Elizabeth Inness-Brown

It's Just a Book: Revelations on the Occasion of Publishing a First Novel
by Elizabeth Inness-Brown

I've been writing seriously since my early twenties. Over the past three decades, I published two books of short stories. But it was only this winter that I finally published my first novel.

Burning Marguerite is the story of Marguerite Deo, a woman of French Canadian and Abnaki Indian descent born just after the turn of the century, on an island similar to but not identical with South Hero, Vermont, where I happen to live. Moving backward in time, the book reveals Marguerite's life in three phases: the last phase, when she discovers the joy of motherhood in her sixties; the middle phase, where she experiences domestic happiness; and the first phase, her tragic childhood and youth.

The book was written over a span of five years, during which time its characters became as real to me as my own family. And, just as one sometimes must let go of one's family, with Burning Marguerite's publication I've had to let go of the book, and move on to other things. What I'm trying to move on to is a second novel, a whole new cast of characters -- a new surrogate family, another world to immerse myself in.

When I finished Marguerite, I thought: Now I know how to write a novel. And I was anxious to start the next one, thinking what a breeze it would be. Yeah, right. While a first novel is hard because you're learning so much about technique and process, in many ways a second novel is harder. The first novel, you do on spec. No one's waiting for it. If you fail, no one but you will know it. You can write whatever you want -- it doesn't matter to anyone but you. If you assume (as I did) that your chances of publishing it are a million to one, you're liberated to make as many mistakes as you want. (And, as someone once wrote, "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes; art is knowing which ones to keep.")

In short, with a first book you work in quiet anonymity, which is probably the best condition there is for writing.

With the second book -- the "follow-up" book -- there are pressures. Maybe you know the basic moves now, but you also want the new book to live up to or exceed the first book in quality. Now you have an editor who's waiting for your work; you know what she likes and dislikes. You don't want to disappoint her. If you're lucky, you have a public out there, fans, however many or few-people who will consume your next book as soon as it hits the shelves. You don't want to disappoint them. Meanwhile, the "old" book is out there getting reviews, and unless you're a better person than I, you're reading them, and they're also influencing what you write. The world is suddenly very noisy, and you feel anything but anonymous.

I find myself spending a lot of time fighting these pressures. It's not easy.

Three axioms are helping me out. I've got them taped to my computer on a blue sticky note. The first is a paraphrase of something Hemingway said: "Write clean and hard about what hurts." The second is a variation on that: "Be honest." Both of these I put up to remind me that the goal is not getting another book published or even writing another book-the goal is writing well and writing something that matters to me, something I can be proud of even if I never publish it.

The third axiom, though, is the kicker: "It's just a book."

It's just a book. This is the lesson I've been learning over and over again ever since Marguerite came out. But it's something that's hard to accept. After all, during the writing process, Marguerite took over my life, with greater and greater intensity as time went on. As the book release grew closer, the anticipation was almost painful. I expected, somehow, that it would hit the scene with such a huge splash that everyone in the country would get wet.

The book went on sale on a Tuesday. I had a plan. I would go into town, have lunch with a friend, then head over to Barnes and Noble to see the "display." The book had received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and a great review in the local "big" paper just that Sunday. I imagined, at the very least, a pile of books facing the front door-maybe on that "new release" table with the other books, but definitely front and center.

I get there. I walk in. No sign of the book on the new release table, not a single copy. I walk around, thinking it might have its own display somewhere. Nope. I check the new fiction shelves. Nothing. Then I realize that the new fiction shelves are in alphabetical order, and I look a little closer. There they are: three copies of Burning Marguerite on the third shelf down, at the end, below eye-level, in the dark. My beautiful cover just barely visible. It's just a book, I realize, and there are many, many other books out there, and they're all vying for attention. Big deal, so you published a novel. Who didn't?

A while later, I find out my book is on sale at Costco. It's just a book, a commodity like any other, and it too can be discounted for bargain hunters.

My local rotary club wants to read the book and have me come to their meeting and speak. I think: Great, book sales! Then I find out that rather than each of them buying a copy, they've bought just a few, which they're circulating around and which they plan to donate to our local libraries when they're done. It's just a book. Not everyone wants to own it. Heck, you can take it out of the library.

