Writing: A Love Story

“Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.” ―Grace Paley

My publishing history has been…interesting. Back in 1990, after getting fired from my editing job at Bantam Doubleday Dell, I started to waitress and do things that artists sometimes do. I was a fake patient for training foreign doctors. I posed naked for a photographer wanting to diversify his portfolio. (Me: “Do you want a picture of me naked?” Boyfriend: “No! You look terrified.” Me: “I’m smiling!” Boyfriend: “Your eyes are filled with fear!”) I edited a few essays for money, and I wrote.

I wrote a novel. I didn’t know I was writing a novel. I thought it was a too-long short story. However, I ran into an agent I had worked with on the street who demanded to read it and after a few tweaks, Harper & Row bought it. I didn’t even know she was submitting it and when I went for my first meeting with the editor, I thought they had mixed up the manuscript until she started talking about my characters. Parting is All We Know of Heaven failed to take the publishing world by storm, but suddenly I was an actual writer. Like my father and my parents' famous friends.

After that, I applied to a Brooklyn College MFA program so I’d have the ability to teach. Starting an MFA program with a book deal gave me the false impression I would be immune to criticism and everyone would be in my thrall. That didn’t happen. What did happen was that I wrote my second novel, Living in Arcadia, promptly rejected by my huge American publisher, but claimed by Bantam, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, so it was published in the UK and in places like Canada and Australia. I went to England, had an affair with my English publisher, came home, and realized despite all this hoopla, I needed a job, and then I met my future second husband.

We moved to London, I had a baby, we moved to Dallas, and I had a minor breakdown inspired by the focus on cars, makeup, cheerleading, and hair. We moved to Chicago and after a while realized we had a wonderful child, but the marriage was toast. After the divorce, I adjuncted in a half dozen universities until, fed-up, I went and got an education degree and a teaching certificate and started teaching high school English. I loved it. I loved my students and I loved the classroom. The administration, not so much. After thirteen years, I wrote a third novel called Stone Garden, getting up at five o’clock every morning for two years and writing until seven when I had to drive to school and teach. Coming home as a single mother with a folder filled with papers to correct, I had no idea if anything would happen. I sent the book off to my agent and went off to work.

A few days later, I received a phone call that said the novel had gone to auction, two huge publishers wanted it, and the offer was six figures. I had another breakdown and had to go on antidepressants. While I was over the moon, I was also ill-prepared for the success and then the silence when the book no longer mattered, my tours were over, the reviews stopped and while I had experienced incredible joy with book clubs and being named a New York Times Notable Book, I was not rich nor famous.

I kept writing. My agent semi-retired. I kept teaching and writing and getting rejected, and after many years—twenty-two—believed this adventure was over. I found Substack and began posting an unpublished memoir weekly. But then along came a new indie publisher, Empress Editions, and someone who told me she loved my writing and asked if I would consider autofiction.

Yes, I would.

Molly Moynahan signing books at the Lake Leelanau Street Fair Harvest Festival.

So, here is MotherPerson, publishing tomorrow, which will be today when you read this. I am deeply grateful to Empress Editions and Alisa Kennedy Jones. 

Molly Moynahan