I remember when I published my first novel. It was the culmination of much hard work and so many dreams. I love Ann’s story, here, about how she found her way to her first publication. If you want to be inspired, read on!
by Ann Bancroft
I started writing in elementary school, with a hand-drawn sequel to Pippi Longstocking, my favorite book.
Growing up female in the 50s and 60s, I had no idea of what career I might have, or even whether I would have a career. Nor was I raised with the certainty and direction that, once I finished school, I’d need to make my own living. My mother had high aspirations for her daughters to graduate from good colleges, but not having had that opportunity herself, didn’t have a clear idea of what might follow.
But writing was fun for me. I spent late nights writing news copy and laying out pages for my college newspaper, but figured in a few years I’d be…teaching French? Fortunately, a mentor appeared to guide me.
Long Before My First Novel, I Got Hooked on Reporting
This journalism professor saw some talent and a lot of enthusiasm, and allowed me to take graduate school journalism classes as a junior at UC Berkeley. From then on I was hooked on reporting, and began a career writing news, feature stories, and eventually editorials and opinion pieces.
I worked for the Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Associated Press and The Sacramento Bee, moving to Sacramento when I was pregnant with my now 42-year-old son.
A new governor who liked my education editorials hired me to work on communications with the California Secretary for Education — the start of an entirely different career phase that included speechwriting, policy papers and opinion pieces for newspapers statewide.
So I’d written all my life, but none of it prepared me for writing fiction.
My Cancer Diagnosis Led to Some Changes in My Work Life
It wasn’t until my first diagnosis of breast cancer fifteen years ago that I began to question staying in a full-time job that was well paid, with great colleagues, but less than creatively satisfying.
After a year of working as much as possible through surgeries, chemo and radiation, I retired early and decided to take some short story classes. What a challenge it was to make things up — characters, places, events, entirely from my imagination. All of that had been forbidden to me as a journalist.
It was a tough transition, but very satisfying to get into the “zone” of writing fiction. Of course I began working around the most traumatic thing that I had experienced, which was cancer. I was still less than two years “out” from diagnosis, and convinced I would die before I turned 60.
Nobody wanted to hear my cancer story, however — I wasn’t even that interested in it. So I did my best to avoid the subject, writing memoir-ish pieces about my childhood as an Army brat, and what that was like during the Vietnam War. I got published in a couple of anthologies, which was heartening, but the idea of writing a novel seemed too daunting.’
Two things helped me move forward and take that leap.
What Helped Me Leap Into Writing My First Novel
The first was my work as a breast cancer hotline volunteer and hospital “navigator,” or mentor, to other patients who were traveling the same path I had been on. I spent lots of time with these women, going wig shopping, to oncology appointments, chemo sessions, meeting their families, talking on the phone.
With each patient, I developed a peculiar and lovely bond, even though we may have been very different in backgrounds, personalities, world views, race and age. Our experiences with cancer transcended all those differences. It was empowering and uplifting for me to give them hope by my very presence as a healthy survivor. There was definitely some fodder for stories there, though fictionalized, of course.
At the same time, I got my certification to be a facilitator for Amherst Writers and Artists groups, using writing prompts to inspire creativity and generate new work. I was astonished at the writing that came out of those groups, both by others and myself. Attending AWA sessions greatly strengthened my creative voice and gave me the confidence to keep at it with fiction — enough so that I began working on my first novel, at age 60.
I Struggled with My First Novel
The story was about three people who meet in a support group for metastatic cancer, and become unlikely friends at the end of their lives. Its title at the time was The Oakland Mets, the inside-joke name the characters gave themselves after ditching a dismal, hospital-sponsored group and deciding to meet on their own.
Their goal is to have as much fun as possible as long as they are able. They grow close as secrets spill out and they support one another in resolving difficult family issues. They are bonded not only by their diagnoses, but by the substance use disorder that plagues their families. (“Mets” means metastases. I had fun weaving dark humor into the story),
I worked on the novel for a couple of years, struggling with a bloated and meandering middle, a plot that needed to be stronger, and a main character who wasn’t clearly enough the protagonist and did not have a strongly defined arc. Also, it lacked consistent tension!
I Should Have Hired an Editor
Too often, I fell back on my wire-service training and summarized rather than showing events in scene. I was good at dialogue and my writing was smooth, but, despite some classes and a shelf full of books on craft, it was a challenging task and, though I’d fallen in love with my characters and their stories, I often felt I had no idea of what I was doing.
Nonetheless, at the urging of a beloved teacher, when I reached “the end,” I sent the novel out to three agents. I had no clue that I should have first sent it to beta readers, then hired an editor. Unsurprisingly, the first two agents rejected it for different reasons (see above). To my everlasting shock, however, an agent at the third and largest agency — a big-deal Manhattan agency representing National Book Award winners, famous statesmen and dozens of bestselling authors — said they liked it and would represent me.
My Experience with My Agent
This felt like being plucked from the bench at a Little League game and being asked to start for the San Francisco Giants. When I showed up at their Park Avenue address, I half expected to find a shoe store there instead, and all my friends leaping out to say, “psyche!”
