You Wrote a Thing. Now What?

Followed by an interview with the Brazilian writer Daniel Galera, winner of the Sao Paolo Literature Prize!

Dear Desperate Writers,

One day, an idea came to you. It came out like the first star on a dark night, shining for your eyes only. Or it hit you like an itch you couldn't ignore, a splinter in your foot that hurt every time you walked until you were forced to attend to it. Or it was like a lover who seduced you, saying softly, "No one has ever imagined this before. No one ever will. It's yours to write."

And so you set out to follow this idea, like a pilgrim without a map. Or sometimes you thought you had a map, but the stars misled you. There were lakes and rivers where you had been told there were meadows and forests. Sometimes you had to swim in cold water where your feet couldn't touch bottom. You kept on. Sometimes you were lost, other times you knew exactly where you were headed.

Time passed, months or years, and then you realized you had arrived at your destination. You, and you alone, made manifest this dream in your mind and put it on paper.

Wow. You wrote a thing. From the spark of an idea to completion, you created something out of nothing.

You did something that only a small percentage of the population ever does.

And now your only desire is to publish it and get it out into the world so people can appreciate your offering.

Art Auntie is here to say, "Whoa Nellie. Hold your horses." Before you go rushing off to publish, you need to celebrate the heck out of this moment. Celebrate it for its own sake. Think like a mother. If we are fortunate enough to bring a child into the world, our first instinct is not to say, "Now let's see if she'll get accepted to Stanford!" Our first instinct is to cherish her, to show her off to our friends and family who are certain to appreciate her, to adore her for herself.

Stanford's acceptance rate is about 3.7%, which seems rather better than the odds of getting a book deal at a Big Five publishing house. But you didn't make a creation just so she'd get into Stanford, did you? You made her, I hope, out of an excess of joy and curiosity and love, and maybe other, more complicated reasons too--but not because of what she could do for you.

And you wrote your manuscript because it begged to be written. You made it because the idea came to you at night and whispered in your ear that you, and you alone, could manifest it. That it had a purpose, a reason for being that pleased you, and you hoped might please others.

But it did please you. Don't forget that. There's a saying about ugly children, that "only a mother could love them." But I often find in my conversations with other writers, and my work with students, that we mothers and fathers of our creations don't love them once we've brought them into the world. We often carry something close to shame about what we've created, especially if it doesn't sell quickly, or it's taken us a long time, or it doesn't fit neatly on the shelf of public expectations.

I encourage everyone who has written and completed a manuscript to look at it with affection at the minimum. I also encourage the creation of a ritual week after a work of art is finished. This is where good writer friends are essential. You have labored, and you have likely sweated, and wept, and laughed and groaned and thought it would never be over. And now you have a book in your hands. Let your friends know how important this accomplishment is to you. And friends/partners/besties: this is your cue to step up! This is the time to bring flowers, and chocolate, and wine, and maybe to host a party or take your writer friend to brunch.

I've had the privilege of being present for many writers as they completed their manuscripts. It's a fragile, hopeful, exhausted, happy, vulnerable time. It's become more and more clear to me that if we don't mark this time, we are robbing ourselves of an opportunity to celebrate the one thing that we, as writers, have any control over at all: our commitment to our work.

I was there for my friend and neighbor Angela. She told me she was getting close, and that whenever she finished she'd be knocking on my door. I told her I was waiting for her.

This is how Angela remembers it: "In early September I finished my manuscript, a difficult work of memoir about transracial adoption. This is a project that has been thirty years in the making. When my son was five years old, I decided to set aside working on the memoir in order to raise him. I held the vision though that one day I would finish and publish it. My emotions of disbelief, awe and excitement were palpable the day I arrived on Rachel Rose‘s doorstep to tell her I had completed my manuscript. That day in September sitting with Rachel I realized that I needed to take this time to celebrate. Writing is joyous, and it’s also extremely challenging. The celebration of this work isn’t just for me. It is also to celebrate my son who inspired me, my mentors who supported me and the friends who cheered me on. As I now work on my book proposal, I wear the three rings I bought to mark this achievement."

We took a photo together the day she knocked on my door, to celebrate the completion of this difficult memoir. It makes me smile whenever I see it.

Much of what happens on this strange path we take as writers is completely out of our hands. Committing to doing the work is the one thing we can control. And celebrating our accomplishments strengthens that commitment.

We do the hard work. We pause to rest, and to dance, and to let ourselves be lifted by those we love. And then we begin again.

Angela bought three rings to mark the accomplishment of completing a book that took her thirty years to write. There is wisdom in finding a ritual like this. And there is power in wearing a concrete reminder on your hands--the instruments with which you type your story--of just how far you have come.

~ ~ ~

I so enjoyed talking to the Brazilian writer and translator Daniel Galera, winner of the Sao Paolo Literature Prize! I especially appreciated his advice to Desperate Writers, and I trust you will, too!

How did you become a reader, and then a writer?

