Solace Amidst the Exposure: How Publishing and Community Brought Me Back to Myself By Catherine Lewis
When I was asked to write this blog post on my experience navigating publishing, I thought it’d be easy. Just chronicle the effortless steps I took to get my debut chapbook Zipless published. Easy-peasy, right?
That would have been a lie. Getting published has been one of the most emotionally complicated journeys of my life.
Months after my November 2019 graduation from Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio program, I’m the only one in my poetry workshop group who hasn’t started submitting her work to literary journals, contests, or publishers.
“Cat, you need to start getting your work out there,” one of my mentors says over Zoom. It’s Spring 2020, and our in-person meetings have just migrated into virtual space.
My mouth remains a thin, tight line. “I’m not ready.”
“Well, you need to start submitting. It’s mostly rejection at first, but just keep sending things out. I know you can do it.” She smiles. Her confidence in me is unflinching.
Staring at the ground, I nod, resigned.
By Summer 2020, however, I’ve simply run out of things to do. My cross-town commute has been replaced by the walk from my bedroom to my home office. Staying socially distanced meant not seeing family or friends, not attending dance classes or even dining in restaurants.
As we all cocooned at home, some started baking bread. As for me? This is when I finally start whispering to myself, Maybe, just maybe, you could start submitting your work. Just one journal. One poem. One cover letter. Baby steps. What have you got to lose?
Our work is meant to be read, they say. They being the classmates and mentors with whom I’ve shared my writing and many cocktails, as well as writers I follow on social media.
Still, I hesitate.
Most of my writing centres around topics I’ve been too shy to mention publicly. My failed battle with infertility. My late-blooming queer sexuality. But 2020 is when I finally start submitting poems and memoir manuscript excerpts to contests and journals. I do this because it’s what’s expected of me, because my mentors have insisted, and because I’m going stir-crazy at home, having run out of hobbies. In lockdown, I don’t have to face any in-person awkwardness from the self-disclosure involved in publication.
Slowly, starting to submit my writing soon turns into my pandemic hobby.
At the 2020 Zoom Christmas party for the 2019 and 2020 Writer’s Studio poetry grads, I listen to the 2020 grads I just met that evening, as they chat about the chapbook presses they’re planning to submit to. I’ve never compiled a chapbook manuscript, but the chapbook deadlines I’m hearing about are coming up soon. And soon, for me, is a real motivator.
That week, from my 2019 classwork, I pluck out ten poems, mostly about my queer sexuality, compiling them chronologically. I title the manuscript “QPOC,” after a poem set at a Pride event in Chinatown, and start submitting it to chapbook presses and contests.
Along the way, one of my poems is published online— “Red Shoes,” a poem about my failed IVF journey, is my first time mentioning online that I once tried to have a baby. After reading the poem, many fellow writers get in touch afterwards. Everyone treats me, and the delicate subject matter, with great sensitivity.
Self-disclosure feels less daunting after this.
The fourth time I send off my manuscript, in April 2021, I’ve incorporated Arc Poetry Poet-in-Residence Jim Johnstone’s astute edits into three of the poems, added in a poem about beauty standards, and renamed the manuscript “Zipless,” after a racy poem set at Pride. I’ve become accustomed to rejection emails containing “Unfortunately,” but 13 months into working from home full-time, submitting my work is still keeping me entertained.
That June, I scrolled through emails on my iPhone, when the words jumped out at me: “chapbook” and “we would love to publish it.”
My jaw drops. The email is from 845 Press (an Ontario-based imprint of The /tƐmz/ Review) where I’d submitted my manuscript back in April, after having spotted local poet Rob Taylor and a variety of diverse writer friends amidst their chapbook authors and journal contributors.
Instantly, a mix of emotions swirls up within me—Elation, from my first time having work accepted for print publication from a submissions call and then Terror, from the vulnerability of publishing such personal work.
Over the next day, I discuss with writer friends about how it will feel to have a queer poetry manuscript in print, given how closeted I’ve been about my sexuality. As they insist that everything will be okay, nervous sobs well up within me. My chest shakes. This chapbook’s publication could result in the ultimate vulnerability hangover.
In the end, however, the allure of publication wins out and I sign the chapbook contract. Soon afterwards, I add Pride flags to my social media profiles.
