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I was in LA having lunch with my old friend, Chris, who, after many false starts, was having a lot of success writing for film and television. I always like talking to Chris, whether things are going well for him or not, but I was glad to hear that after so many years several projects were coming to fruition at the same time. “It’s definitely a good time to be Chris Kelley,” he observed.
Somewhere in the middle of all his good news I started fretting to him about my publisher. The company that owned them had gone bankrupt, and there was much uncertainty among my fellow authors about what this meant for our books going forward. Would the publisher be bought? If it was bought, would the new company pay the royalties that were still owed? Would they continue to make the books available? The agent who had sold my book was advising me to get the rights back and self-publish it, which I did not want to do. And besides, how do you even get the rights back? I don’t usually complain to my friends, but once I opened that door, my worries tumbled out as if they’d been jammed in a closet.
“You know, Bill,” Chris said once I’d laid out my network of unanswered questions, “I don’t think I’d worry about it if I were you. I think it’ll probably just work itself out.”
Chris knows a lot about writing and the film and television industries, but very little about publishing. Yet hearing him, I felt calmed as if the head of Harper Collins himself had just told me everything would be fine.
It reminded of the one time I was able to give my father advice. My dad and I have a lot in common: we both like to teach, we both like games, and neither of us likes to be told what do to. In his retirement, he had immersed himself in a complex WW II simulation boardgame. He spent entire weekends playing just one game of it. He went to national tournaments. He read a newsletter about it. And then, one day, he realized he didn’t want to play it anymore. Suddenly he was looking at large swaths of time with nothing to focus on, nothing to analyze, nothing to get better at. He told me he was a bit worried for himself.
“Well, as long as I’ve known you,” I said, “you’ve always found something else to do, something else to be interested in. I have no doubt whatsoever you’ll do so again.”
And of course he did. Now he teaches ESL to Brown University graduate students, and he loves it. This didn’t surprise me, but what did surprise me was when I was thirty and I got a call from my younger brother, John, who told me he’d moving back to our native Providence after several years in Portland. He said he was going to save some money there and then move to New York. I thought he was crazy. A few things were starting to happen for him in Portland, and this felt like a step backwards to me. He’d get to Providence and waste away and then have to start all over again.
On that afternoon, however, unlike many other times, I chose to say nothing. I’d learned he wouldn’t take my advice if I told him not to go–he and I were enough alike in that way–but he would have to live with the burden of his big brother’s judgement. As it turns out, he did save some money, move to New York, where, after a short while, he found work as an editor at TV Land, where he’s been working ever since.
I rarely want to hear other people’s specific advice. It feels like they’re trying to write my books for me. I don’t write my books just to have them written; I write them because I enjoy the experience of writing them, of finding my way from beginning to end. That’s where the books I write change me. But I’m always to open to someone reminding me that everything will work out, that I have everything I need, that I don’t need to worry. I can’t be reminded of it often enough.
By the way, Penguin/Random House bought my publisher and will indeed pay all the back royalties. Things don’t always work out quite this neatly, but in my experience, they do always work out. In fact, I have to agree with my friend Chris about his life, though with this one caveat: it’s always a good time to be Chris Kelley, or Bill Kenower, or anyone. Sometimes you just have to wait a little find out why.
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