Does Status Matter for a Writer?

(Maybe, maybe not....)

I grew up in New York City with New York City-size dreams for my writing career. My first love was short stories and I hoped to be in The New Yorker, The Atlantic at the very least. I read both religiously—and later on journals like The Kenyon Review—for enjoyment and education because I had longed to be a writer from as far back as second grade. And when I had a book ready some day, surely it would end up with Knopf or Scribner’s. Back then before the waves of consolidation in the publishing industry, these were the most prestigious New York houses for literary fiction.

Surprise, surprise. My first short story was published in a women’s magazine: Redbook, which then had a reader base of 4.5 million. Between the prize money and what the magazine paid me, I earned somewhere between $7-8,000 in today’s money. Heady stuff for a graduate student finishing his MFA.

I received fan mail and queries from agents, but that publication did not lead to being published in any major literary magazines that I read on a regular basis. I think my subject matter, children of Holocaust survivors, was ahead of its time in the late 70s and early 80s. Remember: Art Spiegelman didn’t publish his book Maus until 1986.

I had a rough five years of what seemed like endless rejections, but I kept writing, reading, studying top magazines and journals that published fiction. A friend in the MFA program had sold a story to The Atlantic—why couldn’t I?

But moving to Michigan and letting go of those dreams, finding inspiration from the beauty of that state, and falling in love made me re-think this strategy. Given my subject matter of inter-generational trauma in families of Holocaust survivors, why not try Jewish publications? I did, and almost immediately found editors who were eager to publish me and who gave me top-notch editing. It was exciting and eventually led to a prize-winning collection of short stories with St. Martin’s Press.

So, no, I never published in the magazines or with the publishing houses that I thought mattered, but I’ve made a good living as an author and been recognized in many ways. I’ve been sent on international book tours; seen my work anthologized almost two dozen times; done sponsored book tours across the U.S., and even sold my present and future literary papers to a Michigan university’s Special Archives at their library.

I’ve also done hundreds of invited talks and readings (many with great speaking fees); been delighted to see my work appear in fifteen languages, most recently Mandarin and Romanian; and one of my books—from a small press—has sold over 300,000 copies. My work led to jobs as a book reviewer, one of which suprisingly brought me two paid Caribbean vacations.

It’s all followed a completely different trajectory than I expected, but a more than fulfilling one. Status, schmatus as my fellow New Yorkers might say. :-)

Lev Raphael is the son of immigrants and has been living his childhood dream of being an author. He’s published 27 books in a wide range of genres, seen his work widely taught in universities across the U.S. He mentors, coaches, and edits writers at https://www.writewithoutborder.com. Raphael is a big fan of the Oxford Comma but not an ideologue about it. :-)