The movie offers don't flood in. Oprah doesn't pick it. It doesn't rise instantly to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. When it finally hits the Boston Globe list at number nine, it only stays a week. It's just a book.

I still have to clean the toilets and mop the floor. I still have to have a job. I can't drop everything and just write. It's just a book. My life does not change overnight.

So far all this probably sounds fairly humbling, even humiliating. And, despite the fact that the book is actually doing pretty well for itself out there, it has been. But the humiliation has had some positive effects on my current writing. For one thing, it's helped me put all that "pressure" into perspective. Yes, things have changed -- my editor and agent are waiting for the new book, have high hopes for it, etc. But at the same time, it's just another book. Just like the last one, it's not going to change my world, or anyone's world. It's what I want to do, yes, and it's the best thing I can do with what abilities I have. But it's not that big a deal. Just get on with it, one word at a time.

When I am stressing out about whether the New York Times is going to review my book or when an ad is going to appear in the New Yorker, I remind myself that New York City is still recuperating from a terrorist attack that makes any novel seem less than a fly speck. When I'm talking to my friends and wishing they would just ask me about the book, I remind myself that they have real lives of their own to talk about -- stuff like a lump in a breast, finding a job, having a baby. Real life is much more…real than any book ever will be, no matter how good the book, no matter how important the topic. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but when the sword strikes, reading is not the first thing on anybody's mind.

And yet, and yet…people are reading the book. And they care about what they read. At a recent book discussion, one of the women told me that, times being what they are, she found my book very reassuring, an island of calm in a sea of troubles. The idea that people can find solace in a book -- in my book -- is a reason to keep writing. It may only be a book-it is only a book-but a book can be a good, a calming thing, a reassuring thing. She reassured me, too. A book may be only a book, but it can have an impact on real lives.

For a reading at Wordsworth Books in Cambridge*, I chose a passage in which Marguerite discovers that the five-year-old boy whose guardian she's just become has a cancerous growth on his finger. Afraid she'll lose custody if her small, rather insular community learns how long it took her to notice, she convinces a vacationing ophthalmologist to remove it. Afterwards, the boy stops eating for several days. Marguerite's on the verge of taking him to the emergency room when she finally figures out what the problem is and gets him to eat again by offering him salad made from the petals of fresh flowers.

That's where I stopped reading. During the Q & A, a man in the audience raised his hand, very concerned. "Did she take him to a doctor afterward?" he said. "Did he get a biopsy done? Is he all right?" I wanted to tell him It's just a book, but clearly, to him, it was not. Later he confided to me that he had responded so strongly because the situation echoed something in his own life, a mistake he had almost made. I reassured him. Yes, the boy is all right. Yes, she takes good care of him. Yes, everything is okay.

Other people who have read the book want to know: Do Faith and James Jack stay together? Was Marguerite's husband gay? Did her mother know what the doctor was going to do? They ask questions about the characters that the book doesn't answer. They imagine that "the truth is out there," and I've just omitted it for some perverse reason of my own. They want answers. It's just a book doesn't satisfy them.

Saying it's just a book makes sense if you want to remind people-or yourself, as you write-what a novel really is: an arrangement of images to make a world on the page, an arrangement of words to make those images. Just words. That's all a novel is, really.

But if the world in that novel comes alive, speaks to people, makes them care, gives them solace-then it's a worthwhile thing, isn't it? Even if it is just a book. I gotta get back to work.

* * * * *

Here are a few of the worlds I return to over and over again as I write:

The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields
Postcards, by E. Annie Proulx
Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
the Claudine books, by Colette
anything by Tom McGuane or Toni Morrison
Boston Adventure, by Jean Stafford

The next book I'm going to read, because everyone I admire admires it:
Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner

A March/April Book Sense 76 pick:

"This deserves our wild collective support. A really fresh and seamless story; can't think of this story being told before. It's utterly amazing that it's a first novel. I may have to ask for more time out front in order to handsell this book; I heartily recommend it! "
- Melissa Mytinger, Cody's, Berkeley, CA

* Wordsworth Books: 30 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: (617) 498-0062 or 1-800-899-2202