By Brendan O’Meara
Kesley Rexroat brings you a beautiful love story for The Atavist Magazine, this one titled “Love, Interrupted.” The dek reads, “Two women promised they would see the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time once they were together. They had no idea how long that would take.”
It’s a wonderful, redemptive story that proves the power of commitment and following one’s true path.
Kelsey is a “meticulous copy editor and dynamic content writer based in San Francisco, California. She specializes in technology, health, and lifestyle.”
She has worked with The New Yorker, Amazon Pay, and Rand McNally and her writing has appeared in The Atavist, Literary Hub, and The Atlantic.
In this episode we talk about what she calls “the monstrosity,” turning off her editor brain, and writing in 20-minute spurts. Also, if you don’t know how to browse a used-books story, Kelsey’s got you.
TL;DL: TK
Parting Shot: Anxiety Relapse
Got the first chunk of the final edits back. And, by and large, I finally crested out of anxiety and into the realm of excitement. The first time in nearly two years that I’ve been excited and not trembling. Then my editor was like, we gotta retool this first chapter. First chapters are too important to futz with. It’s only a seven-page chapter, but those seven pages could kill the book for a reader if the chapter is not doing the right kind of work.
After a long conversation about it, I relapsed into panic and stress eating. I basically ate an entire jar of peanut butter in the span of 48 hours, drank three beers at a baseball game, and haven’t been able to sleep … [the borderline insomnia preceded the drinking, which I know makes me sleep like garbage. No, I don’t have good coping skills].
I didn’t know what more I could do to this chapter, so I started retyping it, moving one anecdote to the top of the chapter that forefronts Steve Prefontaine in a way that it didn’t before, then I started to fold it into Chapter 2 thinking that Chapter 1 might be best as an accent piece. The more I retooled that, the more the original Chapter 1 came back into focus and Chapter 2 went back to its room.
I don’t have much time to tinker on this kind of level. I was told that this is the final back and forth. Then we gotta move on to copy edits. So I’m feeling the crunch, the panics are back. But amidst this fury, I got the book cover mockup and it’s really good.
I love it.
I had no input into the design, but I love it. It’ll still be several weeks before I can share it in the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter or on, bleck, Instagram. I just threw up in my mouth.
The MS will likely be down to 105,000 words or fewer, down from 160,000 words. Yeah, I’m fuckin’ shitty at writing books. I think I already said this once, but my acknowledgments section is largely going to be a litany of apologies big and small.
Trying to find photos, get rights to photos, thinking about the PR plan. Is there a budget to send me places? I don’t know. Should I hire an outside PR person? Should I spend the $5,000 of book advance money? 5 grand is a LOT of money, and it’s no guarantee that it’ll be worth it. I could spend that and not be featured on any prominent podcast, or radio program, or MTV.
Hell, there are dozens and dozens of publicists who reach out to me for their authors and I have to ignore many of them. That’s money that author spent and I’M ignoring them. That’s a waste of money. I don’t ignore them to be a dick, but I can only read so much and I only have 50 slots a year, give or take, 12 of which I reserve for Atavist writers, so any given year will be about 38 to 40 authors and creators. I probably get pitched more than 100 books a year, which probably isn’t that much, but it’s far more than I can handle. I can read, at most 50 books a year and that’s a stretch. It’s probably closer to 40.
For all intents and purposes, the podcast doesn’t make any money. It makes $100 a month from Patreon. But I spend the equivalent of a robust part-time job every week on it, but there’s no way I can honor all the pitches. I don’t know how Brad Listi does two interviews with authors a week. Maybe he makes money with his show and he can spend his time reading.
If that $5,000 equated to say, bestsellerdom, then that makes me a more marketable, bankable writer, which can lead to future bigger book deals, so the $5,000 could be seen as an investment. What if that $5,000 spent leads to a future $200,000 advance? Then I’d be set for another four to five years.
It’s something I’ll flirt with and, shit, I sorta kinda need to be thinking hard about this NOW. Like, right NOW, so stay wild CNFers, and if you can’t do, interview, see ya!
