- Two years before you write the book, get your mother to plant amaranth. Amaranth crops sustained people all the way from Guatemala to the southwest. The staple grain has more protein than quinoa and requires just 2 millimeters of water to survive. Colonialists stamped out the fields to force Indigenous people to rely on European, water-needy crops, like wheat.
- Publish an essay in the New York Times that goes semi-viral. Assume this will make it easy to sell your book. Feel betrayed by both asses and u and me.
- Campaign for reproductive rights in Florida, DC, and Arizona—the rendered experience becomes the ending for the book that will become How to Plant a Billion Trees,
- January 2025. Find the kindest agent in the world. One that doesn’t mind if you email her five asking if she’s heard anything since going on submission earlier that same day.
- Wait with agent. Try not to think what presses will say yes.
- Or manifest: Try very hard to think about presses will say yes.
- Zoom with your agent and a few presses.
- Post about the process on FB, including the press that wanted me to have 100,000 followers on Substack. (I have 100!)
- Freak out when two different arms of Bloomsbury say yes to two different books. So exciting! Also, how will you finish two books in a year?
- Fortunately, How to Plant a Billion Trees was nearly finished. Writing the Hard Stuff was sold on proposal. Fortunately, it’s about the writing of How to Plant a Billion Trees, which you had just finished, so now you can write the Writing the Hard Stuff book which is due September 1.
- Put together a panel called Writing the Hard Stuff with colleagues and graduate students for the Desert Nights/Rising Stars conference in Phoenix.
- Submit companion essay. Publish in Craft!
- Be grateful you’re invited to present on two AWP panels: Writing Gender-Based Sexual Violence Is Difficult Enough, So How Do We Teach It? And Writing Unashamed: On Resisting Shame & Silencing.
- Write like the wind!
- Travel through the west for research about an entirely different, future book.
- Revise Billion Trees, especially chapter 4, thanks to advice from editor.
- Travel to Alaska for research about an entirely different, future book.
- Be grateful AWP panels are accepted.
- Submit both books to Bloomsbury
- Attend Sex Trafficking conference to understand how to give some context to A Billion Trees.
- Ask mother-in-law to harvest amaranth.
- Writing the Hard Stuff is to come out on November 27th. Thanksgiving Day.
- Talk with your who have hired publicists. Wonder if it’s a good idea. Look at bank account. Friend gives great advice about podcasts and bookstores. Think, “I can do this myself.”
- Post cover of Writing the Hard Stuff.
- Write column about Writing the Hard Stuff
- Forget that one has three other jobs besides being publicist for one book.
- Bring postcards to Desert Nights since Writing the Hard Stuff isn’t released yet. Make postcards as substitute.
- Teach the ideas around Writing the Hard Stuff. Students write an object lesson and braided essays. Share publishing process with students—hope both are useful!
- Start contacting friends with whom you’d love to present at bookstores.
- Copyedit first and only draft of Writing the Hard Stuff
- Email bookstores to see if I can read with friends over the next few months.
- Submit companion essay to the New York Times. Place it in Brevity!
- Buy a 3-day subscription to Listen Notes to search for podcasts that might be interested in interviewing you.
- Draw up list of potential blurbists.
- Write to potential colleagues at campuses across the country about book to ask about visiting their colleges.
- Email editors almost as often as you once did agent to see who is going to blurb the book.
- Start a Substack.
- Zoom with publicist who will help get the word out about the book. Hope he has the strength and connections.
- Worry about blurbs.
- Write Substack post about Donald Trump being a sex Trafficker.
- Meet with greenhouse manager about collecting trees to give away at readings
- Copyedit the first draft of A Billion Trees.
- Order matchbooks with the cover of A Billion Trees. Stuff some of them with pinenuts. Some with amaranth. Leave most matches to distribute at book events.
- Substack post about writing postcards to potential voters in red counties.
- Check in with book events hosts and co-authors.
- Read books of friends with whom you will read at book events.
- Copyedit second draft of a Billion Trees.
- Substack post about witches.
- Email publicist, marketer, editors about plans for the release of A Billion Trees.
- Email potential blurbists.
- Post cover of ABT without blurbs.
- Worry about blurbs.
- Substack about the terrible film After the Hunt
- Email publicist, marketer, editors about plans for the release of A Billion Trees.
- Proofread 1st round.
- Substack about One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This
- Make digital postcard for book tour.
- Email editors of Writing the Hard Stuff about marketing plans.
- Substack about Wright Thompson’s The Barn
- Proofread A Billion Trees. 2nd round.
- Post cover of ABT.
- Write Bio Mass Index email to editors.
