Book launching...maybe?
Or the complicated feelings around a book that may or may not come out.
I probably won’t promote this blog post or leave it up too long but it’s something I had to get out for my own sanity. And to quote another musical to ‘move on’.
I have a book coming out today…well maybe I do maybe I don’t. I tried really hard also to write a normal celebratory ‘this is the story of this book’ post but actually, inevitably that was never going to be the case for this book.
The book in question is my book about Rent. That iconic 90s musical that yes as cliche as the marketing tagline was ‘defined a generation’. Hopefully, one day soon I can write a more celebratory post, one of those fun, deep dives into the why and wherefore of writing it. But I think I have to write this one first. The one where I’m honest about how hard it is sometimes.
It’s easy, sort of a given, even to talk about how hard the juggle of all this is. I’m just coming off about 6-7 weeks of manic promoting my other book- a lot of travel, social media, article writing and whatnot, all on top of my normal job. Oh wait jobs, because as an ageing millennial who chose a career in the arts I have multiple jobs to be able to support writing books. Anyway I digress, that’s all kinda a given by now (but maybe deserves a blog post of its own). What’s hard is after working with a wonderful publisher so closely on one book, you get kicked back into the harsh reality of what is also the norm: being very much on your own kid.
Because for this book, some websites say it comes out today, some say simply ‘November’ some say December, some say January. I had one conversation with the publisher that said ‘yes November’ and that’s it.
I don’t have author copies, I don’t know when I’ll get them. I saw someone get an advance copy the other week and got really sad instead of excited because…do I get a copy? Maybe not. Should I just order it from Amazon? Just to see if one turns up ever?
And this isn’t an attack against my publisher, because quite simply…they won’t care. I’m just a random cog in a machine of content churned out. I realise that’s the nature of the game with some publishers. Just another anonymous author who really nobody particularly cares about in terms of the work, less so about them as a human. And it’s nobody’s fault; it’s no slight to the people involved, even if they’re just doing their jobs the best they can.
But still, even knowing it’s so far from personal is hard. When you poured years of your life into a book that you know nobody cares about …it’s hard. Even when you yourself have lost all passion for the book too (we’ll get to that), there’s still a part of you that wants to at least mark its being in the world, if nothing else, to know it’s over. And instead, it’s just sort of limping out into the world sometimes, maybe…that’s hard.
This book was never going to be a massive celebration for me. My relationship with it was broken long ago. And I think it’s because originally I cared so much. I always said of my PhD that Angels in America was my head and Rent was my heart. There’s a real irony or something that in writing the books on both, I grew to love Angels so much more- to grow from it just being something intellectually I loved, to something truly part of my soul. While Rent…I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever be able to watch that show again. I have watched it since writing the book, but now, I feel such…indifference to it. It’s not a hatred of the show (though I am also critical of the show where need be) but the act of writing this book- not even the actual writing, the getting it out in the world, the already negative pushback I had for writing it. It broke my heart a little and with it the love of something so important to me.
I’ve never had writing about something break my love of it. I’ve reached a sense of closure with things- my forthcoming Schitt’s Creek book, for example, I’m no longer in the same obsessive-love space as when I pitched that book. But when I handed in my last copy of that, I felt a really satisfying ‘done with that’ closure moment in a good way, in a way fittingly like when a TV show you love ends perfectly (hey, like Schitt’s Creek itself) and you have a kind of ‘aww, I’m done but I’m happy’ moment. I cannot wait to talk about that book, revisit that show in a different way and share all the things.
Likewise, in my Angels book, I still love talking about that play, I still have things to say. My Russell T Davies book, I’ve spent a month and a bit talking about and I still have so many things to say, layers to unpick and yes- I could write a whole other book and be so so excited by it.
But I think of the Rent book? And I just feel sad. I feel disappointed and sad and like I just want it to go away. I don’t want it to go away, I fought so hard for it to still exist. And yet, I don’t want to talk about the book or the show. I just feel really sad. Maybe because I fought so hard for the book, maybe because it’s something I did until so recently, love so much.
But instead I joke this book is my ‘evermore’ that second album in a year I’ll just ignore. Because as much as I’m sad I don’t even know if this book is out, is coming out…a big part of me really doesn’t want to promote it because I’m scared what will happen if I do. I don’t say anything in the book that’s particularly controversial, but I’ve already had people connected to the show come after me, at times quite forcefully, because I’m not unilaterally praising it. Because I, in fact, someone not connected to the show wrote about it. This book almost didn’t exist for these reasons and others. It took a year longer than it should have to come out, and tears I cried during that process. The hours I spent sitting on my sofa crying because this thing I’d worked for a decade or more on wasn’t going to exist now. And that process, all that went with it, has made me wish maybe I lost that battle. Maybe it would be better if I’d just given up and let the book die a death. As much as I’m not a quitter, as much as I want to see the results of my work, I now wonder if that would have been a better course.
The process made me doubt my own work, the work I spent a PhD and substantially more time researching and writing. It made me… ashamed of my work, question my own validity and grow to hate something that has previosuly been so important to me.
So while I want to celebrate my achievement at getting a book out into the world it’s hard for a few reasons. Firstly having utterly no clue when the book will come out, if ever. Which also just compounds the feeling of, this book shouldn’t exist, this book isn’t good enough, this book will just cause you more problems.
I probably won’t leave this post up for long. But I needed to record, to get it out there that it’s not always a celebration, it’s often far from easy and it’s sometimes really complicated.
If someone had asked me a decade ago when I started my PhD what I wanted- this would have been it, to be the person to write a book on Rent. To be able to be that writer of musical theatre books that I wanted to be in my 20s. And while, technically, I might have achieved that, it’s tarnished for many reasons. I’m disappointed in myself, I’m sad, that this thing is now a broken thing to me. That this show too, is now a broken thing to me.
I hope in time I get to celebrate the book, and to feel like I did something good in it. But for now too I want to acknowledge the complexities and indeed sadness that also come with it.
So sorry that this has been your experience Emily 😔
Oh love, I hope the book does emerge from limbo, and I'm sorry your journey with it has had more heartache than love. I would very much like to read it and hope I get chance to do so!