Publication Anxiety

On Friday, I received this package in the mail. Somehow, brilliantly, two beautiful contributor copies of Hunger Mountain, published by the Vermont College of Fine Arts had made their way across the ocean. I slid them from their paper wrapping. They were heavy. They were large. I cradled a copy in my hands, opened it, and read my name. This is my second publication, but the first in print. The story, “April Mornings,” was inspired by an inscription on a grave in Rome.

Several of the literary journals to which I have submitted list “contributor copies” as the or part of the payment to writers. When I read that I would be receiving these contributor copies, I had thought that sounded nice, but I had not really understood. But holding the journal in my hands on Friday, in my office during my lunch break, its physical form, the heft and the feel of the paper, the thumbing through of pages, it bestowed a new kind of reality on the whole thing. Here is this thing I wrote.

It feels good. I take a moment and feel proud. My husband took several photos of me that afternoon pointing at my name in various places on the journal and sent them to my family, who returned kind congratulations. I texted a group of college friends, and one asked me for a reading next time we all Zoom.

And by all this I am touched, but it also has me nervous now, in a way that I was not before, and it is mostly for those people that I know who will ask me now to read the story. The prospect of sending it to them, or worse of reading it out loud–they will think, is this our Jimmy? Will there be surprise? Shock? Offense? Will they say they want to read, or that they find it interesting out of obligation? Will some think privately that I have overstepped my bounds? Will someone be embarrassed?

I know by now that privacy is a tricky business in writing. So many hours sitting alone before the page, it is freeing to let down every filter and just type and type, to see where the story takes me or where I take it. But the moment I send that manuscript to some journal–if I really wanted to keep things hidden, I never should have sent it out.

My writing is not particularly dark, but it is also not the bright and cheery face I sometimes wear. And then, it’s true that some of the feelings in my writing are my own, and then that others are exaggerated, others fully invented. When someone reads, who do I become to them? Perhaps more my real self, yet also less, and how is anyone (even me) to quite disentangle the Jimmy who emerges in those pages from the Jimmy typing solitary with his cup of tea from the Jimmy family member, friend, or the real self? Maybe I am none of these people.

I am not deeply worried. I will face the little nervousness and embrace the joy of sharing something meaningful to me with the people I care about. Maybe it will lead to some good conversations. Maybe I will blush or roll my eyes. So it goes, in this so personal of businesses.

In the meantime, I’m still busy writing, and the more I write, the deeper into myself I go, and I know that the prospect is only heavier from here on out. I used to wonder why on earth anyone would use a pen name unless writing against an oppressive government. I’m starting to understand.

Best wishes for the week ahead,
Jimmy