- Joyful thank you to blurbists.
- Proofread A Billion Trees 3rd and final round.
- Email publicist, marketer, editors about plans for the release of A Billion Trees.
- Collect books of fellow authors to read for book tour and Zoom talks.
- Write 3 companion essays
- Girls Are Not Your Millennium Falcon
- Look Down. Look Around. Look Everywhere.
- Impossible Books
- Complete Questionnaire for Memoir Monday.
- Wait to hear back from companion essay editors.
- Prep for AWP.
- Email Gmail contact list about both books.
- Submit companion essays to more editors.
- Make Bingo Cards for reading at AWP
- Make postcard for ABT
- Make postcard for individual book store visits/readings.
- Plan California book tour.
- Update website!
- Post individual blurbs with huge thanks to blurbists
- Collect trees from greenhouse. Plant in pots to give out to winners of Bingo game.
- Strike a match from one of the publicity matchbooks. Hope the book sets the metaphorical world on fire while the regular world seems to be burning down.
Tag: fiction
So Many Books. Some of them Great
I read for work—student manuscripts, manuscripts for Crux and DIAGRAM, manuscripts of people who ask for blurbs, and from friends who need a sounding board. These books are sometimes better than the books I read for fun. Maybe being an editor/mentor has changed me so much that reading published books seems too easy? Too finished and therefore become mere objects? Perhaps it’s that I listen to too many audiobooks from Libro.FM. But at the end of the year, I’d download a new book and be like, what is this travesty of justice? Why aren’t my friends’ and students’ books getting published more? Perhaps the Big 5 has led to a dullification of the novel, but I sometimes found it true of the nonfiction too.
But I must read more and more often. The news is bad. Book reading in the US has dropped to an all-time low. Who is going to buy and read these books if not me (and by me, I mean us)?
The books I loved were ones of big scope—2666, Middlemarch, The Secret History, Barkskins, Underworld—Do indie presses publish such long books? Perhaps I don’t know.
I loved all of the Independent Press books I read. These I read by eye not ear.
Secret Agent Man Margot Singer
Excellent collection of essays about a father who may be a spy and other subject, like the essay “Call It Rape.” The essays connect by considering what it means to look and to name.
The Avian Hourglass Lindsey Drager
One of my favorite books ever. A world without birds. Tragic and yet the people Drager makes live here have spirit even without the most elemental animals.
The End of Tennessee Rachel Hanson
Good book about a woman leaving her fundamentalist household. She is wracked by guilt for leaving her siblings behind.
Entwined Bridget Lyons
Excellent book about specific animals and how they are responded to climate change.
Field Guide to the Subterranean Justin Hocking
Fascinating book about the darknesses of human actions and earth’s underground spaces.
College Girl Laura Gray-Rosendale (re-read and taught)
A rape rendered in distressing detail, Gray-Rosendale uses the writing of her own story to both heal and to understand how writing works.
Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer (re-read and taught)
Western academic ecology interwoven with Indigenous knowledge. Obvs very brilliant.
Blanket KT Thompson (re-read and taught)
Excellent book about blankets, what they cover, what they reveal, Native American History/Personal History
Bigger press books read by eye:
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison (re-read)
This book is actually super weird. The POV moves around so much. Very strange/interesting to have one of the POV’s be by a man who rapes his daughter.
The Mighty Red Louise Erdrich
A cool river and farm and animals dying mysteriously. I liked this much better than The Sentence but not as much as The Night Watchman
Dust Alison Stine
Excellent book about a girl dragged to a very small, dusty town. She’s not allowed any freedom except at the café where she takes refuge.
The Bean Trees Barbara Kingsolver (re-read)
Turtle is kind of abducted! Didn’t quite realize it the first time. A little more complainy than I remember.
Salt Bones Jennifer Gavin
Mystery and the Salton Sea! What more could you want? Generational misunderstandings and missing women.
Mother Trucker Amy Butcher
Very interesting to read after having just returned from the Haul Road in Fairbanks
Heavy Kiese Laymon (re-read and taught)
This book is so embodied. Written in the second person, ostensibly to his mother, Laymon puts gravity in every detail.
I list these audiobooks basically in reverse chronological order. I was super annoyed by Flesh. Find further annoyances below.
Flesh David Szalay
If the author cut “okay” from the dialogue, this book would have saved a lot of paper. I’m glad the title was “Flesh” so I could understand that the protagonist, this very boring guy, was driven by bodily pursuits. Why even have him talk?
One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This Omar El Akkad
Great and hard and necessary. See substack.
The Light Eaters Zoë Schlanger
So fantastic. Plants aren’t human but they still show kinds of intelligence.
