I never expected any sort of success.

Harper Lee on what you know before you’re published. (The Commonplace Book Project)

The Commonplace Book Project is a daily post based on Ray Bradbury’s advice to aspiring writers: read a poem, a short story, and an essay every day for 1000 days. These posts start with a quote and go wherever the rabbit hole leads. Follow The 1000 Day MFA publication so you don’t miss a thing.

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“I never expected any sort of success with ‘Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.” — Harper Lee in an interview with Roy Newquist.

I love everything about To Kill a Mockingbird. Everything. I have ever since I was twelve years old. I wanted to read important books that summer. I was going into the eighth grade and important to me then meant books that a high school English teacher would assign.

My dog’s name is Maybelline Scout. The little sister in my new book is named Harper. I named my dog on purpose, but the little girl’s name in my book just kind of happened.

It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when no one knew that To Kill a Mockingbird would be special. But there was. There always is.

Because nobody knows anything at first. You can think it. Have a gut instinct. Surely someone must have about Harper Lee’s book. Maybe Truman Capote did — he was her best friend. Maybe her publisher did, I don’t know.

But they didn’t know.

I’m reading William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade right now and I came across this:

But did you know that Raiders of the Lost Ark was offered to every single studio in town — — and they all turned it down? All except Paramount. Why did Paramount say yes? Because nobody knows anything. And why did all the studios say no? Because nobody knows anything. And why did Universal, the mightiest studio of all, pass on Star Wars, a decision that may just cost them, when all the sequels and spinoffs and toy money and book money and video-game money are totaled, over a billion dollar? Because nobody, nobody — not now, not ever — knows the least goddamn thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office.

And then he continues to say that Columbia spent a million dollars developing E.T. and then — let it go. They didn’t think there was a broad enough audience for it. Guess who picked it up. Right. Universal.

The book was published in 1983. One of the best parts about reading it is remembering how good movies were then.

Anyway. His point is that nobody knows anything when it comes to making movies. And guess what?

Nobody knows anything when it comes to book publishing either.

That’s kind of freeing, don’t you think?

You don’t have to follow trends. In fact, it’s not a good idea to even try. Publishing is so glacially slow. By the time a trend makes its way to you, it’s over as far as agents and publishers are concerned.

You don’t have to worry about whether or not a publisher or agent will want you book. Or, if they do want it, whether or not readers will fall for it. Because that has nothing to do with you. There’s literally nothing you can do to influence it.

All you can do is write the best book you can. Learn how to write well. And keep doing those too things. Over and over. That’s what’s in your control. None of the rest is.

Here’s that interview the top quote came from. It’s the only recorded interview that Harper Lee gave about To Kill a Mockingbird.

If you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird, please fix that. You can thank me later. If you have read it, read it again. I think I’ll read it again this year myself.

And of course, the movie is as much of a classic as the book is. I watched it as I wrote this post. It never gets old.

In 2015 a second book by Lee was released. Go Set a Watchman was a preliminary version of what became To Kill a Mockingbird. I haven’t been able to make myself read it. Maybe I will some day. I don’t know.

I loved this article about Lee’s relationship with her editor.

Today’s Poem:

The Realists William Butler Yeats

HOPE that you may understand! What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live That had gone With the dragons?

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.