Blue Moon, You Saw Me Standing Alone....
On rare occurrences of luck in the writing life, and dealing with the luck of others as we toil on
“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.”
— Oscar Wilde
Happy Blue Moon! (The only one of the year!)
It’s the full moon again, and as the second full moon in a given month, this one is a rare, lucky Blue Moon! Also, today is the closest supermoon of the year, for what it’s worth! (does this Blue Supermoon look bigger to you???? I’m no astronomer!)
So why am I quoting Oscar talking about envying our friends’ successes?
Because for me, the Blue Moon has got me thinking about writing and luck. And the shadow side of writing and luck—for me, at least—is about coping with the luck and success of friends and strangers as we continue to toil about our writing days.
To continue a line of thought from earlier this month, it’s tough being a writer, day in, day out. We write on, hoping for publication, occasional money, and general recognition and readership for one’s writing. Having been seriously writing as an adult for over 15 years, I’d say that a given year tends to be a long, quiet toil. I may have satisfactions and frustrations, inspirations, and moments stuck in the quagmire, but largely, these moments are spent quietly.
Except then, every now and again, once in a blue moon, I get published. And even more rarely than publication—for me, it has only happened once—occasionally, one’s writing hits a nerve and actually gets read and shared by a lot of people.
For friends and acquaintances of mine, this has entailed books ending up on the NYT bestseller list, or Good Morning America, or Reese’s Picks, etc. Here’s a quick moment to shout out some good luck and Blue Moon karma of dear friends and charming acquaintances this summer:
Jimin Han’s book The Apology is everywhere! It’s a captivating read. Pick up your copy here, and read more about her inspirations in my interview with her in Electric Lit.
Kirstin Chen’s book Counterfeit is out in paperback! A NYT Bestseller and Reese’s Pick, it’s a gripping romp full of heists, twists, and the luxury world of high fashion purses.
Jessamine Chan’s book The School for Good Mothers is out in paperback! I read this book almost exactly a year ago, and it still gives me chills. (the good kind)
Our buddy Stephen Flavall (known to the video game streaming world as Jorbs) published a behind-the-scenes-tell-all memoir about video game streaming called Before We Go Live, and I interviewed him about it in The Guardian.
For me, my Blue Moon bit of luck came some years ago, when an essay I wrote for Lit Hub in 2016 went viral.
Here’s the quick backstory (and a link to the essay, if you’d like to take a read): it was about collecting 100 rejections a year. I stole the idea from a writing friend who stole it from their friend, and to me, it was a good idea, but pretty obvious. Submit and apply to things often enough to try to collect 100 rejections, and there would be bound to be an acceptance in there somewhere. Part of the idea was taking some control back over the writing process by making rejection the goal (rather than acceptance).
Anyway, that’s the gist. I wrote it with Poets & Writers in mind, but after waiting about 6 weeks for a response from them with no dice, I sent it to Lit Hub (on the advice of my friend Jill! Second shout out!), and they accepted it four days later. They published it three weeks after that, and I received $100 in payment, which I was thrilled about.
Here’s the thing: my rejections essay wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, or even the longest I’ve ever spent on a piece. It was good! I stand by it. But in the span of my writing career, it was one essay I wrote in a sea of essays, memoir, and fiction. It flowed easily and was a pleasure to write, in part because I got to quote from some of my favorite craft books, and ultimately, I’m a craft book junkie.
But what happened next was pure LUCK, pure and simple. I didn’t will it into happening, and if I tried again, I couldn’t replicate the circumstances.
The rejection essay went viral! What can I say, 2016 was a great year for rejection.
My essay was viewed, shared, tweeted, retweeted, emailed, and circulated around the literary community at a speed that frankly stunned me. The day it was published, I was having a regular Tuesday at my job as a technical writer for an immigration lawyer. At some point, I checked my text messages (very frowned upon during the work day!!) and a friend was like, WHOA, your piece is everywhere! And then I went to Twitter and Facebook and slowly lost my mind.
That week, three literary agents reached out to me, to see if I wanted to send them work and be considered for representation, which led to my first literary agent partnership. That weekend, my piece was on weekly round up newsletters and websites, and at the end of 2016, my essay was the #4 most read piece on Lit Hub that year. As of 2017, it had been viewed more than 200,000 times.
So at the time, I thought, THIS IS IT. Now I am a BIG SHOT writer. I’m gonna get my big break, sign with an agent, publish a bestselling debut book, and I’ll be A SUCCESS.
Reader, did that happen? Let’s just say, Not Yet. Not at the degree I was hoping, certainly. The debut book is still coming. (Soon, we hope!)
Fall 2016: I signed with a pair of literary agents. I sent them my novel. They had pages and pages of editorial feedback. Fast forward two years, and after epic revisions, they didn’t like it. I put the now confused novel in a drawer and turned to revising my Taiwan family memoir, but instinctively didn’t want to show it to them, perhaps realizing that the creative schism had grown too deep.
It was a deep low. I wasn’t sure what to do next.
