Behind The Scenes Of My Novel

Which comes out in one month!

Upon graduating college I became the receptionist at The Wylie Agency, a literary agency with a New York office just down the street from Carnegie Hall. Weeks earlier I’d turned in a 70-page paper on the work of Vladimir Nabokov; now I was answering calls about his estate. On what I remember as my first day (which may be apocryphal, maybe it was the second or fifth) I picked up the phone. This is Philip for [agent], who’s this? said the Great Novelist in a voice as timeless as a baseball game on a summer evening, and after the following three minute conversation I felt that, at age 21, surely my life was complete.

Soon I moved across 8th Avenue for an assistant job at ELLE Magazine, where in the early days I primarily took care of administrative tasks, helped with research needs, and transcribed interviews for senior staff and their freelancers—if you want to learn how to interview a subject, there’s maybe no better way than listening and relistening to and writing down the conversations of seasoned journalists—most of whom were women talking to other women.

Through both these jobs I tried to write fiction and failed. There are a lot of distractions in New York when you’re 21, 22, it turns out. But at the end of that first year, in June 2014, my wonderful former fiction professor, Paul La Farge, who was then a fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center, told me I should come to a reading there. The brilliant Karen Russell and Rivka Galchen were in conversation and afterwards, at the reception, I met a famous screenwriter in his 70s who said, Your life is only going to become more beautiful than it is now. The next morning I started writing the book that became The Mythmakers. If you read it (and I hope you will!) you’ll find a scene not wildly dissimilar from the one I’ve just described.

Over the next couple years, in the mornings before work, I chipped away at the first chapters, writing and rewriting the opening with the belief that without a perfect beginning, nothing could follow. Finally I decided to just write a whole bulging version of the story that had been steadily ballooning in my mind (if not in the word doc) in what was, for me, a short time—three or four months. I wrote about creative failure, and a fear of running out of time, and the Great Male Novelist, and New York in the summer. Relationship woes. Physics. A commune in the woods. And then it turned out that once I had something to work with, I had something to work with.

I wrote and rewrote. Quit drinking. Started dating my friend Dan, and then married him. Sent queries to agents, signed with two, sent the manuscript to editors, signed book contracts.

And now, in one month and one day, the book is coming out! Earlier this week I received my box of finished copies, which was surreal. I love the cover, designed by Tristan Offit, which subtly calls to my mind books that influenced my own writing.

I’m launching the book in two parts. First I’ll be in conversation with the brilliant Lynn Steger-Strong at Mechanic’s Hall in Portland, ME on Wednesday, June 14. Print bookstore is co-hosting, and you can preorder the book from them here. Stay tuned for timing and a link to RSVP.

Then I’m doing a reading in Manhattan at P&T Knitwear at 7PM on Friday, June 16, where I’ll be in conversation with the absolutely wonderful Maris Kreizman. You can RSVP here, and preorder a copy, too.

If it’s been quieter around these parts, it’s because there’s been a blitz of writing activity percolating elsewhere. Here are two recent VF booklists you might enjoy, if you’re looking to stock up on new reads, and an interview I did with David Grann about one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read in a long time. (Watch this space for a veritable cavalcade of interviews with interesting people, all of which I’m furiously writing up over the coming weeks.)

Hit the little heart if you’ve enjoyed reading, and also let me know: Do you want to hear more about the book process? How I signed with my agents? The actual nitty-gritty of submitting the manuscript to editors? (If you are interested in this stuff, Yahdon Israel, an editor at Simon & Schuster, shares all kinds of behind-the-scenes stuff on his Instagram, and Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal substack and book are incredibly informative.) Sound off in the comments, and feel free to send your one-off questions my way.

Read lots, be well, ‘til next time!

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"A meditation on art and memory, a twisty literary mystery, and the story of a young woman's emergence into her true self, The Mythmakers is full of surprise and delight." —Dani Shapiro, NYT-bestselling author of Inheritance and Signal Fires

"Every once in a while, a novel appears that grips you and confides in you as an old friend would. Keziah Weir's The Mythmakers is not only a love letter to the mysteries that bind us, but it's also a remarkable portrayal of how we move forward, stumble, get up again and rebuild our lives when we need to the most. Suspenseful, elegant, so full of life and the ghosts we carry, this is, quite simply, beautiful storytelling." —Paul Yoon, author of Run Me To Earth

"Keziah Weir's The Mythmakers is a wildly inventive, thought-provoking page-turner filled with luminous language and resonant characters. It tackles the weightiest of subjects—love, art, inspiration, death—with grace and wit. This is the rare novel that will stay with me for a very, very long time." —Tara Conklin, NYT-bestselling author of The Last Romantics