Take The Opportunities That Are There For You: An interview with Jennifer Baker
The Hustle co-curator Jennilie Brewster talks with writer, editor and podcaster Jennifer Baker about her day job, literary activism, questioning everything, creating a support system of trustworthy people, and paying attention to what helps a writer succeed and what gets in the way.
Their conversation took place on November 12th, 2015.
Brewster: Let’s start with where we are?
Baker: We’re at Teachers College Press. That’s my job. That’s the job that pays me.
Brewster: What happens at Teachers College Press?
Baker: We do professional graduate texts for all aspects of education: teaching, administration, social policy, activism in education, literacy, Common Core books. Some of them might be textbooks, but they’re not like your big-ass 2,000 page global story.
Brewster: What do you do for Teachers College Press?
Baker: I’m a production editor, so I typeset books. I get them copyedited, proofread, get the index, work with a cover designer. I guess I’m the author’s therapist before the book goes to print.
Brewster: That sounds like a pretty cool job.
Baker: It is pretty cool. I like typesetting. Typesetting is the fun part.
Brewster: Tell me about typesetting.
Baker: Typesetting is basically you take what we all work on as writers, that double-spaced clean Word file, you style it in Word, give it certain fonts, page breaks, a certain kind of layout, create chapter heads and those things. Then you plug it into InDesign. That’s when you make it pretty, add the pictures or graphics. That final product is a PDF file made in InDesign.
Brewster: I recently tried playing around with InDesign. And I feel like it’s a labyrinth. All those Adobe programs are so vast.
Baker: There’s a lot going on. It’s just really knowing how do to it, because it’d be like, “I just want to super-impose this on this. That’s all I want to do,” and it’s not hard. You’re like, “What are the buttons that do this?” Then you figure it out and it’s done in three steps, but if you don’t know what button does it, then you’re kind of screwed. You just sit there staring at it.
Brewster: I feel like there’s a metaphor there for writing.
Baker: Sure. You’re just staring at it.
Brewster: In addition to your job here, you got a few other things going on, other than writing.
Baker: Yeah, unpaid things.
Brewster: What is the center of your life?
Baker: Definitely writing. Even though it’s not what I spend the most time on, sadly, and this is where I’m going to be pulling back in 2016. But I do my podcast, the Minorities in Publishing Podcast ( @minoritiesinpublishing). Episodes are twice a month. I interview people from marginalized cultures and backgrounds, who are in the book publishing industry or correlate to the industry. I talk to them about their experiences, why there’s such a lack of diversity and try to get inspiration for people who want to work in book publishing, or aspiring artists.
Then I volunteer with We Need Diverse Books ( @weneeddiversebooks ) the non-profit that was that big hashtag in 2014 thanks to BookCon not having much if any diversity on their panels. So the organization started as an online campaign and is now a nonprofit. I’ve been with them for more than a year.
Brewster: What do you do for them?
Baker: I manage the social media team. I also share duties on the Twitter account. I’m on the executive board and I help organize panels.
Brewster: When do you write?
Baker: For @nanowrimo [National Novel Writing Month], I’ve been writing probably an hour a day. And I just came back from a trip, which was kind of a self-made residency. A friend let me house-sit her place in San Jose while she and her husband went to Cuba. For two and a half weeks, I got to not work and just write. Actually, that’s a lie. And this is where I need to cut back on my volunteer work because that kept seeping in. I managed my time well for the most part, but admittedly, I could have managed it better coming into the trip because I did have to do podcast editing while I was there and some recording too. That took up hours. But for the most part I got a lot done, not everything I wanted to but that’s also because I was blocked. Literally, like we were saying, staring at the screen, “I don’t know how to fix this, so I’m just going to work on something else.”
Brewster: Is that what you do—pivot when that happens?
Baker: Yes, I’ll work on another project. You know Ron Carlson? He’s written a few books. I saw him at a writers’ conference, and he said, “Stay in the room.” Actually, what he said was make your characters stay in the room. It’s easy to just say, “Okay, they’re in this tense moment,” and then, “Okay, I’m going to have them leave the room.” He’s like, “No, make your characters stay in the room.” I also took that for my own advice. I try not to say, “Well, screw it. I’m going to do spreadsheets and organize this panel now.” What I try to do is stay in the writing sphere.
With my collection, it’s a novel in stories, so to speak, so they’re different POVs. It’s easy to leave one POV and switch to another. Rather than, “Okay, I have to write Kayla’s story right now,” and I don’t know how, I’ll write her brother Calvin’s story, because I have more hold on his voice right now.
Brewster: That seems like a very important tool to have within your writing practice, different points of entry. If you hit a roadblock in one, you can shift. Which connects with what I know about the brain being able to only focus on one thing for a certain amount of time.
Baker: Right, and social media kind of sucks in that way too—and I like social media and I’m good at it—but it shortens that time span, where you’re thinking, “I just don’t want to do this. So I’m going to go on Facebook and see how many people respond to this post.” That kind of instant interactivity can be a way to distract yourself, or maybe it invigorates you. But I think it’s important to have multiple projects so you can change directions and still be writing.
Brewster: Have you always been a fiction writer?
Baker: Primarily. I’ve done and still do reviews, articles, blog posts, interviews. And now I’m doing more personal essays, which is a big, big deal, because that’s definitely harder, I think, because it’s easy to make yourself the victim. So in these stories, it’s looking at what I did that I could’ve done better. And what did someone else do in the situation, how that affects me, but not being, “Well, I went on this date, and the guy was a dick. Obviously I’m perfect, and he’s just got issues.” Because no, it’s not that simple. It’s not interesting. It’s not truthful. It’s not layered. It’s not nuanced.
