, you need to accept the reality of being a person who writes books. Here’s how it works: After you publish a book, there is a reckoning. All of the emotions you suppressed and fought with writing alone suddenly rush in and crush you. If your book doesn’t sell, you feel sick. If it sells a ton, you’re also in for a scary ride. When your goal is to make art, to give a big piece of yourself to the world, to tell the truth, and — crucially! — to FACE THE TRUTH, then your goal is also to feel like a complete fucking idiot, to ask for way too much, to seem impetuous and enraged and self-centered and needy. You will stand up in a nearly empty room somewhere and you will read your book out loud and you will think “I am such a loser” — and you will also think “I deserve it all.”

Your most important job as an artist is to listen to that second voice — and believe it.

By the end of that workout, I was starting to believe again. The song “Reincarnated” was playing, and in it, Lamar was craving credit for everything he’s done, but he was also asking for forgiveness for everything he’s fucked up. He was saying “Look at how special I am!," but he was also saying “I haven’t done enough, I’m a failure!”

Then a voice asks him, “So can you promise that you won't take your gifts for granted?"

That’s what crushed me. I’ve been taking my gifts for granted for a long time now. That’s just what people do. It’s embarrassing to realize what an ingrate you are. But it’s also embarrassing to look at your gifts and acknowledge them in public and continue to push them into people’s faces, in spite of everything.

It’s embarrassing to be human.

Writing is a very public quest for love. It’s embarrassing to ask for love out in the open. It’s embarrassing to believe that someone will understand you eventually. It’s embarrassing to know that you’ll keep working hard to be loved, to share yourself, to show yourself, whether anyone is paying attention or not.

But listen to me: You write because you believe in it. You still believe, even now. You crave love, and that part of you isn’t humiliating. It’s sad and pure and true. It’s a gift. So stop telling yourself lies and repeating this world’s bad noises. No one smart measures quality on sales. No one enlightened reduces art to commerce. You are an artist. Fuck everybody. You deserve it all.

Polly

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