Circe Madeline Miller
Loved. Came late to this. Actually about Circe, but her side of the story. True witchery!
Last Night in Montreal Emily St. John
Kind of annoying book about wayward twenty-year olds. The Lolita allusions felt over-the-top.
What We Can Know Ian McEwen
Part 1 is about living in a flooded planet 2120 and trying to be a literature professor. Part 2 is about the wife of a poet who wrote her own memoirs. The parts do not shine light upon one another. Annoyed.
When We Cease to Understand the World Benjamin Labatut
Great book about uncertainty and principles and fictionalized stories about Heidegger and Schrödinger.
Into the Clear Blue Sky Rob Jackson
Focusing primarily on methane, Jackson uncovers ways we can prevent greenhouse gases from escaping into the atmosphere. Very good.
The Old Ways Robert MacFarlane
Dude walks around England. Could not finish.
Magical/Realism Vanessa Angélica Villareal
Incredibly smart and readable understanding of how pop music, gaming, and Game of Thrones play into our understanding of literature. Brilliant.
Fuzz Mary Roach
Excellent fun times thinking about how animals get into trouble, often because humans are in their way.
Prophet Song Paul Lynch
Darkest book ever but also spot on for the US if we don’t stop the fascism now. S
Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs Kerry Howley (reread but I didn’t know it until halfway through)
Reality Winner’s disillusionment with the government leads to her to share one small piece of classified data. She gets punished in ways far beyond usual. Also, it’s The Intercept’s fault for not scrubbing identifying material.
Dream Count Chimamanda Ngoza Adichie
Very good. Four-POV’s about Nigeria and Washington DC, love, feminism, body autonomy.
The Frozen River Ariel Lawton
18th Century Mid-wife with very modern viewpoint. Writing is strained.
Raising Hare Chloe Dalton
Fave book of the year. See above.
The Time of Our Singing Richard Powers
Long book about 1940s singing. I didn’t finish even though I love Richard Powers. He should blurb my novel!
Tiny, Beautiful Things Cheryl Strayed
I hadn’t read this collection of dear Sugar columns. Sweet.
Orbital Samantha Harvey
Fine. I don’t remember much about it. Sometimes, I wonder about The Booker Prize
Boys and Oil Taylor Brorby
Excellent book about growing up in oil country and surviving.
Careless People
Awesome book about Facebook and how a senior exec came to find it reprehensible.
Weather Jenny Offill
Short book. Quite lovely though I don’t remember much.
Silent Spring Rachel Carson
I can’t believe I hadn’t read this. So beautifully written and so disturbing. The problem isn’t just DDT though. The pesticides we continue to use continue to kill everything around us.
Black Reconstruction in America WEB Dubois
Also can’t believe I haven’t read this. Clarifies how racism was instituted after the Civil War. People, especially poor, white people, were driven to be racist to hold onto any glimmer of power they had.
The Safekeep Yael Van Der Wouden
Omg. So boring. Almost died. Old timey people in cars. Annoyed.
Twist Colum McCann
Cables on the seafloor. Intrigue on the High Seas. Not my kind of book.
On Tyranny Timothy Snyder
Required reading for this year
Whale Fall Elizabeth O’Connor
Hmm. Ocean involved? The eating of a beached whale?
Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz Józeph Debreczeni
Cold and hard story from the “sickhouse” at Auschwitz. Necessary.
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother James McBride
Lovely reflections about color. I don’t remember that much.
Tom Lake Ann Patchett
Cherry trees and daughters. Kind of just beautiful.
Playground Richard Powers
OMG. A story that is very maddening at the end. Good though.
A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini re-read.
Important book for 2025
Everything is Tuberculosis John Green
Title is self explanatory. I’m reading it again right now. I bought it for 3 people for Christmas. I’m teaching it for my climate science class.
Palaver Bryan Washington
Pretty good. Gay son deals with Jamaican mom who now lives in Houston while she visits him in Tokyo.
Underworld Don DeLillo
I started this book 20 years ago and then was like, I don’t want to read a book about a baseball. The book isn’t really about a baseball, except that the book really is about a baseball. I liked it but thought it was annoyingly hyper realistic.
The God of the Woods Liz Moore
OK. Camp counselors and lost children. Mostly a mystery/thriller, which I don’t generally prefer.
The Ministry of Time Kaliane Bradley
I LOVED this book about time travel. The protagonist is a handler for a man transplanted from 18 something to current times. Might read again soon.
The 1619 Project
A must read for 2025. Should have read sooner.
