Publisher Unmoved by Chapters Bitching about the Cruelty of Being Given a Book deal. Cut from "How to Weep in Public"
Mid-process, I became convinced the real narrative was whether I could finish the manuscript. I drafted a meta-thread of interludes on the agonies of writing. None made it in.
See below for one of those interludes.
“Writing Update: A Complaint Against Agent, Editor, Publisher, and Friends”
A veil has lifted. I realize now I’m not to blame for the suffering this book has brought. It’s time to cast responsibility where it belongs, on those who believed in me and put money behind that belief in the form of a book deal.
Here’s what’s really going on, and how we arrived here.
A publisher made the grave error of buying a humorous book about depression on proposal from me, as though they could trust a depressed person to finish something she started. Didn’t they know that the very depression that qualifies me to write the book would also show up to prevent its completion?
It’d be one thing if a depressive had slipped a completed manuscript under an editorial board’s door and they decided to publish it. No, they bought this thing on proposal.
All I had to do was drum up several sample chapters, summaries, a convincing table of contents. I can’t be blamed for presenting a few floating ice chips only for them to presume these were iceberg tips, a formidable book below the surface. Half a book is so easy. The rest nearly impossible.
Despite their reckless decision, fault will surely land on Ole J when they realize it is impossible to make depression funny for more than a sentence or two.
If these publishers seriously believe I’m up to the task of doing what I say I will, then the mental illness is theirs. Maybe they can write a humor book about it.
Unfortunately, even though I know that all blame lies squarely on the suited shoulders of my publishers, agent, and encouraging friends, I have depressive tendencies, and so I will inevitably go into a shame spiral when I fail. Isn’t that just rich?I will blame myself, and marvel at my inability to get it together when really I am the one who has been failed by the people around me.
At this point, the most tiresome thing about shame spirals is they don’t really throw me. Disorienting circular emotional descents make up my day-to-day existence. My body is quite accustomed to the movement. You might say I’ve had my sea legs for some time.
This whole book endeavor (me, writing one) is too few lifeboats on the titanic, historically and emotionally on par with other great failures of hubris and institutional oversight.
Notes on Your Manuscript
It’s probably just coincidence, but this all became clear roughly around the time that I received a little something the people in the book world call Notes Back.
Not to be a jargonist, but Notes Back refers to, for example, “getting notes back from an editor about your draft.” Of course, you don’t know that what you sent was a first draft until after the Notes Back tell you so. You might think you’d sent in a completed masterwork and it’s time to talk cover design. And, yeah, you have some thoughts.
In the e-mail of broad editorial notes I received, the editor delved into things like structure, content, and tone, and it was this delving that disturbed me.
Particularly aggressive was the suggestion that I needed to make things more densely funny. The laughs were a bit diluted I suppose. Perhaps my sense of humor about depression has been skewed by my depression.
I find personal anecdotes of sobbing in public humorous empirically, without clever imagery or startling dood-dads at the ends of sentences. Maybe I’m just the madman, laughing wildly over his peas.
Also, I argue that my depressed reader is in a state where too much hard hitting humor could cause them to close the book feeling misunderstood.
The Cruelty of their Confidence
My voice may be small and shaky, but I will no longer be afraid to speak out against the publishing industry for their reckless treatment of a key segment of the mentally ill population: me.
Sure they think it’s a real hoot to show interest in our perspectives and even award us book deals. They get their kicks “shepherding our best work” into the world through whatever midwifery required…but what about us? Are we not human? Just look at how they’re treating me.
Apparently I’m expected to make depression funny to people who are…not me? Oh Jesus, what the fuck do they think I am? A writer?
I see no way out. For now, I will take to bed, in the name of research. Goodnight. It is 3pm and I got up at 11AM. I like to say goodnight in the day, because it feels like a larger yet gentlemanly rejection of life in general.
At Risk of Taking Responsibility and Trudging On
While it may appear that I have a healthy grasp on who has wronged me, I’m only talking big because I know you’re listening. Later, I’ll fall into an unhealthy sense of personal responsibility, and that never leads anywhere good. It’s already starting and it’s not pretty. I just heard myself think, what strategies might I employ to support myself through this process?
I’m no doubt at risk of other destructive thoughts like I committed to this project and I will finish it or I can probably get this done if I let go of perfectionism. They’ve driven me to the brink of revisiting Bird by Bird. It’s not fair. This buddy wouldn’t have to take it bird by bird if I hadn’t been cruelly tricked into submitting a proposal in the first place.
The Reader is Not Innocent
At this point, completing the manuscript would be to condone the publisher’s cruelty, not to mention an act of overindulgence of you, the reader. I had the word dear, and I deleted it, because yes, my resentment now extends to you.
While I brave an upright seat, writing under the AC’s rough wind, you lie there and enjoy the ride, knowing I finished the book. I still do not know, as of this writing, whether I ever finish this book. We speak through time, but only you have peace. You enjoy a book. I talk to a phantom. I thought we were in this together and I realize now that I am alone.
[END of Chapter]
During the writing of the book, when writing tantrums came on, I tried to follow the book’s original ethos - writing from a state that doesn’t seem to produce anything readable - so I’d stay in the document by writing these interludes. Always ready to alchemize waste products of my moods, I later argued these sections could offer the book something it really needed, a protagonist with an active quest, some stakes.
They were never included.
-JN
If you’ve made it this far, perhaps you’re interested in exploring more of Jacqueline Novak’s work:
Stand-up shows
August in Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
Watch Get on Your Knees, her Emmy-nominated stand-up special, now streaming on Netflix.
Buy How to Weep in Public on Bookshop or listen on Audible