Publishing My Debut Novel: Shame Edition
Shame loves to rear her head, doesn't she?
Sending love, care, and community to all of us as we navigate the world together right now.
A big thank you to sara nović for clearly and consistently sharing what’s happening to disability rights on their Instagram page. And much, much grief about the terrors in Kashmir; I am thinking about the people there caught in the cruel cross-fires of state-sponsored violence.
Where I’m At 🤔
RAVISHING💄💉✨ comes out in just about six months. I’ve gone through various emotional stages with this book: excitement, dread, confusion, boredom. Six months is both a short time and a long enough time to feel like I could waste the year away by only thinking about my pub date. I’m sure there will be more feelings to come.
Right now, I have a sense of a “turning point” as I keep describing it to my friends, family, and therapist. To me, that looks like a slow, but steady acceptance that my relationship with publishing my debut is deeply informed by my psychological past. And with that comes the urge to rethink my relationship to shame.
Shame? 😳
As much as I’d rather not admit it, shame has been ever-present in my life. As a child I was bullied, both by my peers and certain family members. I was also compared to too many standards by those close to me: was I thin enough, smart enough, talented enough, sweet enough, polite enough, ambitious enough? I can’t remember a time in my life when I believed I was enough (though I hope there was such a time).
And then, at the age of twenty-one, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
I didn’t know many people my age with UC (though I would come to learn that there are many who have it in their early 20s and younger), and I wasn’t sure how to talk about it, especially in a culture rife with poop and fart jokes. I felt alone, sick and struggling. And of course, there was an internalized ableism. I engaged with old standards: as as disabled person could I really still be a partner, career woman, writer, thinker, global traveler, future mother? And of course, there was the shame again, as I considered that even if I could be those things, it might not look the way it does for others—which meant, again, it might not be good enough.
I have a lot of tenderness for that scared girl who was wading through all that fear. And I have tenderness for anyone asking these questions, about what it is we can and can’t do as disabled people. Because, yes, it’s ableism (Elizabeth Roberts reminds us in “On Disability, Infrastructure, and Shame,”
Disability rights activists have fought against locating disability as a pathology within individual bodies, replacing this medical model with a social/environmental model whereby all people are recognized as having different capacities and impairments. Disablement arises when the environment accommodates some of these capacities and impairments and not others. In other words, disability arises in relational interaction (Harpur and Stein 2022; Issues 2022).
—meaning that the fear of not being able to do something should be less about our own individual failings and more of society’s inability to support us in our lives), but often diagnosis is the first time a person really learns they have to revisit their ableism and unlearn it. And even once they unlearn that ableism, they have to live in a society that constantly pushes ableism at them. Living life as a disabled person in an inaccessible world still requires a lot of a person, even if we know it shouldn’t, even if we know we’re still fighting for something better.
Before I embarked on the publishing process I was under the impression I’d worked through the worst of shame. I considered myself separate from the pains of my youth. I believed that because I spoke up about being disabled, because I recognized the inherent beauty of living life with this acute sense of my body, I had done some of the hardest work of all.
But book publishing has proven that what I actually did was convince myself that if I couldn’t be “perfect” in the past, I could be “perfect” now. Suddenly, all the fear of not being good enough has surged up again, and with it, shame: what if I say no to a critical opportunity, piss off my marketing and publicity team, come off as too neurotic to my agents, am too annoying on social media, fuck up in an interview and get cancelled, am not a genius, should never have even written this book? What if me and my work are just not enough in the literary landscape?
It’s suddenly a lot to contend with.
Okay, So Now What? 🔜
In her essay, Roberts writes:
Disability studies has also helped us think better and harder about pain. While pain might accompany disability, scholars question the assumption that disability necessarily entails pain (Siebers 2008). And as with disability, pain doesn’t necessarily come from within individuals, but can be made through lack of infrastructural support (Holmes 2015) or from medical attempts to create normality in the non-normative (Clare 2017; Lehrer 2020).
It’s worth thinking, then, that the shame that one can feel—that I certainly feel—around book publishing comes not from me as a flawed individual, but from the realities of the industry and reading landscape that writers are living in. In truth, we are writing into a world obsessed not with thinking and communicating through words, but one seeking gratification. The publishers are seeking sales. The internet is seeking scandals to pounce upon. The readers have become reviewers, and they are engaging with work not as it is, but as they would like it to be. (Catherine Lacey’s note below is about professional critics, but as the Goodreads reviews have trickled in for RAVISHING, I’m seeing the same type of feedback.)
There is pressure, so much of it, and all of it sucks away at the writing process—or it does at mine, at least.
But Maddie Norris, a wonderful writer and friend, recently told me “writing has to be imperfect to be interesting.” I’ve clung to that in recent months, because of how true it is. Writing that tries to embody the human experience can never been perfect, because humans are not perfect. It can’t even really be good enough for everyone, because humans are not usually good enough everyone they encounter anyway. But we humans are so deeply interested in each other because of our complexity—and our best art is similarly complex, both in its so-called failings and successes.
And if the world we’re writing into is inhospitable to that idea—well, we, like so many thinkers and activists before us, have to question it anyway.
My book is imperfect, because I am. My published process is imperfect, because I (and the people around me) are imperfect. My book will be read in imperfect ways, because readers are imperfect too. There’s no shame in that; in fact, that’s the point. Our imperfections are what create conversation, new ideas, and, ultimately, connection.
A Dose of Updates
Ravishing 💄💉✨
You can preorder Ravishing 💄💉✨!
Preorders are really important for the life of a book, so it would mean the world to me if you would consider preordering, and if you would be willing to share the link with those you love. It’s the perfect book for anyone who has had to contend with their body and how care looks in our society.
Another way to support the book is to continue to subscribe to this newsletter (and sharing it either by forwarding it or talking about it on social media!) as well as following me on my socials. I’m on Bluesky/Instagram/TikTok as @eshanisurya. Reposts, especially about the book, are always welcome.
If you have any interest in hosting an event, reviewing the book for an outlet, conducting a written interview, having me on a podcast, asking me to visit a book club, etc etc, please reach out! You can either reply to this email or contact me here.
Other Things
Research for Book #2 is on its way. This means ponies all day, every day. I can’t say much more than that, but I can give you this photo, taken by my sweet husband, Zach.
xx,
Eshani
Congratulations on your novel! It sounds amazing. I can relate to so much of what you talked about in this post. As one debut author with UC to another, I hope your body is kind to you throughout the rest of your publishing experience!❤️