The Rejection That Changed My Life by Jessica Bacal

Author:Jessica Bacal [Bacal, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

KERI SMITH

I have a manuscript that is sitting with my publisher. I submitted something that they did not expect and I have no idea if they’ll like it; I could be crushed tomorrow. Waiting is nail-biting. At the same time, I personally like the manuscript. And I know I’ll be okay because I have a lot of practice going through failure in small ways. That has led me to an acceptance of bigger things too.

The artist and writer Keri Smith, bestselling author of Wreck This Journal and How to Be an Explorer of the World, along with more than a dozen other books, is extremely humble for someone who’s kind of famous. Her humility was evident throughout our conversation, and especially in a vignette she told me as we were wrapping up.

Keri spends a lot of time reading and “making connections between different things that shouldn’t be connected,” so she needs access to libraries. When she moved to Northampton, she was excited to visit the Smith College library. However, she also has a constant nagging worry about not belonging in academic spaces. Anytime she enters an academic library, she says, “I always have this baggage where I don’t feel like I’m allowed to be there.”

Soon after moving, Keri biked over to the Smith College library to find out if she’d be able to borrow our books, even though she didn’t work at the college. The young woman working at the desk said she would need to talk to her boss and asked to see a driver’s license. When she looked at the license, she gasped. “Are you Keri Smith the writer?”

Smith told me, “I was like, ‘Well, yeah, I think . . . I don’t know if I’m the same one you’re thinking.’”

The woman at the desk said, “Oh my God, I’m such a huge fan of yours!” And this made Keri Smith happy, not specifically because the woman knew her name, but because “every time I would go in there, she’d be like, ‘Can I help you find stuff?’”

Keri’s humility, creativity, and curiosity about the world, along with her willingness—almost a determination—to make mistakes, all contribute to her work. Talking to her about it was a lot of fun.

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