Brewster: Do you think the reason you’re moving more into this territory in your writing now is that you’ve had enough life experience that you’re able to take that close look inside?
Baker: Sure. I always say about my collection, which is heavily influenced by my life, the 27-year-old me could not finish this book. The 34, maybe 35, 36-year-old me will be the one to finish it, but the 27-year-old me who was doing everything she thought she was supposed to in life: You get married, you go to school, you go to grad school you get apartments. She just did those things. Me now is a person who questions everything. I know, as I’ve been told, it can be off-putting, because it puts people on the defensive when I say, “Well, if we do this, what does X, Y and Z mean?” People are like, “Well, it feels like you’re questioning me.” I’m not questioning you. I’m asking a question. But I need to know information rather than taking everything blindly. And getting divorced, going through debt, going through other difficult things. There’s more life experience. I can speak from a place of knowledge and reflection.
As women, I feel like, we’re so, “I just want to be likable.” That’s why at @bindercon , Jenny Lumet and everyone’s saying, “Empower yourself. You have the right to do this. Don’t wait for permission.”
We hold so much fear of what are people going to think. Am I going to get fired? I’m not saying throw chairs if someone pisses you off. But you reserve yourself so much, especially as women.
Brewster: It’s funny how sometimes when the thing we’re afraid of the most happens, it’s a relief because then we don’t have to be afraid of it anymore.
Baker: Shonda Rhimes said the same thing in her book that just came out, Year of Yes. She said she kept saying no to things because they scared her. Then when she would do things, she said, “Oh, I didn’t die after making that speech in front of 10,000 people. I didn’t die after being a guest star on Mindy Kaling. I didn’t die ...” She really pathologically thought bad things were going to happen if she did these things. Then after she did them, she said, “Oh, okay. I’m fine. Maybe I can keep doing this.”
Brewster: Do you have a handful of people whose writing you support and who support you, people who you’re exchanging work with?
Baker: Yes. There’s Ennis from grad school. He and I keep in touch. That’s grad school pluck. Then my friend Kim, who I met at the Pan-African Literary Forum, a retreat in Africa. Pluck that. Chelsea I also met at the same place, but she’s in Baltimore now with two kids. She’s in my orbit but not as frequent because of those life differences. You got that. I did several writers’ conferences so I met people there and we keep in touch. You pluck people from that. From Binders there’s one or two people. And from residencies.
My work is precious to me. I only want to share it with people I know who are going to help me with it. Because I’ve met so many people who are like, “I’m so excited to meet you. I’m so excited about your work.” Don’t you know? I only hear from them when they need something, so I don’t go to them. Not because I wouldn’t want their help, just because I don’t trust them.
I say find the people where you are. Take the opportunities that are there for you. Maybe you’ll meet someone. Maybe they’ll be genuine. Because I went to those writers’ conferences and residencies for me. I didn’t go to make connections. I went because I was like, “I need feedback on this. I want to go here.” Or I liked the instructor and that’s why I went. Then if you find a connection, you’ll keep the connection, because they believe in you. You believe in them. You’re both serious about writing. You both have the same kind of work ethic.
Brewster: I think we’ll wrap up talking about goals. I always have short term and long term goals. Most of the time I just move closer to them. I know some people have a word count they try and hit each day. Or, even thinking about this year, you’ve got two projects, the collection you’re working on and the YA novel you’ve finished. Are you like, “I’m going to send this out to agents?”
Baker: I sent it out already. Then I took a break. Now I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to do it again, maybe next year.” I don’t set daily goals. I do monthly. Mostly it gets done, but then freelance stuff comes up and it’s like, “Well, there goes that. This pays me so I’m going to do it.” I live by my calendar. If I have an article due on the 15th, I have to get that done. Maybe I can squeeze in an hour of my own writing time. I also usually make a big year list that seems feasible to do in 12 months.
Brewster: We’re coming to the end of 2015. Do you know what your goals were?
Baker: I do and I know I didn’t do a lot of them, sadly. I did do some I was really shocked about.
Brewster: What did you do?
Baker: I got readings. I was like, “Do at least three readings.” I did six.
Baker: Then it was like, “Finish this collection.” Mentally, though, I wasn’t ready. There’s more work to be done. There’s also a new YA I wanted to finish this year. And maybe I will, I have another month and a half. Get more publications, which did and didn’t happen. It happened more in an article freelance way than story publications in lit mags. But also I didn’t submit as much as I wanted to.
As I start to make a new list I’ll look at this year’s and be like, “Well, I didn’t do that so move it to 2016.” Then I’ll think about what kept me from doing it. Most of the time I just wasn’t mentally ready because when it comes to the work itself, I’m very methodical and very into it. Some things will take me two years. A story that is 10 pages can take me two years.
Brewster: I totally understand.
Baker: This collection is taking me seven years and the YA I finished took two years. This new YA may take two and a half. I want to finish it this year. But I need to make time to finish it. With the collection I sat there and I was working on it, but it just wasn’t there. With the new YA, I didn’t even look at it for nine months. Those are two very different reasons. In the case of this one where you didn’t even look at it, that’s on you. That’s why it didn’t get done.
Jennifer Baker is an editor, writer of fiction & nonfiction, creator of the Minorities in Publishing podcast, and head of festivals and social media for the non-profit We Need Diverse Books. Her work has been in Poets & Writers Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Boston Literary Magazine, Newtown Literary Review, and has a story in The Female Complaint (2015) anthology from Shade Mountain Press. She’s at work on a linked anthology following an interracial family in Long Island, NY and a new YA novel about an incarcerated teen.