I Blurb You, You Blurb Me, We're a Happy....

A Literal Literary Loser Looks For Laurels

Let’s talk about book blurbs.

We’ve all read them. I’ve made an impulsive purchase when I’ve seen that a favorite author said nice things about an author I wasn’t familiar with. I figured, if a writer whose books I like thinks this is a good book, then maybe I’ll think so, too.

I’ve written some. Since “The Nesting Dolls” came out in July of 2020, I’ve been asked to blurb books about Jews, books about immigrants, books about immigrant Jews, and book about Jews immigrating. Every book has something positive going for it, and I’ve made it my mission to find and highlight it.

For “The Nesting Dolls,” my publisher, HarperCollins, went about asking other writers on their list to blurb my book.

For the upcoming, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” my new publisher, History Through Fiction, asked me to be the one to request them.

I am a writer. I have been making a living writing since 1994. I can say with absolute certainty that the hardest writing I ever had to do was in reaching out to fellow writers asking if they would blurb my book.

It was an absolutely terrifying process. First of all, I didn’t want to bother them. I know how busy my fellow authors are. As Jack Nicholson so famously - and insanely - seethed in “The Shining,” “When you come in here and you hear me typing or whether you DON'T hear me typing, or whatever the F**K you hear me doing; when I'm in here, it means that I am working!”

The point is, writers are always working, whether they are actually sitting at their desks typing or not.

Writers are working on their own writing. Any time they take to read and blurb another author’s work is time they are not working on their own writing.

All of the writers that I was planning to approach about blurbing my book also had jobs outside of novel writing, and most of them had families and children to take care of, too. I didn’t want to be yet another obligation that elbowed my way onto their already overflowing plates.

But, if I’m honest, the real reason I was so petrified of asking for a blurb is because I was terrified they wouldn’t like my book.

After reading it and re-reading it and editing it and proofing it and proofing galleys of it and proofing the proofed galleys of it, *I* didn’t like my book! Heck, I couldn’t even follow what it was about anymore or what I was trying to say, or understand why anyone would give me money for it on the assumption that other people would give them even more money for it. (The fact that I hit this point on every single one of my previously published book at this time does not, in any way, reassure me that perhaps I am too close to the situation and no longer have a rational view of it.)

I deeply, deeply respect the opinions of all the women that I asked to blurb “My Mother’s Secret.” I admire their work. And I want them to like mine.

I know it’s childish. I know it’s neurotic. So what?

I suspect I’m not the only author who feels this way. For those of you who had to round up your own blurbs, how’d you get past the awkwardness and the guilt and the insecurity? (I am never awkward or guilt-ridden or insecure is AN answer, but I’m not sure if it’s one I believe….)