The agent asked me to go back and take another crack at the middle couple of chapters, and that’s when I blew the greatest opportunity I’d ever had. Did I research and hire an editor? Nope. Did I get my smartest friends and writers I knew to look it over and provide feedback? Nope. I had spent so many years as a journalist — where the practice is to do it alone, and get it done fast — neither of those critical steps occured to me.
I went home, did it alone as best as I could, and sent it back to the agent in just a few weeks (palm on forehead emoji here).
The result was a slew of very kind rejections. One publisher said she was certain it would get published and that she’d be kicking herself, but couldn’t take it; timing wasn’t right. Several “loved the voice” but thought the arc wasn’t clear enough, or the pacing not tight enough.
The fact that they all had nice things to say about my writing, if not the so-called finished novel, kept me afloat. I put it in a drawer and started work on a second, very different book.
My First Novel: A Writing Contest Gave Me the Confidence to Try Again
About two years and one draft of the second book later, in 2018, I received notice in an email that San Diego Book Awards was accepting submissions, including for Best Unpublished Novel. (By then my husband and I were living more than half time in San Diego County). I dusted off The Oakland Mets, read and revised it (amazing the holes and glitches you’ve find when looking after a years-long break), submitted, and it won first place.
That gave me confidence to try again, and I entered one of those “speed dating with agents” events at a big writers conference in Southern California. Two of the agents were kids barely past twenty, and looked both terrified and disgusted at the subject matter of cancer. But the third was a woman in her late forties who loved my pages so much she asked me not to sell to anyone until she’d had a chance to read the whole thing on the plane (LOL!)
When I told her the saga of the previous agent, though, she said she couldn’t represent my book — the same publishers would be seeing it again.
“But it’s been years!” I protested. “And I’ve revised and revised…”
She said re-submitting, unless it were a completely different book, was not done. And she suggested I run the novel by a developmental editor and put it up on Kindle.
I Chose a Hybrid Publisher for My First Novel
So I did hire an an editor — essentially giving myself a graduate course in revisions. This was during the pandemic, and in 2021 I also was diagnosed with a recurrence of my breast cancer. I revised and revised while healing from another three surgeries and three months of chemo.
Doing the final series of revisions, I had the advantage (?) of close proximity to cancer brought by my second diagnosis, and I felt more deeply for my characters. On some days it was hard to write about cancer yet again, but I feel more than ever that this novel will connect with anyone who’s had or cared for anyone with cancer,
This time, I felt less frightened, more confident, and more determined than ever to make my book as good as it could be. So that’s what I did, only instead of putting it on Kindle, I submitted what is now a novel I’m proud to put “out there,” to She Writes Press, an independent, hybrid publisher. I’ve been impressed by the supportive nature of the publisher and my fellow She Writes “sisters.”
I changed the title to Almost Family, because it more closely represents the story (and people won’t think it’s about baseball). At long last, my debut novel will be published when I am 71. Whatever the outcome, I am glad I persisted.
After My First Novel, I Plan to Keep Writing
Like most people I know in their 70s, I don’t feel it. I feel much more confident. In better shape than I’ve been in years, and I intend to keep writing. I liked the expansiveness of writing a novel, the daily getting into the flow of a story. So, once this surge of pre-publication work is finished, I look forward to doing that, as long as I am able.
Main photo by Madeline Yang, staff writer at The Coronado News.
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Ann Bancroft began writing fiction after a career in journalism and communications. Her first job after graduating from UC Berkeley was as “copy boy” at The Oakland Tribune, at a time when there were few women in the newsroom. As a reporter, she worked in the State Capitol bureaus of the San Francisco Chronicle, United Press International and the Associated Press. She wrote editorials for The Sacramento Bee and was later appointed communications director for the State Department of Education.
After a first bout of breast cancer, she retired early and began writing fiction, leading generative writing workshops, and mentoring breast cancer patients. She’s an alumna of the Community of Writers, the Tomales Bay Writers Workshops, and Everwood Farmstead artist’s residency. “Almost Family” is her debut novel, to be published when she is 71.
Ann and her husband are avid travelers and hikers, and when not writing, she loves to cook and entertain. They live in Sacramento and Coronado, California.
Find more information about Ann and her work at her website, and connect with her on Facebook and Instagram.
Almost Family:
Liz Millanova has stage four cancer, a grown daughter who doesn’t speak to her, and obsessive memories of a relationship that tore apart her marriage. She thinks of herself as someone who’d rather die than sit through a support group, but now that she actually is going to die, she figures she might as well give it a go.
Mercy’s Thriving Survivors is a hospital-sponsored group held in a presumably less depressing location: a Nordstrom’s employee training lounge. There, Liz hits it off with two other patients, and the three unlikely friends decide to ditch the group and meet on their own. They call themselves the Oakland Mets, and their goal is to enjoy life while they can. Together, Dave, a gay Vietnam vet, Rhonda, a devout, nice woman who’s hiding a family secret and finds peace in a gospel choir, and snarky Liz plan outings to hear jazz, enjoy nature, and tour Alcatraz.
In the odd intimacy they form, Liz learns to open up and get close, acknowledge and let go of the dysfunction in her marriage, and repair her relationship with her daughter. They joined forces to have a good time—but what they wind up doing is helping one another come to grips with terminal cancer and resolve the unfinished business in their lives.
Available at Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Amazon, and wherever books are sold.