A quick note…
Thank you so much to everyone who pre-ordered Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here last week! This is a gorgeous little book and I can’t wait to send it off to you on Thursday!
Pre-orders are still open, and more information about the book can be found below today’s essay.
The Book I Never Published
In 2019, things were falling apart, so I decided to write a novel about a trans man who tries to get pregnant and then things fall apart for him. His name was James.
I signed up for Ariel Gore’s manuscript writing workshop and worked on it all summer. On Saturday mornings, I’d work on it in the coffee shop. Sunday afternoons, sometimes in a bar. I worked on it on the couch and at my desk. I thought about it at work and while taking the subway.
I visualized the cover of the book, visualized it published. It had a beginning, middle, and end. I revised, added more, read books on plot structure. I workshopped it with Sammi LaBue at Fledgling Writers Workshop. I laid the chapters out on the floor during a stay at the Millay Colony and assigned each one a tarot card. I made a spreadsheet showing the plot elements associated with each scene.
I believed in this novel.
I thought the “point” was to finish the novel, get it published. But that turned out not to be the point.
Looking back on this novel, I find it surprising that I needed to hide behind “James,” yet this was the bravest I was able to be at that time. Writing the novel, I captured details of my own fertility experience that I—thankfully—no longer recall as vividly. Writing the novel, I learned to show up and write.
This week I received the proof copy of Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here. I opted for a physical, not digital, proof because I saw the preorders coming in and I wanted to make sure the physical copy was exactly as I intended. It was.
The beauty of publishing your work yourself is that every choice is yours. I paid extra for the pages to be cream-colored, not white, for the cover to be a little thicker with a matte finish called “silk laminate.” Each of these choices had the exact effect I’d intended.
It was strangely emotional to hold the physical copy in my hands.
I wanted a baby and it didn’t happen for me.
I think I was afraid I’d want a book and it wouldn’t happen for me either. That I’d pour energy and hope and time and money into a dream I wanted with my whole heart and be left with hands full of nothing at the end of it. That’s always the fear with dreams, I suppose.
It’s interesting that I’m thinking about the James novel this morning. That novel was my first big dream as a writer, and now it sits comfortably on my hard drive and that feels fine to me. What I thought that novel was “for” and what it turned out to be “for” were two different things.
I remember in high school, a friend came to me very excited about a word she had just learned. Teleological. “It’s when you explain something in terms of how it ended up working out,” she said. We were fascinated by this idea.
It’s scary to want something you’re not sure you can have. Scarier to admit that you want it.
And what happens when what you want changes?
When you wanted something, thinking it would serve a certain purpose in your life, then grow to realize the story was different all along?
Today, I’m feeling grateful to James, a fictional character that lived intimately in my heart and mind for two years, an invented person who is both me and not-me, a dream who ended up being a stepping stone to other dreams. James doesn’t “exist” in most senses of that word, and yet it’s true that I wouldn’t be the writer I am today—the person I am today—without him.
Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here
Essay collection now available for pre-order!
What happens when a trans man, devastated by infertility, moves to a small town to start over and immediately gets his period back?
A sumptuous collection of thirteen short essays, presented with art from Shea in the Catskills.
"In this lyrical collection, Finn Schubert explores the liminal spaces between urban and rural, past and present, maleness and menstrual blood, what's here and what's missing. Read it and keep it in your heart."
—Ariel Gore, author of We Were Witches
So appreciate your clarity and transparancy of heart & mind. Looking forward to reading your book! Your self-publishing expereince is inspiring!
Your writing is continually inspiring to me. Roman à clef is a super important novelistic genre and pathway to exploring autobiography in ways that only fictional recasting can. I feel humbled and blessed to be a witness to James' creation and development! 💕