How My Book Came To Be #2: Emily J. Smith

On writing and publishing my debut novel, 'Nothing Serious,' a 30-something coming-of-age thriller about a woman untangling from internalized misogyny.

Emily J. Smith at work.

I started writing this book because I couldn’t for the life of me publish the first book I wrote. My first novel was about a woman in tech who, despite her ambitions, finds herself at 35 single, childless and unhappy with her career. But her life changes when she meets an older woman writer, prompting a process of self-discovery in which she starts to understand herself and her wants outside of other people’s expectations, untangling from a lifetime of internalized misogyny. The book was almost laughably autobiographical.

Like that protagonist, I do not have a background in writing. I studied electrical and computer engineering in college, choosing a major that would ensure a steady income, enough money to repay my loans, and be an anchor for my financially unstable parents. It wasn’t until my 30s, loans repaid and secure in my ability to earn a living, that I began asking myself what I actually wanted to do, money aside, which was when I discovered writing.

I learned how to write by working on that first novel. Writing that story—my story—felt unbearably urgent, which allowed me to allocate every speck of spare time I had for years, attending classes, submitting to workshops, obsessively reading novels to learn how the hell to write one. But eventually you have to admit when something’s not working, and after my hundredth rejection, it was hard to deny. All the agents I engaged with had the same feedback: the writing was strong but it needed more plot.

I do not have a background in writing. I studied electrical and computer engineering in college, choosing a major that would ensure a steady income, enough money to repay my loans, and be an anchor for my financially unstable parents. It wasn’t until my 30s, loans repaid and secure in my ability to earn a living, that I began asking myself what I actually wanted to do, money aside, which was when I discovered writing.

Plot had never interested me. I prefer winding, internal narratives, sitting inside the head of someone like Sheila Heti and Karl Ove Knausgaard, but with two dozen agents all saying the same thing, it felt wise to listen. I gave myself the challenge of writing a novel with a propulsive plot—specifically a murder, the juiciest plot I could think of. The prompt bumbled around in my head for a few months before the idea came, and when it did, it came in full.

Similar to my first book, the seed of Nothing Serious was inspired by life. I was in the process of freezing my eggs—dutifully stabbing myself in the gut each night—but on the last day the shot had to be administered by someone else, so a dear friend (a man) jumped at the chance to help. This man happens to be a very wealthy tech bro and, at the time, was simultaneously dating multiple women. When I sat him down to watch the instructional videos, I noticed that instead of paying attention, he was swiping Tinder. I won’t go into detail because the scene is detailed in the book, but needless to say I was not happy. Here was a man who had consistently supported me in times of need, but his overconfidence, his disregard for the cost of the procedure and the risk of botching it, his bounty of Tinder matches—the ways in which life had seemingly “worked out” for him, while I felt miserable and alone—filled me with a distinct rage. If he were put on trial, I wondered, would part of me want to see him suffer?

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I wrote the first draft of Nothing Serious in three months. Back then, it was called “Crazy Single” because that was how I felt, the misery of dating apps pushing me to the brink. Part of what made it so quick to write was that I had broken my foot dancing with the aforementioned friend at his holiday party and was house ridden for months. Also, the protagonist and character journey was more or less the same as my first book, it was just couched in new circumstances. After some revisions, I queried a handful of agents to test the waters, but no one was interested. Then, I got distracted. I had been pitching a dating app concept to VCs (like I said, my background is in tech) and landed an investment to launch the company, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and a particularly rare one for women. I put the book away, embarrassed that I’d spent months writing something so gimmicky and plot-driven. I had no intention of going back to it.

I didn’t look at the book for three years—three years! But in 2022, I had to shut down my startup and was eager to get back to a writing project. I opened up Crazy Single, mostly to procrastinate working on a new project, and, wildly, found myself enjoying it. I sent pages to some friends as a gut check, and they responded positively. Meanwhile, in those three years, suspense as a genre had elevated in pop culture. The Undoing, White Lotus, and Promising Young Woman, had all recently come out and each reminded me very acutely of my own book. Seeing their success made me believe that I could create something with a juicy plot, yes, even a murder, but also depth and nuance, something I was proud of.

I gave myself a few months to revive the book, persisting on savings, before looking for a new job. Three years later, it was easy to spot where my rage had clouded the story and flattened the characters, where dialogue needed to be cut and a subplot flushed out. I began querying five months later and, this time, agents responded with interest. But no one bit. People loved the story but wanted a big, thriller-style ending, whereas my ending was (intentionally) more nuanced and open. After a few dozen rejections, I locked myself in a cabin for a few weeks and tried to do surgery on the book, making it more of a thriller with a who-dunnit ending. But I could feel, as I was writing, that I was making the book worse. The agents didn’t like it, either.

I didn’t look at the book for three years—three years!…In those three years, suspense as a genre had elevated in pop culture. The Undoing, White Lotus, and Promising Young Woman, had all recently come out and each reminded me very acutely of my own book. Seeing their success made me believe that I could create something with a juicy plot, yes, even a murder, but also depth and nuance, something I was proud of.

I felt defeated. I had spent almost a decade trying to write a book that I loved, yes, but that was also commercially viable, and I had failed. By that point, I’d started working at a full-time tech job again and had very little free time. The idea of starting over from scratch on another book felt impossible.

I got the email from my agent five months after I started querying, three months after I’d first emailed her (I had taken her silence as rejection). Apparently she loved the book, and crucially, she loved the ending. She offered a few notes that I addressed quickly. When you finally have someone invested in your work, your world changes. I had spent so many years alone with my Word Docs, I’d reached a point where I was so full of shame and rejection I could not bring myself to look at the pages. To finally have someone taking my work as seriously as I did, to see a crack of light at the end of the publishing tunnel, felt like the strongest wind in the world at my back. Three months later, we went out to publishers, and within a few weeks we got an offer.

If this book hadn’t worked out, I think it would have been a long time until I rallied the energy and fought off the shame enough to try again. The motivation required to write a novel with absolutely no guarantees of publishing (rather the opposite; the odds are unbelievably low) takes a level of psychosis that is hard to maintain while also getting by in modern society. But you have to live in that liminal space of suspended belief for as long as you can, trusting your instincts as a writer while keeping your ears open to the reader. It’s a complex and magical balance, finding the story that drives you to the page, unable to let it go, then crafting it in such a way that, hopefully, has the same effect on your reader.

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Check out the whole “How My Book Came to Be” series.