Swapping sides

The problem with working in publishing is that everyone knows when the book you’ve written goes on submission. You think people are talking about you because people are talking about you. I thought I’d prepared myself (colleagues knew I was writing, and I wasn’t shy when it came to discussing the process), but the reality was bizarre.

An editorial director mentioned they brought up my book at lunch and again at drinks. "Who are they?" Scouts, apparently. A colleague in another division told me there were whispers among editorial of "a girl in sales with a book on submission". That’s me, I thought. I’m the girl in sales with a book on submission. A third person said that her scout friend loves it. Scouts again. Who are these scouts? Are the scouts in the room with us now? "It’s a good thing! Scouts talking means people are excited about your book." I didn’t even know what a scout did, but I came to understand it as some sort of literary insider trading. I smiled and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling office windows and pressed my forehead against the glass, looking down at the ant-like crowd swarming the city. Sonofabitch is down there somewhere, I thought, like that boy from that film.

Every day without news was a day a manuscript came in at work, and I became hyperaware of the same thing happening at other publishers with my own novel. I decide we should buy every book, I would love them all. A 900-word tome on an old war? I love that war. An editor liked my tweet. They’ve read it, I thought. Someone smiled at me a bit too hard in the office. They think there are too many sex scenes, I knew it. The first, inevitable rejection comes in. They think I’m illiterate, I thought. They think I’m an illiterate nymphomaniac with delusions of grandeur.

And then, the book sold, and I was no longer suffering. In fact, I was surprised to find I felt little at all. It’s a dream publisher, but I felt like a sim, standing in front of my bookshelf holding I Love Dick in one hand and In the Dream House in the other, waiting for something to happen, for that gorgeous little snake I loved to move me.

As someone in the industry, I now understand that experiencing the submissions process from the side of the buyer, and having a book to sell, is like the difference between knowing the mechanics of swimming and being thrown into the sea

It didn’t immediately register as dissociation, because I didn’t see it as a traumatic experience. Dissociation is a trauma response to emotional stress: your emotions, having put a shift in, pack up and leave for a while. You can also feel as if things aren’t real. People told me my own good news and I heard it as a story; it was difficult to connect. "You must be so happy!" a marketer beamed when she heard the news. "I feel nothing," I said, watching her smile turn at the corners. "Hahahaha," I followed up.

I understand why my response was jarring, writing a book while working in publishing isn’t unique. But it’s an exposing situation. A friend went through the submissions process immediately after me and found me innocent of all charges. "Having a horrible, horrible time!" she said, "I’m sorry I ever told you to be excited".

Knowing what I know now, when I go through the process again I will tell myself not to guess how quickly the book will be bought, not to put words in people’s mouths or envision scenes between people whose names and lists I know. I won’t take my own advice, mind. As someone in the industry, I now understand that experiencing the submissions process from the side of the buyer, and having a book to sell, is like the difference between knowing the mechanics of swimming and being thrown into the sea. As people who see multiple acquisitions a week, it can become common to speak somewhat lightly of people’s work. I’ll speak for myself: there have been times that I’ve held a manuscript in my hand like something in a market, doing my own appraisal of it’s worth, whether to barter or buy quickly, hoping no passer-by sees what I’ve picked up. To think of numbers before I think of heart. Any action, done over and over again becomes autonomous, but we need to remember what we’re doing here. What our jobs mean to writers, and to treat more tenderly the writers in our midst.

From experience, I know my feelings will come back to me. I assume when the book is announced, certainly once I start editing. Some trigger will break the neurological dam and I’ll feel as I deserve to. The facts of the situation will be recategorised in my brain from fiction to non-fiction, from understanding to comprehension. I’ve written the book I most want to write, and it was given to an agent who gave it to an editor and the absolute astonishment of this will come back to me. Eventually it’ll be out in the world, emblazoned with an imprint that has had me in awe over and over again. The strangeness will fade away and a new normal will become established: both selling books and writing them, being able to do both and only losing it a little.