What happens when publishing isn't ready for you? ⌛️
What happens when publishing isn't ready for you? ⌛️
Today's guest is author Mansi Shah.
No one wants to hear their story isn’t worth publishing.
When you’ve poured your heart and soul into your manuscript, rejections from literary agents can make you question if it’s even worth continuing. You might have heard of miraculous anecdotes of authors getting their literary agent after a single query letter, or their debut novels becoming instant bestsellers as soon as they are published. However, the more common story is that finding publishing success takes incredible amounts of time, patience, and perseverance.
As hard as it is, let the rejections fuel you to keep going.
Pay attention to what’s happening to the publishing industry, to the writing community, and to the world around you as a whole. A “no” today doesn’t necessarily mean a “no” tomorrow, as the publishing industry is ever-changing. Your story matters, and you will find the readers who believe in it as much as you do.
In today’s interview, author Mansi Shah shares intimate details of her publishing journey and how she maintains her writing groove amidst changing circumstances.
OUR SPECIAL GUEST TODAY IS…
Mansi Shah
Author
Her debut novel The Taste of Ginger is available now, as is her new novel The Direction of the Wind, a heartfelt story about a young woman who searches for answers about a mother she barely remembers.
What was the biggest obstacle you faced in your publishing journey?
It took me over a decade to get a book deal for The Taste of Ginger, a story about the immigrant experience and the search for identity and belonging when someone straddles two cultures without ever fully being accepted in either. My novel highlights the challenges and sacrifices that an Indian immigrant faces while trying to assimilate into a predominantly-white American culture and the ripple effects of those decisions within herself and her family. When I first began writing in 2009, there were very few books by Indian authors at all, let alone by Gujarati authors that represented the part of India that my family was from. I set out to write the story that I wished my younger self could have read, but with the number of rejections I'd gotten along the way, it felt like the publishing industry wasn't ready to publish that type of story.
In 2011, when an agency meant to send an internal email but instead replied to me (that dreaded act that we all fear), I saw their true unfiltered thoughts: “Solid voice. Great title. Though I’m worried because you said the India wave has passed…”
I spent a long time thinking about my culture as a passing “wave.” I knew my culture’s stories were worth telling, so these rejections fueled me to keep going until I found the right agent and editor who wanted to join me in my efforts to disrupt the publishing industry.
I kept writing and revising year after year, and saw the world changing alongside each new draft. Amid the 2020 global pandemic, a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd and too many others, and rampant acts of Asian hate, voices that had often been disregarded were calling out for change more than I could remember at any other point in my life, and people seemed to be listening. Finally, The Taste of Ginger was the type of story people were ready to hear, and I was able to publish the book that I hoped generations of immigrants after me could find on bookshelves and see a part of themselves and their journey within those pages.
What is one thing you wish you had known about the publishing process before going through it yourself?
Having had a career as an entertainment lawyer, I thought there would be more overlap between Hollywood and publishing, and there really hasn't been. The biggest thing I hadn't realized is how much of the marketing falls to the author. I'd hoped that I could just focus on writing books, but so much more is expected of authors, especially in this world of social media. I love creating characters and telling stories, but I am not a natural digital marketing content creator. I've had to learn to use Canva and Photoshop, and making a 30-second reel can often take me over an hour, but it's also been nice connecting directly with readers through those platforms.
How do you balance finding time to write and managing other obligations and responsibilities?
This is an interesting question, because I am going through a big transition at the moment. I recently left my lawyer career to focus full-time on my writing career and am learning to find my new normal. While I'd been working as a lawyer, I knew I had to jam a writing block into my day wherever I could find it, and then expect to do the heavy lifting on the weekends. I'm now figuring out what schedule works for me as a full-time writer. I am most focused and creative in the mornings, so I tend to do my writing at the start of my days. I then spend the afternoon dealing with marketing/publicity, social media, and responding to readers. I'm trying to give myself the grace to be more open and flexible in this new phase of my life after spending so many years in such a high-stress and rigid profession. If I'm not on deadline and need a break from writing, I will take it and trust that the time off will rejuvenate me so that when I sit down to write next, it will flow more effortlessly. Writing demands so much of your heart and intellect that it cannot be done well from a place of depletion, so I try to balance productivity with self-care whenever possible.
What's one writing "rule" or piece of advice that you decidedly break?
I am a rules-follower by nature, so breaking rules is a big deal for me! Because representation and cultural authenticity is at the center of my writing, I prioritize that above all else. There's been a longstanding trend in publishing that authors writing about non-white experiences are expected to make those cultural differences easy for the reader and italicize and explain any words or concepts that aren't part of mainstream American culture. I want readers like myself who have sparse representation to be able to turn to my books and feel like they are coming home, so I never break from my characters' POVs to explain anything to the reader that the characters would already know. I do make sure that anything I write can be easily googled for readers seeking a better understanding of a particular word. But as a reader, I've always found the shifts in POV jarring when I've seen them in other books, and I want to keep my readers completely immersed in the experiences of the characters they are following.
What is the most memorable writing tip or technique that you have heard, and how did it influence your process?
During an advanced novel writing workshop at UCLA, my instructor told us to think of writing in intervals and only write for 40 minute blocks, and then always take at least 20 minutes to do something unrelated to writing before starting again. She said that after 40 minutes, your focus drops off and it would be diminishing returns to keep pushing through rather than taking a break and letting your subconscious marinate on what you just wrote. That is hands down the best advice I'd ever gotten because it makes the writing process manageable, especially when I'd been maintaining a full-time job as a lawyer in addition to writing. I've now written this way for over a decade and have been much more productive, often able to hit my daily goals in just a couple blocks a day.