Building bridges, not walls
My grandmother’s house in Atlantic City… this white and pink house a block away from the ocean… you just went in and it felt like home. Whenever I’m thinking about writing or where I feel both safe and comfortable enough to create and imagine anything that’s possible… I go back to that place, that house… When I think about my literary home is that house that’s no longer there.
The one thing that I felt I handled well were all the rejections to the book, but I think the reason why was because I wasn’t yet seriously considering myself as a writer. Rejection felt inevitable.
With my poetry collection… I’d send it to places and they’d say it wasn’t quite right but then they would give some really nice feedback… and that’s what kept me going, because they actually took the time to tell me that so that probably is a good sign.
I’ll always remember the first time I submitted something to The New Yorker and it was rejected and I was like, yeah, I got a rejection from The New Yorker, that’s pretty cool, and I was talking to a really good friend of mine, who is not a writer, and she was like, oh my gosh, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna stop writing? And I’m like, what are you talking about? They don’t send rejections to everybody… this is great!
I really try to write first thing in the morning, before I do anything else, at least anything else that’s mental… because my brain is just too tired after a day of work.
In this extract, Inés discusses how to write in a langue that is not your mother tongue and how to find publishers in different countries.
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THE WANDERING BARD 