Daniel Galera: I was lucky to live in a home full of books. Both my parents, though not intellectuals by profession, were avid readers, so I grew up surrounded by all kinds of books. As a teenager I'd read adult novels constantly, first in Portuguese, later in English too. It didn't take me long to realize books were portals to ideas and experiences that were supposedly beyond my reach or not adequate for my age, so great books felt not only fascinating, but often mischievous as well. That's how you create a true reader: you must bring them to understand that books contain not only entertainment but also secret knowledge, the dark matter of human existence. The sooner the better. But I did not see myself as a future writer. I'd picture my adult self as a graphic designer, or a "web designer" as we'd say in the late 1990's. The arrival of the World Wide Web as one reason I became a writer: I got into making personal websites, then digital magazines, and I started to publish online opinions, small essays, then short fiction. Later I got involved in writing workshops in university, and at some point I realized writing fiction was my true talent, and expressing myself though fiction became a desire and then a necessity. I self-published my first couple of books and they led me to a big publishing house.

What other work do/did you do to support your writing?

Daniel Galera: My main source of income has been translation, from English to Portuguese. In my early 20s I was offered a few children's books to translate, that led me to longer books and finally I found myself translating the very same novels I loved to read. But I do all sorts of jobs available in the book market: critical reading, reviews, essays, discussion panels, workshops. For a few years, after I published Blood-Drenched Beard, I was able to support myself from my book rights. That novel won prizes and was translated into some 15 languages. But usually I must rely on these "side jobs" in the literary arena.

Are you in a book club? If so, tell us about it. If not, what would your ideal book club read and who would be in it?

Daniel Galera: I'm not in any book club. But I guess my ideal one would be about philosophy rather than fiction. A Spinoza book club.

I just finished your fascinating novel, Blood-Drenched Beard, a quest for a grandson to find out what really happened to his grandfather, who disappeared in the village of Garopaba. Reading it was a gripping experience. How did this story come to you? And, without giving too much away, why do you think this novel has resonated for so many readers all over the world?

Daniel Galera: I'm so glad you enjoyed it, thank you! In 2008 I decided to move from São Paulo to a small southern seaside village, Garopaba. It was a kind of soul-searching move, I wanted to be very alone for a while, and also be able do indulge in one of my greatest passions: open-water swimming. I expected it to inspire my writing as well. Before going I knew a story about a man who was murdered there in the 1970s, during a Sunday church ball: the lights were turned off, there was screaming, and when the lights were back there was a dead body on the bloodied floor, full of stabs. No single person could be accused, it was a way the community found to get rid of someone. Mayne none of it was true, but while living there I kept thinking about that crime. Who was the victim? Why the village killed him? And I pictured this plot about a "gaucho" from the countryside arriving there in the past and being murdered, then decades later his grandson knows about it and decides to investigate. He finds the grandfather has become a cursed subject, that whatever motivated the violence could now hit him as well. And the grandson has a condition called prosopagnosia or face-blindness which makes him incapable of remembering people's faces. And it all seemed to me a great plot for a mystery novel of sorts.

In the 18 months I spent in Garopaba, I was only taking notes, talking to people, going to see places, just absorbing my surroundings, living one day after the other, like my protagonist would. In my hand-written notebooks, the novel grew into something else, the existential journey of a man dealing with grief and family trauma, fresh from a romantic breakup, slowly building new relations while also trying to figure out who his grandfather was and what really happened to him. I see it as a novel about a troubled man finally finding his place in the world, about how myths and superstitions are born, about the patterns we inherit from our ancestors. It's also about the discussion on determinism versus free will, and a little bit of Buddhism. But maybe it's above all about the richness and the mysteries of a place, and that's one reason I think the book resonates for many readers. They can really inhabit Garopaba, a beautiful, strange, sometimes threatening place, and the richly described surroundings are deeply connected to the character's feelings and desires, all the time.

What is your advice to other "Desperate Writers" out there?

Daniel Galera: My first advice would be to spend as much "useless" time as possible with your idea, allowing the imagination to elaborate intuitively. Rather than sitting down to write or research on every occasion you are able to occupy yourself with your book, go take a walk without or phone, or take a seat on a bus until it returns you to the same stop you embarked, or just lie on the floor. If you like to jog, don't use running apps, don't even listen to music. The creative mind flourishes when you leave it be, in my personal experience.

Another piece of advice is to keep in mind that we very often need to write a sentence or even whole paragraphs only in order to be able to cut it out afterwards. You need to write it in the first place to know it doesn't belong, and it requires discipline and detachment to identify and cut them, but it will pay off. When reviewing your work, look for those passages that sound redundant or explicatory of elements that were already told or suggested shortly before with dialogue, actions et cetera. The last sentence of a paragraph and the last paragraph of a page can often be cut to improve the narrative. Any writer is a bit insecure, afraid that the message won't get through, so we repeat things with different words and explain a bit more, just in case. It results in weak prose. Trust the reader to get it from the concrete and necessary information already offered. That's the part of the writing process that I love most: going back through a full first draft of a manuscript, cutting things, moving bits around, picking more adequate words.

Thank you, Daniel. I can’t wait to read whatever you write next.