One of the many perks of working with The Writers Circle (a wonderful regional organization in northern New Jersey) was finding new colleagues among my fellow teachers. That includes Donna Baier Stein, who guides writers in the art of the short story. Donna's work has appeared (among other places) in Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Puerto del Sol. She was a founding poetry editor at Bellevue Literary Review and now publishes Tiferet Journal. Donna has been honored with three Pushcart nominations and prizes from Kansas Quarterly and Florida Review.
Please welcome Donna Baier Stein
There are scores of encouraging
stories about writers who didn’t find success easily … or even early.
Frank
McCourt published Angela’s Ashes at
age 64, and Booker Prize winner Penelope Fitzgerald published her first novel
at age 61. Belva Plain, a bestselling author from right here in New Jersey,
didn’t publish her first novel until she was a 63-year-old widow. She went on
to publish 21 novels that were on the New
York Times bestseller list, and more than 30 million copies of those books
were in print at her death at age 95.
I find
these statistics encouraging. Do you? Have you ever looked at a published
author’s age and thought, “Oh, I still have time?” I know I have. Though as the
years, the publications and the rejections have added up, I find myself doing
that less. I am far more interested in my own trajectory than seeing how it
compares to someone else’s.
My first
story collection, Sympathetic People (Serving House Books),
was published in 2013, when I was 62, and received
some blush-worthy blurbs
("Donna Baier Stein is a
discovery," according to C.
Michael Curtis, fiction editor of The
Atlantic, and New York Times
bestselling novelist Caroline Leavitt called the book, "…a brilliantly edgy collection of stories that
gets under your skin as even as it illuminates love, lust - and everything in
between."). Most of
the stories in this book were written and published in literary magazines in
the 1980s, and an early version of the manuscript was a finalist in the Iowa
Fiction Awards. Still, many, many years passed
without my seeing it in book form.
Why? Because
I didn’t make writing a priority. Over the previous three decades, I had a
thriving career as a
copywriter, two children, a busy husband. I undertook several major moves.
At times, I let myself be both distracted and insecure. There were very few
days devoted only to creative writing. More often, I squeezed extra hours in
early in the morning while my children slept and before copywriting client
demands filled the work day. When I turned 40, I put my copywriting work
aside for a year to earn an MFA from Johns Hopkins University, where I studied
with a long-time writing hero of mine, John Barth. My thesis was a very early
version of Sympathetic People.
Instead
of continuing to pursue publication of that collection, I wrote and published
new stories and essays. I published a poetry chapbook. I wrote a novel that won
the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction and had a top agent from
William Morris try to sell that book. "Close but no cigar," we were
told by 17 New York publishers.
I sometimes
felt like giving up but somehow never did. I sent the collection out to about
five more publishers and finally, to my great delight, Serving House Books
offered publication. I was thrilled!
Having
my story collection finally in book form gave me a nice injection of can-do
confidence. So I resurrected the novel I’d been working on for years and rewrote
it almost from scratch. And started a new collection of stories based on Thomas
Hart Benton paintings.
Sometimes,
hopelessness about “being too old” or “not good enough” still takes hold. What
we as writers try to do – to create something from nothing, to have our insides
be heard – is hard. I’ve come to think that occasional hopelessness may just be
part of the creative package.
So, how
do you switch hopelessness to hope? Here's what I do.
Talk
to other writers, and gain perspective. I know a lot of “famous” writers. And every
single one of them has a tale of woe to tell about some stage of their
publication history. No one is immune from that.
Discover what you need when you want to stop. For me, physical exercise and meditation are
both big helps. So is finally learning that first drafts can be, as Hemingway
said, “*&($.” Getting anything on the page is a step in the right
direction.
Accept that sometimes a step back takes you
forward. Every time I’ve gone through a cycle of
hopelessness, I have come out the other side a better writer. This is a fact.
Sometimes we have to trust that growth occurs even during fallow periods. And
keep on writing.
At a
commencement speech at Duke University in 2008, author Barbara Kingsolver said,
“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The
most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the
walls on both sides."
I love
this image, this idea that hope itself is a space in which we can live, no
matter what our age, no matter what our publication history. Writers need hope.
Very few of us are overnight successes. And the only thing to do in the face of
rejection letters and passing years is find that hallway of hope, set up your
computer or yellow pad, and write.
Notes
from Lisa: Donna would like to send one
blog reader a complimentary copy of her short story collection. Simply leave a
comment by end of day on Friday, Sept. 26, and we'll choose one winner at
random (U.S. postal addresses only).
