Abject Failures

I’ve finished another book. My friend Erin and I are shopping a manuscript about teaching and learning.

Erin was an elementary teacher. I was a high school teacher. And now we’re both professors. We’ve been teaching for a long time, and that is what our latest project is about.

Our previous book was an academic monograph about improvisation, storytelling, and improvisation. It won the 2024 Edward B. Frye Book Award. I’m proud of that award.

Our new book is a humorous memoir that leans towards popular nonfiction. I use the word popular loosely.

***

I asked AI how I should proceed with publishing this latest book.

AI was all too happy to help me. Computers are always all to happy to help. Until they achieve sentience, start a nuclear conflict, and travel back in time to kill John Connor.

AI told me to target 10 literary agents and, after that, seek out university presses. It told me not to feel bad if I can’t secure representation from a literary agent. I’ve been seeking and failing to attain literary representation for nearly fifteen years. I told AI I would be fine.

It has been about two months since I submitted query letters on behalf of Transformations in 10,000 Excruciatingly Difficult Steps: An Unhelpful Guide to Teaching and Learning. I cannot tell you how happy I am with our working title. Agents must not feel the same way. It’s been crickets.

In defense of the agents I’ve queried, our book is short. I described it as concise in my query letters. Erin and my book is only 36,000 words. I don’t want it any longer, even though agents usually want books to be longer than 36,000 words because they’re easier to sell. I’m less concerned with selling things. Writing this book was a vital project, and what emerged is what we want to share. It is as honest an expression about what matters about teaching, learning, and transformation as we can come up with, and that is what matters to me.

***

I emailed a respectable editor at a university press last week. It was somebody that AI suggested I target. I asked if the respectable editor would be interested in receiving a proposal from us on behalf of Transformations in 10,000 Excruciatingly Difficult Steps: An Unhelpful Guide to Teaching and Learning. I didn’t give this respectable editor much to work with – a title and a sentence about Erin and me. This respectable editor replied at 3:00am to let me know he only publishes books about education that are encouraging, because that is what his partner does.

At first I felt bad. Was our title not encouraging? I thought about it and decided I still really, really liked our title. I reminded myself that, despite the respectable editor’s email, our book is a humorous, honest encouragement to those of us brave enough to set our transformational feet in classrooms (and the world).

I read the respectable editor’s email again, and started laughing. Something about my email compelled this guy to respond at 3:00am. He needed to tell me he wouldn’t consider publishing a book that his partner might not like. I suspected that the respectable editor I was corresponding with might be reacting to something in him more than something in me.

Despite my many rejections – abject failures – I’ve put many pieces of writing into the world, books included. I guess I have a lot to say? To write, anyway.

I paged through a folder of countless rejections in the University of Indiana’s archives last fall. Kurt Vonnegut kept every abject failure. And yet he kept putting writing into the world. I guess Kurt had a lot to say. To write, anyway.

I’ll keep trying, abject failures aside, because I do what I muddily-must until I bodily-bust.