I’ll spend an hour on stage sharing the stories of the factory workers and farmers I’ve met on my travels. Then the question always comes:
“What’s your next project?”
It’s a legitimate question. It’s one that I might ask an author after hearing them speak. But here’s the thing: for me, there is no next project. I feel that having a “next project” implies that I write a book, dust off my hands, and turn my back on that book to focus on the next shiny thing.
I can’t do that. I write about real people with real lives and real families. People who’ve shared their stories with me so I could share them with others.
Some of these stories I’ve told hundreds of times over the last seven years. I honestly can’t believe I’m not sick of telling some of them. But I’m not.
This past fall I was telling Arifa’s story at a library. Arifa, a single mother in Bangladesh who supports her three kids as a garment worker, is the first person I met on the adventure that became WEARING. I’ve probably shared her story more than any other. As I talked, I felt her story inside of me. Like I could point to where it existed in my gut and trace its path from my gut, to my heart, and out of my mouth. I could feel every word.
Some stories I feel more than others, and sometimes one story will hit me harder one day than the next. That night at the library I was surprised at how hard Arifa’s hit me after all that time.
I feel every story.
Currently the story that is most likely to get stuck in my throat is Solo’s. Solo is the slave I met on a cocoa farm in Ivory Coast.
These stories live inside of me, and the responsibility to share them in a truthful and impactful way weighs on me. They have changed the way I see the world, the way I shop, the way I live my life, the way we are raising our kids. They’ve changed everything.
I will NEVER turn my back on the stories of the people I write about. I will never stop sharing them. As long as folks keep asking me to share them, I will.
I hear other authors talk about being sick of a project and wanting to move on to the next one before the first even comes out. I just can’t do that. I’m not saying that I’m better than these authors or that they are right and I am wrong. I’m not even saying that my work has a higher calling than a work of fiction.
But I do wonder: Do fiction writers feel as much responsibility to their characters as I do to the people I write about? How about a memoirist, or a cookbook author feels? Maybe a biographer feels more. Maybe a self-help author feels more to their readers than I do.
It’s the nature of the publishing business to focus on what’s next. “Publishing Window” is a term that gets thrown around some, referring to the fact that most books sell 90% of the copies (I made that up) they are going to sell within three months of publication. After that, publishers and often authors move onto “next projects.” A book is either a success or failure.
In that sense WEARING was a failure. Forget the first three months, I think it sold 3,000 copies the first year. But every year after that it sold more copies than the previous year. Most books show a decrescendo of sales, but WEARING and now EATING have shown a crescendo of sales.
WEARING has sold more copies than some NY Times bestsellers. That’s because I play the long game. I blog about the stories. I Skype with students. I talk at high schools, libraries, conferences, and colleges. I look for ways to spread the stories. I work to spread them. I’m not sick of the stories or ready to move on from them; I carry them everywhere I go, and I can’t put them down. I’ve also been fortunate to have a publisher (Wiley) who has been willing to play the long game as well, and to work with Keppler Speakers, who has been a critical partner in helping me spread my stories. But more than a publisher and more than a speakers bureau, readers, students, professors, and common reading committees have helped make the stories spread.
Yes, there will be other projects, and more stories, but they will all be a continuation of my larger mission to connect people through stories to strengthen community (I stole that from the Facing Project) and to make people give a damn.
There is no next project. There is just more work to do.
PS- I just got an awesome email from a professor that has used both of my books and who invited me to speak at her school this past spring. It read:
Yours is very good work, and it matters. A lot. Keep it up.
That is awesome to hear. And I share it not to brag or to humble brag, but I 100% agree with her, and I hope that whatever your work is that you feel it is good work and that it matters a lot. Please feel free to share your important work in the comments.
Keep it up.
