Giving Birth to My Book

by Jennifer Grant

I keep getting asked by friends: Is it like giving birth?

The question doesn’t refer to bringing a child into the family by adoption, as my husband and I did eight years ago. People used to ask me questions like that, but no one who knows me asks about adoption much anymore – especially since my book on adopting my daughter Mia has been published.

No, when people ask me if “it’s” like giving birth, they mean “Is writing a book like giving birth?” My first instinct is to say “No, no, no, it’s nothing like bringing a baby into the world. It’s just a book, for crying out loud, not a human being.”

But, on reflection, I must admit there are similarities.

From the moment I signed my contract with Thomas Nelson publishers in the summer of 2010, the book began to grow, secretly, in my mind. It was assigned a due date and a date of publication. The editorial team and I began to exchange emails about what to call it. The title was very important to me. What name would we give it?

As I sat in the public library, drowning out the chatter around me by blasting Gabriel Fauré through my headphones, I tapped away. One idea split into two. The two evolved into a theme. The book began to move on its own, take on its own life, and even kick a
bit. Sometimes I could catch glimpses of what it might look like, the way you can get a sense of your baby’s profile in ultrasound pictures.

Over the months, as I wrote Love You More, my thinking about adoption, about what it means to tell a story, and about what I wanted to do in my writing life changed. I began to see new possibilities and embraced the longer form of what I was writing. This, this is what I’ve been longing to do.

As the manuscript moved toward that magic number of 65,000 words in the protective womb of my hard drive, I was preoccupied with its healthy development. Like a pregnant woman reading What to Expect books and making sure to swallow down her daily prenatal vitamins, I scoured whatever information I could on topics such as toddler adoption, the current state of adoption in Guatemala, and the plight of women like my daughter’s birthmother who choose to place their infants for adoption. I re-read old journal entries and emails I’d written during the adoption process. I talked to mothers who had adopted children with special needs.

What am I missing?

What facet of my own story have I left out?

What other stories should I tell to give a more complete picture of what it’s like to adopt?

How can I make this story more accurate, more thorough, more true?

In the final weeks of writing the book, I traveled by myself to Vermont from my home outside of Chicago. I made myself healthy meals. I went on long walks and took pictures of the stunning autumn leaves. I shuffled and reworked chapters. I wrote more than a dozen hours a day. And then, when the manuscript was due to the editor, I hit send and let it go. Of course, there were edits to do, facts to check, and the job of securing permissions and
endorsements, but last December, for all practical purposes, my work on the book itself was done.

Fast-forward several months to late July. Like the three children to whom I gave birth, my book arrived a few weeks early. Amazon.com had released it ahead of the official launch date. In some ways, this felt like the book’s real birthday.

Friends emailed me and posted happy messages on my Facebook wall:

My copy arrived today!

Amazon says it will be here in a few days!

Oooh. I can’t wait to read it!

I didn’t have much time to savor the moment privately. Like a brand-new mom, I had work to do, right from the start. But instead of nursing, changing diapers and burping a gassy newborn, I was immersed in the work of publicizing the book. As my friend and fellow Redbud colleague Caryn Rivadeneira wrote on this blog, “The hard work of promoting a book, of being ‘up,’ and ‘on’ makes me want to run into a cave somewhere and hide.” (Yes. Me, too.)

As parents feed the open mouth of the clothes washer, shocked at its insatiable hunger, authors of new books must feed ravenous social media monsters with Tweets, status updates, and blog posts. We must give radio interviews, even if – like me – we have only ever been on the other side of the microphone, asking the questions, reporting the stories.

But even if publicizing our books is hard for introverts like Caryn and me, like a breastfeeding mom getting over her self-consciousness and learning to nurse her baby in public, it’s in everyone’s best interest to, simply, carry on. And so we do, grateful for the opportunity to have engendered this new little thing into the world.

We know that there’s no sense in grumbling about it.