Freeing Yourself from Your Own Legacy as a Writer

Congratulations!” the email read “The Kirkus review of your forthcoming novel has been selected for our August 1 print issue, which is sent to 15,000 subscribers.”

I suspected this was good news but I called a friend, more savvy than me about trade reviews. I relied on her Midwestern straight-shooting to keep my reaction reasonable. “Big deal,” she confirmed. “Kirkus may be the biggest daddy of trade reviewers, and there’s your book on page 181 of this month’s issue, Ann Patchett smiling from the cover.”

Ann Patchett is one of my literary heroes. So I did what I usually do when I can’t figure out how to feel about something, good or bad. I took my two puppies out in the kayak.

Skimming along the lake near our home was not the usual bliss. My two small dogs in their life jackets must have picked up on my agitation, so the hour was all about keeping them from jumping out of the boat and avoiding the bald eagle soaring overhead. When we were all exhausted from not having fun, we docked and piled back in the car, me still figuring out why such a moment of good news had stunned me so much. Why I felt a bit numb, unable to react with the celebration that my friend expected.

It’s been a dozen years since my last book, and trade reviews weren’t something I sought back then. I guess I was also scared—of bad news, not good. I’ve gotten more education in pre-publication tasks since then, more courage to seek comments from Kirkus, Booklist, Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly, the big boys of the publishing reviews. These are important for sales to bookstores, libraries, readers, other reviewers. And online browsers often read reviews before deciding—I know I do.

But it does take the ability to hear negative reactions. (And it takes advance planning: reviewers like Library Journal ask for ARCs (advance reader copies) at least six months ahead.) Unlike blurbs from authors you admire, kindly offering you a sentence or two to entice a reader, trade reviews carry the real possibility of a big thumbs down.

I am a relative newcomer to fiction. Far from the stratosphere where writers like Ann Patchett live. My legacy as a writer has always been in the genre of food journalism, as I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter: I authored or contributed to ten published cookbooks—one an award-winner; penned dozens of magazine articles; and wrote a syndicated cooking column for over a decade. Food writing fed me both professionally and personally (all that recipe testing—and eating!).

But now I stood in a new place. Voluntarily so. Quite unsure if there’d be a universal welcome.

Even now, when my second novel is publishing, I still feel only a tentative belonging in this new genre. Even though I worked hard to gain the credentials to belong: my first novel accepted by a small press, nominated for two awards; I have an MFA in one pocket, an agent in the other. Authors I’ve asked have been kind enough to blurb for me. They seem to love the story.

Do we all feel like someone will yank back the curtain at any time, declare the writer behind it an impostor? Or is it just me?

When I got home from the lake, I waited until after dinner to open the email from Kirkus again. I reread the congratulations. I clicked through and found page 181 and tried to absorb each word in the half-page review. The snippet that stood out:

“Moore’s engaging offering not only gets across the ruggedness of the Adirondacks setting . . . but also presents a touching tale of siblings [who] forge a believable path forward. An exciting work of survival fiction with strong female characters.”

Not long after, another review came in from Booklife (Publisher’s Weekly): “Moore finds suspense in the chase, in vividly described search-and-rescue scenes, and in surprising family relations. The story is fast-paced, and Moore deftly explores and develops relationship dynamics, both familial and romantic, and what someone is willing to do and forgive for the people they care about.  The ending will leave suspense readers—and lovers of complex sister relationships—feeling satisfied.”

They nailed the complexity—two genres in one.

“In this compelling contemporary novel set in the Adirondack Mountains, the act of search and rescue is both a response to an emergency and a metaphor for the repair of a fractured family. Readers who respond to characters longing for connection and building families with those who love, support, and respect them, blood ties or not, need search no further.”

That was from Booklist / Blueink Reviews.

Finally, it sunk in. I forwarded them to friends, feeling (at last!) delight in these impartial judgements of the worth of my story.

Trade reviews, to me, prove more than anything that a writer can move beyond her legacy. To the reviewer at Kirkus, I wasn’t a food writer trying to write a novel. I was a novelist. I could fulfill my long-held dream AND have the approval of impartial readers.

But for years, I didn’t try. Compelling voices told me to stay where I was, even as I grew more and more stuck.

What is it about our legacy, our history, that shapes our expectations with any kind of creative expression?

What history do we unconsciously carry within ourselves that creates limits to our future writing dreams—tells us what we can and cannot do? What kinds of historic messages have we absorbed from schooling, parents, friends, work colleagues? How does this legacy help or hinder us—without our even knowing?

I know many writers who would’ve given away their favorite pen for my journalism career.

But you know how life can be: when we get stuck, sometimes the universe helps us out. Presents a challenge out of nowhere. Something that shakes up our comfort and forces us to re-vision our life.

My shake-up came when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, at the high point of my food-writing career. I had just contracted for two new books for hire at a very nice fee. I was forty-five.

I’d been through cancer before—thyroid. The treatment for thyroid cancer at the time (I was mid-thirties) was brutal: radioactive iodine. But nothing compared to the chemo of choice for breast cancer treatment.

