The inescapable grief of publishing

Here’s my official statement:

“Due to some changes behind the scenes, the rights to SING THE NIGHT have reverted to me. It will no longer be releasing this fall. I’m currently working with my agent to decide what to do next.”

And in the immortal words of Taylor Swift: “I’m getting tired even for a phoenix.”

I say to myself, to my students, to my friends: focus on what you can control. That’s you. That’s the writing. That’s the time spent studying craft and reading books and scratching out joy in an industry with the highest and highs and lowest of lows. I remind myself (and everyone) to keep their eyes on their own paper, comparison is the thief of joy, and to focus on their own journey. I repeat—until the words lose meaning—that the only way you fail is if you give up.

And that’s what I’m telling myself now. So much is out of our control. I signed with my first agent in 2015 and have been through ups and downs of publishing. And I was so close. Five months from publication. I had done pass pages and have ARCs. I didn’t ever expect this. But here we are. All I can do is keep writing. All I can do is churn this grief into something useful. Keep writing. Keep trying. Because the alternative is looking in the faces of my children and students and telling them that their dreams aren’t worth pursuing.

But they are. And that’s the worst part of this. It’s all out of my control and it sucks and it shouldn’t have happened like this. But the book is good. And I hope whatever comes next is so much brighter than this dark moment.

Thank you to everyone who preordered and supported SING THE NIGHT. I don’t know where I would be without this community.

Onward.