The Secret History Donna Tartt
This was my year for long books. I really liked the intricacies of these screwed-up kids who really screwed up.
Whisky Tender Deborah Taffa
Smart description of being torn between many cultures. Great, place-based insights into Latino and Indigenous communities.
The Antidote Karen Russell
Interestingish because there’s a witch and a dustbowl, but super shallow. I read that the book is meant to be as deep as YA, which seemed unfair to YA. With Swamplandia, I will never forget the bad man rowing through the swamps. Everytime I paddleboard, I think of him. I might remember one jump shot the main character takes. And some dust.
On Time and Water Andri Snaer Magnason
Glaciers and melting and sadness and hope.
The Fraud Zadie Smith
Libro.fm says I listened to this book but I do not remember a thing.
Barkskins Annie Proulx
Maybe one of my favorite books ever. I listened to this one too and remember everything. (I’ll try the Zadie Smith again). Pretty much the tale of the Eastern United States through the POV of mowing down trees (and people) for profit. So good and very long.
Nightbitch Rachel Yoder
Woman has a baby. The complete inside-outing of her body and the needs this new creature freak her out. Very right on.
The Horse Willy Vlautin
A man lives way out of town. He’s too old to be doing such things. He tries to save his horse. Very good. My friend Lynn knows him!
Creature Lake Rachel Kushner
Pretty OK book about a guy who lives in a cave and people have to think about him and his thoughts.
This Strange Eventful History Claire Messud
Following the lives of a marriage, children, Algiers, WWII. It was fine.
West with Giraffes Lynda Rutledge
Writing very cheeky and flamboyant but chasing giraffes is always fun.
The Quickening Elizabeth Rush
Pregnant woman. Climate change. On a boat on the way to Antarctica. Pretty good.
How Beautiful We Were Imbolo Mbue
Fighting against oil companies is always a good idea.
The Great Believers Rebecca Makkai
1980s. Art. Friends up to no good. A bit like A Little Life but way less melodrama
Middlemarch George Eliot
Why didn’t I read this 1000 years ago? Like DeLillo, she’s interested in details. Unlike DeLillo, she doesn’t want to batter us over the head with them (I liked the DeLillo! It was just a lot).
2666 Roberto Bolaño
Finally read this. Very long. Also, like DeLillo, many details although these details felt a little more salient. Many countries. Many people. Many dead women in St. Teresa/Juarez. Very good. Glad I survived.
Proofing Was Not (but Has Become) my Forte
I finished proofs for How to Plant a Billion Trees on Monday morning. I also had proofs due for a companion essay that will come out from Ecotone soon. I went back and forth to ensure that the changes in the one manuscript were the same in the other. I think I got whiplash.
I tried to explain to my grad students last week why proofreading is so hard. “It’s the last chance to see what kind of nonsense you wrote before the rest of the world sees it!” Proofreading is really meant to only capture misplaced commas and words, but I, dear reader, found whole sentences that required reworking. It’s a hard thing to do—write a two-pronged book—one prong about childhood molestation and abortion and the other about forest fires and their capacity for persistence. There is meant to be a metaphor, but if you overplay it, the comparisons sound trite and if you underplay it, the point of pairing the two stories is confounding. I don’t want to confound. I don’t mind complicating thing, but I hope that I also clarify ideas too?
My student asked, “How can you even find typos? Doesn’t your brain just read over them?” “Yes!” I told him. “That’s why there are typos in the first 14 versions I’ve revised.” But at the proofing stage, somewhat like the proofing stage during bread week on the Great British Bake Off, it’s all or nothing at this point. Readers, (hence the dear readers address above) could pull your book apart like Paul pulls apart poorly risen bread. The crust could split. The dough could be dense. Where are the air pockets?!?!
If I put on these “public eyes” reading glasses, then all the flaws out themselves. It feels very precarious—like hiking down a sandy, slippery Grand Canyon in shoes with no tread—what if I miss something? What if this doesn’t read like I think it reads? What if the whole project makes no sense and I wind up in the middle of the Colorado River with neither boat nor paddle?
For people less self-conscious than I, they with more self-confidence, maybe this process doesn’t feel as discombobulating. I feel like I’ve been a box with a bunch of rocks and shook about by potential audience, doubt, and also hope. Bruising! That’s what it is! As bruising as all these metaphors.
I’ll stop talking about this book for a bit and turn my overly metaphorical eye to larger concerns, but let me tell you, after I finished proofing, I took a nap for an hour. Then 6 hours later, I went to bed and slept until 8:45 a.m. That is super late for me. No surprise, I suppose, after all this baking and downhill slide-hiking.
Nicole Walker 