Nothing is Wasted

Even that which never sees the light of day.

A reporter interviewing me for the upcoming theatrical release of the movie LILLY on May 9^th said, “I’ve researched you, and I could only find one book you’ve written.”

“Ouch!” said my fragile writer’s ego.

I wanted to stomp my foot, and say, “It’s not for a lack of trying” in a petulant voice.

When Grace and Grit was published in 2012, I thought I’d arrived; Lilly would appear on Oprah and I would rise in the writing world, all my dreams fulfilled.

Photo: Elizabeth DeRamus

This is what actually happened. I continued to write book reviews, editorials, essays, and articles—thousands of words, more than 10,000 hours.

I revisited and revised a young adult manuscript with a #metoo theme I’d written in the 1990s, writing and editing multiple drafts and submitting, submitting, submitting. I endured countless rejections over the years of revision and querying.

I spent two years interviewing Johnnie Johnson, Birmingham’s first African American police chief, a project I loved. What I thought would be a book was a long article, “Policing the Community” in the Bitter Southerner. During this time, as with all my projects, I tend to talk about what I’m writing, my hopes, and my excitement. Then, when projects don’t come to fruition like I imagined, it’s a bit embarrassing. You’d think I’d keep things closer to the vest.

Photo: Rob Culpepper

In 2019, a piece I wrote about Megan Montgomery, “With her death, a piece of every woman’s dream for a more just society also died,” went viral and I spent the next couple of years learning and writing about domestic violence. During the Covid lockdown, I spent hours interviewing Megan’s family and friends to write a book proposal that I then revised significantly when her family objected to the angle I’d taken. I could have moved forward, but the last thing I’m going to do is bring more pain to anyone. So, I rewrote the proposal to make it more academic and issue oriented, and frankly, it fell flat. But I still spent a year submitting the proposal to agents. That’s time researching, sending queries, more waiting than you can measure, navigating close calls and metabolizing rejection after rejection, some personal and encouraging and others deadly impersonal.

If you’re keeping score, that’s one unpublished YA novel and two unpublished book proposals. The second book proposal I finished recently is based on a longform piece, “Living and dying in the shadow of chemical plants,” I spent two years reporting. I’ve sent it to a handful of agents, so its future is still unknown.

Photo: Elizabeth DeRamus

Photo: Elizabeth DeRamus.

Oh, and did I mention the novel? The third draft of my novel is waiting to be finished.

But what is ready after seven years of working on it and many deep revisions is my own memoir. When I had a health scare in 2017, I asked myself if I knew I had only one year to live, what was the story or book I had to write? The answer? AMONG TROUBLED GHOSTS.

So, you’re getting the picture.

The backbone of the writing life is perseverance, and being a long-distance runner in the past has served me well. I know you can’t give up until you cross the finish line, and even then, you can’t rest on your laurels. But it’s not all production and ego.

Here are a few things I know are true about being a writer:

Writers write. It’s that simple. One reason I write is I feel like a better person after sitting down to write (and I’m nicer to my family).

Publishing is another matter altogether. Great books on publishing are Susan Shapiro’s The Byline Bible and Estelle Erasmus’s How to Get Your Writing Noticed. She also has a podcast called Freelance Writing Direct.

As Maggie Smith points out in Ronit Plank’s Let’s Talk Memoir podcast I listened to recently about her new book on craft, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life, you have to love the act of creating above all. This is a long game.

“So if what you really, if your big rush from being an artist or a writer or a filmmaker or a sculptor, if your big rush is having made a thing and then having people tell you how great it is, you probably won't last because you will have to work a long, hard time to get to a place where perhaps that happens. If your biggest rush is sitting down and contending with your own skill set and your own imagination and working out a problem for yourself to build something that didn't exist the day before, you're going to keep doing it because you're getting pleasure from the process. Then the rest of it, I really believe if you put joy into what you're making, all of that other good stuff happens eventually.” Maggie Smith From Let’s Talk Memoir: 159

Stories are energetic entities, and they find us, as Elizabeth Gilbert says in Big Magic.

I just read a great Substack and love the advice to “write from the scar, not the wound.”

Attention is an act of prayer says Jeannine Ouellette’s whose Substack “Writing in the Dark” is immensely inspiring.

Unlike other artists, a writer is the instrument. A painter has a brush, a sculptor a chisel and a musician an instrument, but a writer has his or her five senses. I realized this in Dani Shapiro’s workshop in Key West. I often turn to her book, Still Writing, for inspiration.

The creative life is a spiritual journey. You have to have faith, face the uncertainty every day as you sit down to write, deal with the anxiety at the start of each new project, and let go of the outcomes.

Resistance is also a real energetic force and comes in many guises as Stephen Pressfield explores in one of my favorite books, The War of Art.

I started my writing career after a decade teaching high school English by writing book reviews and articles for city papers and publishing editorials during the days when you mailed or faxed your work to the editors. Then I ventured into the PR world before becoming the magazine editor of “Birmingham Home and Garden” before freelance writing full time. I loved the collaborative effort involved in magazine world. Loved it. I had the privilege of interviewing men like Ray Hinton and writing about Spider Martin’s legacy.

So, talking to the reporter the other day, I explained what I now know. Nothing we write — even that which never sees the light of day— is wasted. That YA novel? Well, when Lilly was deciding who would write her story, I showed this manuscript to the agent, and she could see I had the wherewithal to write a full-length manuscript. Of course, when she sent me the template for a book proposal, I’d never written one, but I did what I always do. I learned by doing it just as I had done as a high school English teacher, a PR hack and a magazine editor. I jumped into the fire, and the skills a liberal arts education gave me guided my path.

I’d like to think Grace and Grit isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Lilly’s legacy will continue to be a transformative story, especially now as we face the rollback on civil rights, and so much more. Even if I’ve only published one book at this point, I’m damn proud of it, and guess what? There’s more to come…I’m in it for the long haul…