An Awkward Phone Call

I have not forgotten you, dear readers. I’ve wanted to be in touch for a long while, but I let too much time go by and my silence began to feel heavier and harder to break. It’s a little like not calling your mom because you’re ashamed it’s been too long since you last called.

Well, here I am Mom, shamefacedly breaking the silence. Much has happened since I last checked in. I took a mental health break from writing and worrying about agents, and the rapid shrinking of the traditional publishing world—and trying to find my place amid it all.

As many of you recall, once I decided it was too dangerous to take Caitlin back to my Peace Corps village as promised during my last trip 10 years earlier, interest waned. Well, it’s more like interest fell off the cliff. Once eager agents said I had lost my cinematic ending.

A Literary Ghosting

But one agent liked the reality of life getting in the way of happy endings. He pushed me to take a harder look at white saviorism and the Peace Corps, to take on the cancel culture that says a white woman no longer has the right to write about her time in Africa. I spent hundreds of hours doing just that, reporting, rewriting and restructuring. He told me that he was sending out my book proposal to publishing houses after one final edit; I was so giddy I could barely sleep. I never heard from him again, despite repeated attempts to get in touch. I’m told ghosting is now common in the agency world.

I have queried dozens of other agents, many of whom loved my proposal and asked to see the first few chapters. You are such a lovely writer, they said. Your story is so compelling, they said. But most Americans don’t care about the Congo and it won’t sell, they said.

I let all of them get in my head and it set me back. Big time.

But I’ve stopped wallowing and have been furiously writing again. I joined a great writer’s cooperative in Berkeley, which has a studio where we can all write without the distractions of home. I’m no longer worrying about agents and have been taking classes on self-publishing and looking at smaller, independent presses. More importantly, I’m writing the way I want to write and not thinking too much about where I will publish—until I’m ready to publish. I hope to never again query another agent.

A Little Good

I’ve tossed the title, “It Took a Village,” after a smarty-pants writerly friend told me it was too cliched. The working title is now, “A Little Good: My 40-Year Journey Through One Village in the Congo.” It’s focused on that lifelong question: Is doing a little good better than not doing any good at all?

I’m now down to my final three chapters. They’re the hardest because I’m building up to the fact that there is no happy ending. It was an incredibly difficult and disturbing final journey back to the village that gave me my life’s mission and my writing voice. There are answered questions, particularly about the importance of connections and making family far from home. But no cinematic ending. Just hard realities and hard goodbyes.

So please accept my apology for this long silence. I’m not going to make any promises, but I’m going to try to update you now at least once a month. My goal is to finish the final draft by this summer and then determine how to get it out into the world.

I hope some of you will be in touch; I know we’ve all changed so much over these last two years and I would relish updates from you as well.

Caitlin and I wish you the Happiest New Year—hoping that it's better for all of us.