A Letter to Myself on the Night of March 20, 2023 (the eve of publishing my debut novel)
Author Jinwoo Chong writes a letter to himself on the eve of publishing his debut novel.
Dear Jinwoo,
Your debut novel, Flux, will be published tomorrow. At 5 am you will wake without an alarm and find yourself checking The New York Times Book Review’s homepage. A positive review, written by the novelist Laird Hunt, will be on the section’s front page. The review, and the day to follow, will be the culmination of a long, difficult path that your first novel took from draft, to agent, to submission, to eventual publication, during which you entertained more than once the desire to quit writing all together. You will only half-read the review the first time, stopping throughout the rest of the day, your publication day, to go through in more detail. You’ll learn later that you did this out of fear that there was a sentence somewhere in there that curtailed the review’s overall positive tone, that you had missed by accident the fact that the biggest review of your debut novel thus far was not actually all that positive.
You have lived much of your writing life this way. By the evening of March 20, Flux will have garnered three starred trade reviews, inclusion by name in Vanity Fair, Bloomberg, LitHub, and a great many other outlets listing the most anticipated book releases of 2023. You will have also accepted invitations to record podcasts, print interviews, and appear at various book festivals throughout the summer.
But you confess, you did not pay much attention to the noise while it was happening. You remember some of the brightest, happiest moments on this journey to March 20—laying eyes on your cover design for the first time, receiving your first blurb, confirming your dream conversation partner Alexander Chee for your book launch event at New York’s Strand Book Store—along with some of the worst: hearing about 30 times in succession from your agent that an editor was politely declining your manuscript or had just stopped responding; attending writers’ parties for the first time in your life a few months afterwards in which guests listened carefully to learn which house was at last publishing your debut and reacted transparently when you told them; understanding that from here on out, there is very little you can do personally toward the book’s success in the market. The fears involved in becoming a published novelist have often outweighed the joy, and you resent this because you are living a dream you didn’t think possible until just a year or two ago.
Jinwoo, I know what you’ll do tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. You will feel relief that a momentous day has come and passed. You will look for reasons to remember only the best parts of the experience. You will also keep tinkering away at your next book, which you are proud of and hope might reach an audience.
You will have kinder eyes for your debut novel, which, despite its flaws, is the most ambitious thing you’ve ever attempted to write, which still somewhat impresses you with its versatility, form-breaking, multi-genre appeal, and cinematic quality. And it will stay put while your life grows further away, the memories will blend together, until such time that you will realize that its paperback version will be on stores very soon, emblazoned with the handful of honors it has received, new quotes from positive reviews, and updates to your author’s bio that include what has happened in the two years since. Seeing it back on shelves in new clothes will be like greeting an old friend. You will look forward to picking it up and giving it another full read.
You will, two years from now, be at a point in your career in which others will ask what the experience of publishing a debut novel was like, as if it had happened a hundred years ago. You won’t have many unique answers to this question apart from the usual, that it was unpredictable, exhilarating at times, disappointing at other times. This question will make you think about how you feel to be a writer now. To be writing now, in the face of daily horrors, the precarity of existence, is your greatest comfort. You will count yourself lucky to have time to write, to have time to read, to do leisurely things in general.
Tomorrow, you will make your mandated social media posts announcing the publication day of your debut novel. You will also post about the upcoming book events you’ve lined up in support. You will do this all from your seat in the company-wide day of meetings and updates at your day job, coincidentally in advertising sales at The New York Times. Several coworkers will read Laird Hunt’s review in the Books section tomorrow and ask, incredulously, if you’re the same person as the one who wrote this book. This will make you laugh. Months from now, please remember how funny this is.
You’ll enjoy the next two years. There will be a lot to celebrate, in your lives both writing and personal. Remember that you are very lucky to be able to do the things that make you happy. Have a nice day. And buy some portable fans from Target, because your AC is going to break for the first of many times in about a month.
Best,
Jinwoo
Check out Jinwoo Chong's debut (in paperback) Flux here:
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Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novels I Leave It Up to You and Flux, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a best book of 2023 by Apple Books, Amazon Books, Esquire, HuffPost, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and Goodreads. His work has appeared in Guernica, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature. He lives in New York.
