Interview: Elizabeth Merrick

On days when I wonder whether I'll make it as a writer (whatever that means), I'm inspired to read about folks like Elizabeth Merrick, who just forge their own way, without waiting for anyone to come and hand it to them.

When agents told Merrick that her first novel, Girly wasn't commercial enough to publish, she created a publishing company and started marketing the book herself. She holds workshops for writers (started in her living room), and runs a reading series called Grace, named after her grandmother. This girl is a real go-getter.

I got this apartment that was a little bigger and I couldn’t quite afford it and my friend Nathalie said, you should teach ballet classes in this enormous living room! And I got sort of desperate and worn out from copyediting so I ended up, what the hell, starting writing classes by advertising on Craigslist. Forget Jesus—Craigslist is magic. Now it’s mostly word of mouth, and the classes are generally full each round, and I’ve moved the intro course into a public classroom space. The most amazing beings show up in my living room every week—it’s such a huge gift. I have this thriving, not-snobby, passionate, fun, hilarious, hard-working, tight-knit literary community bringing beauty into the world. In my house, every week! It didn’t exist before for me, really—I was a bit sad not to have a literary community, but nothing out there appealed—I didn’t quite have one even in grad school. Now there’s this whole crew making such gorgeous books all around me—it is an honor to be involved with my students. It’s the thing in my life I feel luckiest about in addition to my family. I look back and I see: my god, I would have been so grouchy if I had gotten some big late-nineties book advance and hidden away protecting my writing time a few more years. The way things played out, this lovely community was born. My students inspire me and crack me up every single week and their books are going to floor you, just wait.

Gothamist has a good juicy interview with Merrick (where I got that quotation), and there's another one on Gina Frangello's Other Voices Blog.

Here's to finding your own "thriving, not-snobby, passionate, fun, hilarious, hard-working, tight-knit literary community." Sounds heavenly.