Writing Practice #7: Lily Meyer

Lily discusses how she divides her energy between fiction, translation, and criticism

Welcome back to Writing Practice!

Last week I had the privilege of chatting with novelist, translator, and critic Lily Meyer. I first learned about Lily’s writing after Eliza recommended her short story, Rochelle, to readers of this newsletter. Soon after, I started reading her sharp and honest criticism of the work of the biggest names in literature today, including Han Kang, Catherine Lacey, and Lydia Davis. She also dabbles a bit in nonfiction; I especially loved this equally hopeful and heartbreaking piece about DC (her hometown) following the inauguration this year.

I spoke to Lily about pitching projects of all kinds, her weekly schedule, paid leave as a freelancer, and the five (!!) books, including translations, that she has coming out over the next six months. She’s incredibly prolific, and yet speaks with an air of such grace and enthusiasm. I hope you’ll get a sense of that on the page.

As always, this transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tell me a bit about how all the pieces of your current work—fiction, translation, and criticism—came together?

I started out wanting to be a fiction writer. That was really the only thing I ever wanted to be. I went directly into a MFA program after I graduated from college. Only when I finished my MFA did I realize that I had truly no idea what I wanted to do for a job. I was not, especially employable.

So I got a job at a literary nonprofit that was part-time, and I was doing that and nannying and also working in the remaining hours that I could in independent bookstores. I was taking all of these galleys home, both from my job and mainly from the bookstore, and I realized that I could potentially pitch interviews with authors. I thought it would be a way to publish at least something and to make a little bit of extra money. This was ten, eleven years ago, and at that time you could make a little bit of money writing interviews. Now, unfortunately, that's really not the case at all. But I started pitching interviews, and I think I got reasonably good at it. I had editors who wanted to work with me repeatedly.

Once I had those editor relationships, I thought, okay, that must mean that somebody would trust me to write a book review. I was really lucky in that I had an introduction to Petra Mayer, who was the editor of NPR books. She was so wonderful and truly NPR books has not recovered from her really sad and sudden death a couple of years ago. But Petra let me start writing reviews for her. The more I did it, the more I found that I liked it, and I began to think about trying to be a book critic professionally. This was not strategic. Book critic is not a good, stable backup career.

At the same time, I was researching my novel Short War, which is set largely in Chile and Argentina and then in DC, which is where I live. And I was traveling to Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay whenever I could do research. When I was in a bookstore in Chile, I picked up this story collection called Little Bird (in English). It didn't have anything to do with what I was writing, but it was so singular. The voice was so unusual that I had to buy it, and once I had bought it, I had to read it all. And then once I had read it all, I immediately thought: I have to translate this book.

I studied Spanish for a long time and I really worked to keep it up both because I like being able to speak two languages, but also when I was working on Short War I was really doing a lot of research in Spanish, so I needed it. And I had always had a vague idea that I would like to translate someday as an artistic practice. Then when I read Little Bird, it changed from an idea I had to a pressing need. I got in touch with the Chilean editor of the book, who put me in touch with Claudia, who agreed to let me translate the book. Through that, I learned how to translate. I also began to pitch a lot of reviews of translated literature.

In that sense, the translation and criticism parts of my career were intertwined very early on, and for a long time, I was primarily a translation critic. It was really what I was known for. There was, I think, a moment when I was reviewing more translated literature than anybody else in the United States, which is an indictment of the system. It's very difficult to place reviews of translated books. And as a result, freelancers either don't try or fail when we do try. That’s where I got whatever reputation I have as a critic, but I have written about translation less and less in recent years because I write for larger outlets that pay more. Those outlets are much less likely to take a review of a transmission.

Meanwhile, my fiction career sort of progressed as fiction careers do—with a lot of luck. I published a bunch of short stories. I published a debut novel, and my second novel is coming out in February. I made a leap from indie press to big five, which is something that I feel mixed about but certainly also something I wanted for my own financial stability and to reach readers.

Was Short War the project that you were working on during your MFA?

The project that I worked on during my MFA began as my undergrad thesis which I then turned into a full novel. At the same time, I had the idea for what became Short War. There were a lot of different attempts and iterations before I landed on the book as it was published.

I couldn't really begin to write Short War in a meaningful way then, because I did my MFA in England and I couldn’t do the research that I needed to do. I was doing character sketches and otherwise sort of noodling with things that I thought might become it, but I wasn't truly writing it. Then I came back to the US, started working, got an agent. She tried to sell that other book, and did not, which at the time was really devastating for me and now is something that I'm grateful for.

During that pitching process, I began writing Short War which took me just under ten years to complete. In that time, I went back and got a PhD and I wrote all of those short stories that I mentioned.

What was the motivation for the PhD?

I had just gotten lost in the book. I had too many things that I was trying to say, and I didn't know how to say them anymore. And also, at that point, I was working full time as one of the three-person events team at Politics and Prose, which is DC's biggest bookstore. I loved that job and I was working really hard while also freelancing and also working on Short War. After about two years of that, I decided to try freelancing full time, but with the idea that I was going to do it for a year and then go get a PhD.

