By Gabrielle Sher
My debut novel, Odessa, comes out today. I’ve wanted to be an author all my life, and I’ve been working toward that goal for as long as I can remember. I definitely had unrealistic expectations about the publishing process, and it’s taken longer than I thought it would, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
All of my failures and rejections have only made me work harder and become a better writer. Odessa is not the first novel I’ve ever written, but it’s the first novel I’m publishing. It’s easy to get disheartened, but one of my favorite things to tell my students is that getting published requires relentlessness. To be honest, it never even occurred to me to stop trying. I would have kept trying for the rest of my life. I would have written one hundred novels. And even if I had never gotten published, I would still be writing. I think that’s the essence of my beliefs about writing: it’s a craft, a practice– not something you do once, or all at once, but little by little, every day. It’s something you try and keep trying.
Getting published requires relentlessness. To be honest, it never even occurred to me to stop trying.
My brain loves writing. It even loves editing. It wants to create. I’ve always searched for a writing community wherever I could find it, because I also love talking about writing. It’s a million times better when you have consistent feedback for your work, and when you get in the habit of critiquing and thinking critically about a piece of writing. It’s one thing to write alone, into the void, and another to write in a community where you have a supportive environment that challenges you to improve. The Writers Circle was the first writing community I found. I took classes in high school, interned in college, then after I went away to grad school for writing, I came back and became an instructor over a decade later. I still hold my first students very dear to my heart. I knew immediately that I was in the right place. I found a writing community again, and surrounded myself with people who love to write and are so warm and supportive of each other.
One of my favorite classes to teach is called Where Do I Begin? It’s for people who want to start writing but don’t know where to start, or haven’t written in a long time and want to get back into it. I love the energy of that class. It feels like we’re all embarking on a new adventure together, learning a new skill– the ability to create worlds, to translate our imaginations into stories. I always tell my students that writing is a habit like any other. We find ways of incorporating it into our everyday lives, even just a little at a time. We learn to observe the world like writers, to read like writers. It’s a wonderful way to think, and to exist in the world. I hope that my students leave feeling inspired and motivated to try and keep trying.
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Join Gabby’s Where Do I Begin? workshop this summer, starting July 16.
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Gabrielle Sher attended Hamilton College, where she earned the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize for her novella Bowerbird. She received her MFA and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her first novel, Odessa, originated as part of her doctoral dissertation titled “Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and The Female Jewish Gothic.” She currently lives and writes in New Jersey with her husband Jamie and their dog Bo.
