Happy Birthday, Playing Army!

In one of those tricks of time that feels like forever and also no time at all, Playing Army celebrated its first birthday this week. I’m supposed to say, “It’s been a wild ride!” But it hasn’t been, and I am weirdly grateful for that. So here, in no particular order, are some reflections on what a quiet year after publication has been like for me:

1. I hadn’t expected to feel so comfortable with such an intensely personal story being available to just anyone. Prior to Playing Army’s debut, I’d had short fiction pieces published that made me feel super exposed. I wanted to change my name, cower behind a smelly dumpster, never leave the house or at the very least, not make eye contact with anyone who read my work. And the stories weren’t even true! But they contained pieces of my soul and that’s what had me in a vulnerable crouch. Maybe people—other military women, especially—would read these pieces and grind them under their boot heels, and that would have hurt. So I thought I’d feel something similar with the release of a whole-ass novel. Instead, and surprisingly, I’m fine. I wrote the story I wanted to write. It says what I wanted to say and I’m at peace with it being in the world. That’s a thing no one told me to expect but I was really pleased to discover.

2. The deeper message for me is that I can let myself be known by people outside of my innermost circle. It feels risky, vulnerable, but also okay. Good, even. This is a conclusion that Minerva reaches in Playing Army, too. But she learned it at a much younger age than I did.

3. Having said that, I’ll confess that I’m still very much learning about personal vulnerability—by which I mean, I’m finding book marketing way harder than I thought I would. Pitching articles and podcasts and author talks are a different kind of vulnerability, a different way of putting oneself out there, and I’ve had a months-long war with myself over it. I deeply admire authors who talk about their work in interesting ways, steadily and from fresh angles that don’t feel like they have a sales agenda. I’m learning from them, but only just beginning to get my head around that skill set. I wish I’d known more about this aspect of emotional risk-taking before publication but maybe this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

4. I’ve journaled about it, gone to therapy, and bent the ears of all my writer friends about this issue, which I’ve decided is not fear of failure but actually fear of success. There is SO much more to say about that, and in the coming year I’m planning to try to pin some of my discoveries onto paper. I also want to talk more about military women and their bodies. Specifically, how eating and exercise become punitive, but also how under the microscope we were/are, especially sexually. I want to talk about women in leadership roles, when we’re leading people who don’t want us there, and about women defining for ourselves what it means to be a woman, outside and inside all the stereotypes. Publication of Playing Army has only initiated the conversations I want to have, and I’d love to hear what you have to say as I go along. Thanks so much for being on this quiet ride with me.