My friend described [the PhD] as me putting myself in storage. And that was completely right. First of all, I wanted healthcare. But also, I just wanted to have a period in my life where I could really, really concentrate on writing my books.

In terms of the three pieces of your writing life we’ve been discussing, how do you fit each into a given week?

I try to keep it as consistent as possible. The biggest variable is translation. In general, I write fiction every morning. I do criticism every afternoon, which can be writing a review, editing a review, pitching, or all of the admin that comes with being a freelancer. I have considered tracking how much time I spend asking people who owe me money to pay me, looking at how much money I'm currently on track to make for the next months, and figuring out where more can come from. I do that work always in the afternoon.

If I have a translation project going—which over the last 12 months I have at every point been on deadline—I give myself breaks between reviews such that I can do bits of translation in the afternoons for a couple weeks. I just turned in the last of those, and I'm relieved that I don't have another one coming up at the moment. Fitting that much translation in my schedule as a critic has been pretty tricky and has often led to my trying to do all three things in one day, which is too much.

Do you have a set schedule for the fiction?

It depends on how I’m feeling. I’m very sad as I can't let myself do more than an hour, but today I could only let myself do an hour. It happens. In an ideal world, I'm writing fiction from when I drop my daughter at daycare to when I get too hungry and have to eat lunch.

Is one of the three pieces of your freelance career more lucrative than the others?

My criticism is stable. I write consistently enough for The Atlantic that I can sort of work from there. Like if I'm going to write twelve to fourteen Atlantic pieces this year, I know how much I have to fill in to make the rest from the other things. The advance from my second novel is being paid in quarters, and it's enough that if that's a third of my income for the next four years, I will be fine.

Translation is sort of the shakiest. Translating four books in a year was a lot. I would prefer not to do that again so I can concentrate on being choosy in a way that makes sense. I've loved everything that I've worked on so far, but I want to keep that true. So I think in the future, perhaps translation will not be a third of my income anymore, and I'll do more criticism. It’s obviously my hope to continue making as much money as possible for my fiction.

It sounds like you’ve compressed a lot into a short amount of time.

Yes, the last couple of years have been pretty intense, partly because I also have two-year-old.

Did you take leave when you had your daughter? What were the mechanics of that as a freelancer?

DC has a paid family leave program that if you are self employed, or if you have an employer that doesn't offer family leave, you can pay into it. It's a voluntary tax program that you sign up for. So I had paid parental leave as a freelancer through that program, and I took twelve weeks. Then I had a transitioning back period where I was working part time. My dad, who was retired, came over and watched my baby while I was pitching and getting myself going again. My friends who are freelancers with kids in other places, really struggled.

Do you have set weekly hours now that follow the day care schedule?

My rule for myself, even the first time I went freelance before grad school, has always been that if my husband is working, I'm working. If he's not working, I'm not. That's a little dishonest, because it doesn't count the time that I spend reading books to review. I do that at night. But otherwise I have a work day like a normal person.

I used to write fiction on the weekends, until I was pregnant as a way to train myself out of it. I certainly don't do it now.

You already talked about how you formed relationships with editors for criticism early on, but what was your process for getting an agent for fiction and translation?

For fiction, I was really lucky. I was introduced to my agent when I finished my MFA by a DC writer who was, at that time, a client of hers. She's been my agent for 12 years now. And she's wonderful. She is patient. She has stuck by me. I'm really lucky that she's an editing agent, so she's really one of my most important readers, one of my most important sources of feedback.

So she sells my books, but she does not pitch my translations. Those I either pitch myself or the editors come to me. However, I always ask her to do my contracts, and she, in every case, has gotten me better terms. In some cases, the publisher wasn't planning to offer me royalties, and she's gotten me royalties.

What are you working on next?

The big thing is that my next novel, The End of Romance, will be out in February, and people can pre order it now. And also, my rush of translations. One of them just came out. It's a collection of essays by a Cuban journalist named Abraham Jimenez Enoa. The next one, The Shy Assassin, is especially important to me. I wanted to translate it for many years before I got to and it's really influenced me. I think that one comes out in November. And then the third one, which is a coming of age novel by a Bolivian writer named Rodrigo Hasbún, will be out in February on the heels of my own novel. I have a lot of things, a lot of things entering the world. Then the fourth book is about the neuroscience of pregnancies. That one's still in edit, so it won't be out for a little while longer.

Good Content by Lily

• Zadie Smith’s new essay collection, Dead and Alive, which is out in October

• Jessica Kane’s novel Fonseca, about the writer Penelope Fitzgerald

• The Freelance Solidarity Project (the digital arm of the National Writers Union). I started a culture critics working group, and we do a lot to raise awareness of how bad rates are and how bad conditions are for freelancers. We also give freelancers (including ourselves) the tools to ask for better, and that is really meaningful to me. I really recommend it.