That summer, publisher Aaron Schneider and I email back and forth to go over his insightful line edits, and finalize layout and design. I gasp at the sleek cover design featuring Síle Englert’s cover art. And when I see the back cover PDF proof of how my women writer friends have honoured me with their blurbs, I try not to cry.
As soon as I unbox my author copies, I inscribe and mail copies to my mentors. As I once read in an Instagram meme, the greatest gift you can give your mentor is for you to succeed.
The day Zipless’s publication is announced, I upload the social media posts I’ve already prepared. I am unprepared for all the congratulations I receive, unprepared to welcome over thirty people at my virtual launch, unprepared for Zipless’s first two printings to sell out.
I still cannot articulate how grateful I am for the love with which my work has been received.
Publishing my work has resulted in opportunities I’d never expected, such as invitations to read at festivals. As someone who couldn’t have anticipated this two years ago, I’m grateful for each opportunity that has been presented to me.
With this, comes a price. As a writer with a full-time job, I am sometimes presented with opportunities I don’t have the capacity for. I’m continually learning to navigate these moments.
At times like these, I miss the old me. I knew there was a price to publication: Exposure. Being seen. Success as a writer intrinsically means exposure, unless you’re channelling Elena Ferrante.
I consider myself incredibly lucky. As a poet primarily read by other poets, the feedback I have received on my work has been loving, supportive and kind. The vulnerability hangover I expected has not, in fact, transpired. Instead, I have felt welcomed into the communities of LGBTQ+ writers, of poets, of Asian Canadian writers, of BIPOC writers, of women writers. Kinship.
Some final words:
On exercise:
In the years just before writing became part of my life, I first found solace in movement, initially only for fitness, before I then ventured into dance, my first creative endeavour, my first connection to communities of fellow creatives. Movement and exercise sustained me during the emotional rollercoaster of fertility treatments. Now, working out continues to replenish and reset me as a writer, keeping me healthy enough to sit in my writing chair. During my workouts throughout the years, my daily worries have drained away, whether I was anxious about an IVF treatment, or concerned about the potential vulnerability hangover from sharing my work. Plus, while I’m out for a run, great poetic lines often occur to me.
On community:
Let me confess: It wasn’t poetry that saved my life, it was the poets¹. Gossiping together after Writer’s Studio evening workshop classes over nachos and wine at the restaurant across the street, about Pathetic Ex #5 who was the subject of that night’s angry poem, scribbling down collaborative poetry projects until last call. Huddling together in autograph lines at literary festivals. So, let yourself be loved and held by fellow writers. Find writers who love you as a friend/colleague/mentee, writers who love your work and will blurb and tweet it, writers you love sharing sushi with. Thank these loves profusely. Send thank-you gifts to your blurbers and honoraria to your readers. If you love someone’s book, tell them over Twitter or in their autograph line. And tell Goodreads. Find writers whose successes you retweet and whose readings you love attending. Enough writerly rejection awaits us daily, so we need all the writerly love we can get.
Lastly, continue to allow yourself to be loved and held by people who don’t write a lick at all. Until I took my first creative writing class in 2018, everyone I knew happened to not be a writer. These are the friends who read early drafts of poems I subsequently sent to my first-ever workshop classes, who proofread my application letter to the Writer’s Studio, who have loved and held me the longest. These folks have heard nothing of the latest book awards or #LiteraryTwitter kerfuffles, serving as a welcome respite from writerly accomplishments, failures, and gossip. But these loves celebrate every last one of my writerly successes, no matter how small. How incredibly lucky I am, that those who have loved me the longest, cheer the loudest.
¹A nod to Amber Dawn’s brilliant How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir.
Catherine Lewis is a bisexual Chinese Canadian writer and poet. Her debut poetry chapbook Zipless was published by 845 Press in 2021 and is now in its third printing. She was a finalist in the 2021 creative nonfiction contests hosted by The Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review/Creative Nonfiction Collective Society, and the Federation of BC Writers. A graduate of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and of the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, she is a 2021 alumnus of the Banff Centre. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, Catherine lives in Vancouver on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Catch her on Twitter or Instagram at @cat_writes_604 or at www.catherinewriter.com.
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