Hello friend,
I write to you, alive, two weeks into Book Launch Month.
I got asked a bunch, especially when people saw me on pub day, how it felt.
At some point, drink in hand in a Cobble Hill backyard patio after my launch reading, I said truthfully that the lead up felt rather like anticipating all one’s nudes being mass-emailed to thousands of people. When Tuesday, August 2nd actually arrived, though, I woke up feeling relatively sunny and equable, if with a slightly elevated resting heart rate, and like it actually had been only the good nudes, thoughtfully curated. No doubt still strange and vulnerable, but livable, y’know.
(Perhaps I should say that three days before the novel’s water broke I had a whoooolllleee journey with an accidentally-too-strong edible and proceeded to be a paranoid, sad, scared clown for many hours. Thank the infant Jesus I at least brought amusement (and no doubt some annoyance) to the people around me. I was afraid of everything, especially the book, which was unstoppably and inevitably coming out in days. I wanted to get off the ride in every sense, but couldn’t, until it was through with me.)
But on Tuesday the 2nd, actual launch day, I woke up feeling a delicately-constructed peace. I replied to a few texts and calls. Shireen and I ate breakfast together, though I do not remember what it was. I held the book in my hands, just like I’d dreamed years ago, and felt a quiet, pure, shivery gladness and nothing much else besides.
Maybe the edible had performed a minor exorcism.
I got lunch with Bill in Manhattan and bought some things from Duane Reade. On the subway back to Bed-Stuy I reached into my bag and looked at a 4x3 photo of child-me sitting on the blue-carpeted floor of my family’s first flat in Muscat, Oman, writing God knows what, and writing it very intently. I didn’t cry, but for a minute I wanted to, thinking of the long road here.
Before I left for the Books are Magic event I did with Pam (video here if you want it), I reread something I wrote years ago. It was part of a speech I gave in Iowa City.
Writers love to say that writing is *mocking tone* such hard work.
Philip Roth’s basic response to this was: writing is not hard work, babe; coal mining, that’s hard work. “The work of writing,” he said, “is not hard work as much as it is a nightmare, one that you sit down to dream again and again.”
If you succeed, I’d argue, your reward is the artist’s reward: you get to have at least one moment of pure joy that is knowing you’ve made something alive. The second part of your reward is beginning all over again from square one.
It’s the *work* we all did in this place: attempting to make something that can live outside us, creating something alive from the matter of our very selves, that unifies the experience of our time here.
The writer gives over the work of years. The reader surrenders time, attention, sometimes money—any of which can be withdrawn if the writer fails, and also, let’s be real, if the reader fails. It’s a fraught process. But at its best, it is the deepest, most intimate conversation. One that can comfort, or delight, or stir to anger or humor, or change the mind of, another human being, across time and space. To make something that can go out into the world and speak to other people, to succeed at quieting the noise in their lives for a moment so that they can pay better attention to themselves, to the world, to other worlds, to what it means to be alive at all.
This is what we all tried to do here, and it isn’t coal mining, but there sure are easier things.
It’s really the insight within that excerpted speech that I’ve been holding on to in the past seventeen days, in the good and the mid moments alike. Every DM or text from a reader about how they felt about ATCBD feels like a callback to that dream—of the deep, intimate conversation and connection between perfect strangers that a book can foster.
So this is what I’m holding close right now: that I’m loved by the people I love, and that ultimately what matters to me, regardless of what happens with the finished book cavorting around out in the world, is the work of creation, which never fails to humble the person attempting it. Book promo will taper down soon enough. The work—facing it, trusting it, giving myself back to it—will be here and waiting.
And in the meanwhile, I’ll celebrate the wins—rare and precious to me—along the way.
COOL THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED FOR ATCBD RECENTLY
This came out yesterday, from Emma Specter writing for Vogue. Holy shit.
I did an interview I really loved with Bareerah Ghani for Electric Literature: on being bros, being known, and the American dream.
Rafael Frumkin reviewed All This Could Be Different for the Los Angeles Review of Books. It’s a rave—just incredibly generous and thoughtful.
Sarah Sukardi reviewed the book for The Soapberry Review, which is newish and focused on Asian American lit (how amazing!). Obsessed with it, not gonna lie.
Sanjena Sathian, author of Gold Diggers and a friend, talked with me about my novel for Meena Harris’ Phenomenal Book Club.
ATCBD was on freaking Good Morning America for forty-five seconds and I will never be over this.
I’m gonna stop here. Come hang out with me and Sanjena online at Iowa City indie Prairie Lights next week, 8/25, for my final pub month event.
Until next time,
xx Sarah