I remember calling my editor, renegotiating time on the book contracts, hating to do so. But I was scared—the cancer was serious. I didn’t know then but it would take me clean out of my life for six full months, diluting everything for another six as I healed, leaving me for years with a low-level terror. From this, came the biggest question that I’d faced in years: what if I die and I don’t get to do what I always wanted as a writer?

Funny, isn’t it. Many people wouldn’t think about writing at a time like this. Survival is on the line. But I did. I wanted to survive, yes, but I wanted much more than that. I wanted some key dreams to come true. I’d messed around too long, accepted the legacy I had created for myself in my twenties—the food world, writing about it. I still loved to cook—and eat!—but I was fascinated by the unreal now, not the real. I wanted to learn how to write fiction.

It took me five years from diagnosis to application to grad school for my MFA. Then two years facing the facts: fiction was an entirely new language. Different rules, different everything. Yes, I was a seasoned writer, but I had to start all over again to become a novelist.

Like many writers, I explore unfathomable questions in my writing. At least, I try. I’m fascinated with why people risk. With how we are formed by where we come from and how we shake that off or transmute it. With how women, in particular, are heroes in their lives and how we save others and end up saving ourselves. So, of course, when I began drafting scenes for this novel oh-so-many years ago, without even knowing it, I was writing about legacy.

My two female narrators are step-sisters; they are the product of a marriage and an affair. They carry the legacy of their pilot father and his effect on their mothers (the unhappy married wife and the lover in the wings). Eventually, as the story progresses, they find ways to move beyond this legacy with each other’s help. That help is unexpected, and at first unwanted.

A lot of times we carry good legacies along with the bad. The father gifted both daughters with the one thing he loved most: flying. They are both competent pilots. He also gave them the knowledge that they could bust past traditional roles for woman.

The downside of the legacy is a metaphor that trade reviewer mentioned: “search and rescue is both a response to an emergency and a metaphor for the repair of a fractured family.” All three characters take to the sky when life gets too up close and personal. A legacy from their father, a legacy of abandoning first, perhaps? But that brings its own sinkhole: By flying away whenever things got tough, a person hints that somehow the other isn’t enough. Not enough value in the relationship to warrant sticking around.

I knew, like it had been for me, such a legacy takes a sharp jolt to jar loose. So part of my novel work was going into each of these women’s characters and finding the thing that would potentially break them. How would it force them to free themselves from their individual legacy?

I like to believe we can free ourselves from these kinds of creative limits—and life limits—without such a shock. I think about a story that Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, once shared.

At age eighteen, he was in a car accident. He hit another vehicle and broke the driver’s spine. Years later, this awful experience still haunted him. He decided to try to find the woman whose car he hit and apologize.

Turned out, the information at the scene of the accident was miscommunicated to his young self—the other driver had actually hit him. She was fine, too—no broken spine.

Sivers wrote about what he learned from this, and it has stayed with me.

“We think of the past like it’s a physical fact,” he said, '“like it’s real. But the past is what we call our memory and stories about it. Imperfect memories, and stories built on one interpretation of incomplete information. That’s ‘the past.’ History is not true. You can change history. The actual factual events are such a small part of the story. Everything else is interpretation. It’s never too late to change a story.”

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

You can take classes and read craft books on writing your legacy. Everyone from Andrew Weil, M.D., to Psychology Today counsel how valuable it is to preserve memories and wisdom from all the years you’ve been alive. There’s a real healing component in penning your past, seeing it from the distance of the page.

But what if you reversed that, just as an experiment this week? What if you tried to write a future beyond your legacy?

First, complete this sentence 5-10 times. Try not to overthink it—you’re attempting to get past mental barriers and into the deeper truths of your legacy.

“Because of __________________________, I am a writer who ____________________.”

I try to let whatever comes, come. In other words, no editing allowed. If the words surprise you, excellent. That means it bypassed the more polished, conscious part of yourself.

Sometimes, a dream or longing will emerge after three or four tries. You’ll start to see what may lie beyond your current limits, the legacy you’re living now.

If you want, try part two of this exercise, called a presumé.

In writing classes, I loved to teach the “presumé,” or future resumé. It comes from a wonderful little book, Get It All Done and Still Be Human, by Robbie Fanning and Tony Fanning. A different take on time management, I read about it years ago and still love revisiting it. Mostly for this presumé exercise.

Start by writing a future date on a blank page in your journal, writer’s notebook, or new document on your laptop or tablet. You can practice with short amounts of time or go for a year ahead. I often try three months, which for me is a reasonable amount of space to dream and accomplish, and not too far that I forget about it. In my weeklong writing retreats we’d use the date the retreat ended.

This is a kind of visualization exercise where you imagine yourself on that date, looking back. So you write in the present tense, as if this passage of time has already happened.

“I am looking back on the past week/three months/year . . . and so much has changed. I am now __________________.”

Write as if you have moved into that dream or longing, even a little bit.

It’s helpful to put a note in your calendar or set a reminder to revisit this presumé when the time has passed—say, three months from now. I usually put mine away (but in a place I can find it) and let things work. Then when the reminder comes up, I revisit. Often, it’s quite surprising what has changed about my writing life.

Feel free to share thoughts, ideas, comments, and places you might want to go with this exercise or the topic of legacies, in the Comments section below (scroll down). Thank you for contributing to our little community!