At my lowest points as a writer, I’ve wondered if that Lit Hub piece was my last great success as an author. Should I just retire, because I’ll never be able to be that relevant to anyone ever again?
FIVE YEARS LATER, and many many many MANY revisions later, I have a new agent, and the family memoir of Taiwan is finished, and it’s currently out on submission with publishers. Here’s how it’s going, luck-wise:
Since April, we have received 18 personalized rejections, ranging from polite “no thank you”s to personal and detailed (and sometimes excruciating and heartbreaking) feedback.
To put things in perspective facts and figures, since I started querying agents again in Fall 2021 until I signed with my agent this Feb 2023 (with the caveat that I did a MAJOR revision of the book Summer 2022 that made it much better), I queried 89 total agents, received 18 manuscript requests, and fielded 20 heart wrenching yet thoughtful personal rejections from agents. Then, I found my amazing agent Jacqui at Tobias Literary Agency.
While we haven’t found an official publication destination for the book yet, I am hopeful that the wheels are turning, bringing this book ever closer to finding its perfect home and breathing its truths into the world.
But every time we present our writing to anyone — an editor, literary magazine, agent, publisher, or anyone else for that matter—it’s a giant leap of faith. Every book that comes out depends on a ton of persistence, skill, hard work, and luck. Every book needs to find its perfect editor.
As the author, it’s hard not to feel like I wrote it wrong when someone doesn’t jump for joy or send me a check for thousands of dollars for the words I lovingly (and sometimes feverishly) brought to the page. I want to write back to each rejecting editor and say, “Wait! I’ll do it again! I’ll do it better! Just the way you want it. Just pleeeeeeeease buyyyyyyyy myyyyyy booooook.”
But that’s not how the publishing industry works! And I am not alone as I wait—I have Jacqui, my ally, a phenomenal agent. So we wait and I hope for a bit of luck. Again.
This is my point about luck: in the literary world, we cannot control our luck. Some writers I know have a preternatural sense about what is zeitgeisty and what will be well-received or popular at any given moment, but most of us have no idea. Most of us writers just write what we want to say. Writing is too time-consuming and difficult to contort ourselves too far beyond true passions, obsessions, or personal truths and explorations. And we always hope that our work will find its perfect audience. But we also have to make our peace with the fact that sometimes a book doesn’t make a giant splash, or a publication comes out to the sound of crickets chirping (if that!).
So now I come to the more challenging work of accepting when something either doesn’t go to plan, or we see writers all around us having their Blue Moon moments, their moments in the sun, being shared and relevant and beloved and delighting their readers. As you may have noticed on social media, buzz creates more buzz, so there is some momentum that takes hold. And we all want that kind of momentum, every day, all the time, constantly. But we settle for the fact that those friends and acquaintances have been putting in the hard work, day in and day out, in relative obscurity, so this Blue Moon spotlight shining down on them is both well deserved and also not a damper on our own egos. There’s more than enough reader joy to go around. And one of these days, it will be our turn.
Because while you can’t create your own luck, you can be prepared for when it shines down on you. You can write the best possible essay, or story, or novel, or book, or long lyric poem, and then when the moon shines down on you, you’ll be ready to share it with the world.
And even then, it’s so important to manage our expectations.
Let’s keep the faith for a Blue Moon, and share a little grace with those in our lives when they are having their beautiful blue moonbeams.
It’s a bonus moon, so I’m encouraging you to do something bonus for yourself today! Enjoy!
Blue Moon Fun Facts:
Apparently, while Blue Moons are rare, they are not that rare – we get a Blue Moon once every 2-3 years, since the time from one full moon to another is actually 29.5 days. Funny, I always thought it was 28! While Blue Moons occur once every 33 moons, apparently it’s possible to have 2 Blue Moons in a year, which only happens 4 times in a century. Check out Britannica for more Blue Moon math: https://www.britannica.com/science/blue-moon-astronomy
The song “Blue Moon” was originally written in 1934 by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, though it was later popularized and covered by Elvis Presley, The Marcels, Billie Holiday, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and others. It also makes a cameo in the film Grease.
The term “Blue Moon” originated in the 16th century with the phrase “the Moon is Blue” which meant that something was impossible. More “recently”, for two years after the 1883 Krakatoa volcano erupted in Indonesia, people reported seeing bluish moons, so “blue moon” came to mean rare but not impossible.
A Full Moon Writing Prompt:
Take 5 minutes, and write about a moment when you felt like the luckiest person on earth. What was happening, and how did you feel about your luck?
Now, take 5 more minutes, and write about a moment when you either felt like the unluckiest person on earth, or when you envied someone else their good luck. How did you feel? Why? What did you do about it?
Thanks for the shout out buddy! This one resonated. The act of sitting down to write is hard but the business part--the submitting and the querying and the worrying and the planning and the pitching--that part is HARD. (And also why I pretty much don't do it...HA!) Keeping the faith is maybe the hardest. But you got this! I can feel it. <3