The Writer Russell Rowland Spills His Guts (Not Exactly, But I Love the Title)

I have a something special for for you! I asked Russell Rowland, a marvelous and prolific writer, to give my readers, many whom write or dream of writing, a gift.

Here it is:

I’m a Lying Liar

            For years, I’ve been telling my writing students that it’s pretty much impossible to get published these days without an agent. But a couple of years ago, I realized that I had published six (now seven) books, and not a single one of them was referred to a publisher by an agent. Not that I’ve never had an agent. I’ve actually lost track of how many agents I’ve had, but I think it’s about the same as the number of books I’ve published. So am I a liar?

            Sort of. The thing about the publishing business is that it really does seem to eventually come down to meeting the right person, and I’ve been fortunate enough to meet the right person many times. The first right person I met was C. Michael Curtis, the fiction editor at the Atlantic Monthly for many decades. I did an internship at the Atlantic when I was in grad school, and Mike very kindly read every single story I wrote during that period, and for many years after. He often read several drafts of each of them, and gave me thoughtful feedback. 

When I first started writing In Open Spaces, my first novel, I nervously sent the first couple of chapters to him through the office mail, hoping he wouldn’t be offended that I’d given him something other than a story. A couple days later, he called me up to his office, and it was a turning point in my career. It was around Christmastime, so he had a crate of oranges in his office, and he handed me an orange, and as we both peeled and ate our oranges, he told me that he really thought I was onto something with this novel.

“How far along are you?” he asked.

I told him I just had a few chapters done, and he knocked me over when he said, “well, when you get to 100 pages, let me know and I’ll start sending this out to some friends of mine.” 

I naturally thought I had hit paydirt with this offer. I went home and started writing like a fiend. I actually finished the novel in another two months. Meanwhile, Mike stayed true to his word and started sending it to some very high profile editors. Names that I would eventually come to realize were at the top of the heap in the publishing world. As it turned out, my good fortune also turned out to be a rude introduction to just how hard it is to get published. All of them passed on the novel, and Mike eventually broke the difficult news to me that he’d run out of ideas. 

For the next ten years, I did what most writers do, sending out query letters, going to a conference here and there, going to a ton of readings, and mostly, just continuing to write. I wrote three more novels, and sent them to the same editors that Mike had introduced me to, only to be turned down again. I had many moments when I began to think that I just wasn’t as good as I thought I was, but it was amazing how often I turned back to the fact that the fucking fiction editor of the Atlantic Monthly had tried to help me get my first novel published. 

Eventually, I met important person number two. It happened to be a woman I started dating, and she happened to be an editor at Harpercollins. She read one of the later novels, and said that she liked some parts of it, but didn’t think it was ready for publication. But when she said, “I think the best parts of this book are the sections where you talk about Montana,” I thought maybe I should show her In Open Spaces, which is essentially a love letter about Montana. 

That book sold her, and within a couple months, she had sent it to some of her friends in the publishing world, and an editor at William Morrow snatched it up. Ironically, William Morrow was purchased by Harpercollins a couple of years later, so it was Harpercollins that ended up publishing it. So novel number one, not sold by an agent, although I had one who negotiated the deal. In Open Spaces received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. It was reviewed in the New York Times, and made a couple of bestseller lists. It sold well for a first novel, but not quite well enough. Sadly, Harpercollins passed on my next novel, but that’s a very long story that I don’t want to get into here. It’s still pretty painful. 

Not long after that, I parted ways with that first agent and ended up with one of the most prestigious agencies in New York, but they had no luck selling any of the three other novels I’d written by then. Somewhere along the line, I sent the book to a small publisher in Montana that I’d read about, and about a year later, I got a surprise email, offering to publish novel number two. 

            This routine has repeated itself five more times since then. Only two of my books have been published by the same publisher. My story is basically a testament to the notion that getting published has very little to do with talent. It comes down to being a goddam pit bull. I have used my anger and rejection to fuel the fire so many times it’s kind of sad. But it also works. Writing is often the art of walking that fine line between thinking you’re some kind of genius and thinking you have absolutely no business calling yourself a writer. It’s so easy to topple into either side of that narrow ledge, and of course neither one of those places is healthy. Or fun. 

            I still don’t have an agent. My latest novel, Cold Country, which happens to be one of the three I wrote while trying to get In Open Spaces published, just came out with a wonderful small publisher called Dzanc Books, and it got a wonderful review in the Wall Street Journal just a few weeks ago. My editor emailed me a couple of weeks after that review and told me that they were in the second printing a month after it came out, and they had already sold out that printing, so they needed to start a third. Somehow, even though I’ve consistently gotten good reviews, and my books have sold marginally well, I’ve never quite managed to get to the point where I can convince an agent that I’m worth the effort. It’s a mystery, but one that I’ve finally come to terms with. But it does go to show that the people who are supposed to be experts on what’s going to well often miss the mark. 

            This morning, I was reading about Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most highly respected African American writers in our history. Hurston died in complete obscurity, buried in an unmarked grave. She would have stayed there if it wasn’t for some powerful voices that discovered her work later and brought it back to the public’s attention. She is now considered a national treasure. When I think about her, I realize I have no right to ever complain again.