Knowing When to Share Your Work

Plus, a reader asks: “If you had to start writing from square one, what questions would you want to reflect on?”

This is a subscriber-exclusive edition of I Have Notes, a newsletter in which I share essays, interviews, advice, and writing discussions.

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I’ve been thinking about the often subtle shift that occurs when a collection of words in a document starts to feel like A Book. When my editor called me last Monday and said, “You wrote a book!” I replied, “I guess I did”—which might not be something you’re supposed to say to the person who acquired and plans to publish your book, but I meant it as genuine agreement.

When I was still trying to figure out what belonged in this story, it was hard for me to call it a “book” with my full chest. I poured myself into it, knew that I wanted to write it, but could not look too far beyond my goal of completing a full draft. Only recently did I cross a real, if hazy, threshold: I can now imagine the book it’s going to be. I am able to think of and plan for it as something that will exist in the world and belong to others, in a sense, even more than it belongs to me. I can’t pinpoint the precise moment when I began to feel this way, but I know the change is partly due to the fact that after two years of working on something no one else had glimpsed in its totality, I am no longer alone with it—I have finally started sharing it with others.

The day after I spoke with my editor, I was chatting with a couple of friends, both kind and brilliant writers who offered to take a look at the draft after this one. As we talked about the revision process, they mentioned that they’re usually able to tell when something they’ve written isn’t working. It made me realize that I can tell when something is working; when I read a section or a scene and find that I have landed on precisely—or at least very nearly—what I wanted to say. The rest of the time, I’m not sure that I am the best judge of my own writing. (I often find myself thinking of the final stanza of this Merwin poem: “you die without knowing / whether anything you wrote was any good.”)

Letting people I trust read and engage with my work at different stages is an essential part of the revision process. I won’t ask for edits or early reads the moment I finish a draft, nor when I feel it’s as good as it can possibly get, but when I believe I’ve taken it about as far as I can on my own. By then, I have been staring at it for so long that it’s difficult for me to see what’s missing. Others can help me identify not only the gaps, but the things it’s doing well. Sharing it with them also gives me a tiny preview of how it will feel to share it with the wider world—which is one reason why the manuscript I am now revising feels more like a book than it did before.

Over the next month or so, I’ll work on my next draft, relying on my editor to help me make it better. When I share that draft with my trusted early readers, I will ask them to tell me what they think I’m trying to do, so I can see if that lines up with what I’m actually trying to do. I’ll have a list of questions ready for them, so they know which sections and scenes I am still wondering about or wrestling with—the more specific I can be, I have learned, the more helpful the feedback. Eventually, when I think the book might be done, I will show it to a few more readers and see if they agree.

It’s a different process, of course, when I write just for myself. Journaling, free-writing, scribbling fragments of stories that no one else will read—all of these things keep me observing, feeling, recording, remembering, and they are crucial to maintaining my writing practice. But the work that matters most to me is the work others will read, and not just because that’s the work that pays. It’s thrilling and humbling to think of people who may encounter something I’ve written and have their own relationship to it, one I cannot define and could never have foreseen.

With both my first book and my next, there was a slight yet undeniable shift in how I thought about it—how real and how immediate it felt—not when I completed the manuscript, but when I began sharing it with others. The moment when the work is no longer consuming only my thoughts, subject only to my criticism—when it has to meet and stand up to readers, however small in number—is when I finally start to believe in it.

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Dear I Have Notes,

I had a baby (my second) in February 2020 right before everything shut down. Through a variety of circumstances, I became an unexpected stay-at-home mom. I’m 38 and I’ve had space and time to think about the next chapter. I want to be a writer or an editor or both. My question to you is: If you had to start writing from square one now, what would you do? And what questions would you want to reflect on?

— Unexpected SAHM

Dear Unexpected SAHM,

Much hinges on your goals and how you like to work and what sort of writing you want to do; the chances and opportunities vary so widely, and no one’s path looks exactly like anyone else’s. You’ve probably already gathered that writing won’t be a terribly lucrative career at first, if it ever is—I’ve been writing for a long time, and while it supports me at the moment, I’m well aware that might not be the case in a year or two. But right now, we’re speaking of a beginning only—the next chapter, as you put it—and I think you’re right to want to start from a place of reflection and of questioning.

A few big questions: What is it that you want to say? What is it that excites you most about writing, and why? What do you want to spend a whole lot of time (as in years) thinking and learning and writing about? Whom do you imagine writing for? Plenty of people you encounter, including some who are in a position to help or advise or publish you, may have their own ideas about your writing and what you can do. It’s good to be open, and it’s also important to consider and know your hopes and intentions going in.

Everyone says this, and no doubt you’re already doing it, but I can’t overstate how essential it is to read—curiously, critically, and also for the sheer joy of it. When you read writers you especially admire, why do their stories work for you? What do you most appreciate about their approach, their voice, their narrative choices? Homing in on what you love in others’ work will encourage you to think about your own. And when you can’t write—there will be times when you can’t write—you can always read, and it will help you stay thoughtful and appreciative and ready for a day when you are able to write.

One thing I wish I’d done earlier on is seek out a nourishing community, a group of people with whom I could regularly talk about reading and writing. No doubt the pandemic has made this more challenging in some ways, and literary spaces are not always as accessible or welcoming as they should be. But when I was first starting out, I think I could have tried harder—perhaps through classes I took, publications I read, writing groups or book clubs, or community spaces like indie bookstores and libraries—to be a little less siloed in my work. There were times when I didn’t have many people to talk with about my love of literature, let alone my desire to write it, and I sometimes wonder if I’d have found this life just a bit easier to imagine or pursue if I’d had that kind of support from the beginning.

Some more questions that you don’t have to answer today, but that I’d encourage you to keep in mind in the coming months and years: What do you personally need in order to write? What do you want your creative life to look like, and what is going to help you sustain it over the long term? What is going to bring you back to the page when you only have an hour to work before your kid wakes up and your draft is looking shaky and you aren’t sure whether anyone else will see the value in it? What’s going to keep you engaged in reading and writing through a day like that, not to mention the next five, 10, 20 years? I realize this may sound like the opposite of a pep talk, but I’ve asked these questions of myself, too, and the answers were more encouraging than you might think. The writing is the best part, as a beloved writer friend recently reminded me, and it’s also where we all begin. If you prioritize your writing now—if you give it time and give yourself grace and continue to show up for it—then you will do it, and it will exist.

When it comes to writing—and editing, too—it’s honestly tough for me to recommend the particular route I took. It involved so much luck and happenstance. There are choices I regret and doors I hated to see close, and yet I know I might not be here if those things hadn’t happened. For what it’s worth, I also became a stay-at-home parent, unexpectedly, many years ago—I was laid off while on maternity leave. It was one of the most terrifying periods of my life, but if I hadn’t found myself suddenly unemployed at that juncture, I don’t know if I’d be writing or publishing today. I don’t know if I would have ramped up my freelancing efforts, or gotten a creative-writing degree, or started tentatively working on a book proposal. I don’t know that I’d have felt the same urgency, the same need to do something for myself—to reach for a career I’d dreamed about, but had never had the time or the gumption to chase. I cannot know your circumstances or what it is you hope to build, but as you say, this recent and unlooked-for change has given you the space to (re)consider your life and your creative goals. I hope all the questions you’re considering now will show you a way into the work you want to do.

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