I Didn’t Win A Pulitzer. And That’s OK.

The Pulitzers were announced yesterday, and I didn’t win.

I’ve spent the last eighteen years working at the New York Times, which has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes. The citations are hung with pride in our headquarters, neatly arranged along the length of the fifteenth floor conference center. To win a Pulitzer at the Times is perhaps the highest achievement one can achieve in the company. And yet it’s an honor beyond my reach.  

For one, I don’t report or write stories. My job at the Times is strictly in the background — I work in what’s called our data mission, helping the company use data to better understand its audiences. But six years ago, shortly after our five year old son died of complications from a congenital heart defect, I started writing a memoir about his brief but remarkable life. And when it was finally published last year, I nominated it for a Pulitzer Prize in the “Memoir or Autobiography” category. 

All I needed was a PDF, a few minutes and $75.

The Pulitzer wall at The New York Times.

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My publisher was not quite as motivated to submit the book for awards. They publish dozens of books each year, and to indulge any individual author is probably to invite a suffocating deluge. But this is likely the only book I will ever write, and authors are allowed to apply on their own. So I put in my credit card details and clicked submit. What the heck? I figured. Nothing to lose, except for a few bucks. 

I’d heard stories of colleagues who’d won by this route, without being nominated by the company. What a sweet feeling it must have been to ascend the newsroom steps in front of admiring colleagues, their stubborn faith in their work being validated. And I admit that the thought of a backroom data guy being welcomed into that holy circle held some appeal. 

But in the months after sending in that application (and others too — no joy from the National Book Awards either) I began to realize that winning prizes had nothing to do with this whether my book was a success. 

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A memoir about a child who died at the age of five is a tough sell, no matter how remarkable or inspiring the story is. It took me two years to write the first draft, and even longer to find an agent who would take it on. When we sent it out on proposal, forty-nine of fifty publishing houses said no. They loved the writing; they empathized with the story. They just didn’t see the sales potential.

Perhaps they were right. The book was finally published last November, and it hasn’t hit the bestseller list. It hasn’t been noticed by most of the major book review outlets. And it hasn’t won a Pulitzer.

This would be a disappointing outcome for many of my friends who write for the Times, especially since each of these achievements would mark a significant step on their career ladder.

I know how journalists measure success; for a time, I was embedded directly in the newsroom. Every day journalists would ask me for data, wondering how their stories had done. I realized just how powerful this dynamic was when the Times published my only bylined story, a Travel essay about a road trip we’d taken after our son’s death. Suddenly I found myself using my own data tools to analyze traffic to my essay. Yes, reader, I did hit refresh every ten minutes, willing those numbers to rise. 

And yet, the most powerful outcome of that story for me was not the tens of thousands of people who read it. Instead, it was the sixty-two people who commented on the story, sharing their own experiences of grief, and loss, and coping with both on the open road. To connect with those people was truly a gift.

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Six years later, when my book was published, friends who’d published books warned me not to fall victim to what they called “the measurement trap”. Like junkies who’d struggled to come clean, they told tales of obsessing over Amazon’s Sales Rank numbers — as addictive as hard drugs, and just as dangerous. 

The truth was, I stopped looking at Sales Rank after a few weeks. Just as I had with the Travel story, I found that the people who reached out directly were far more compelling. The first-year pediatric resident who thought our story would help him become a better doctor. The father who couldn’t put the book down, even though he couldn’t stop crying. The woman who’d been born with a similar condition to our son, and survived. 

I felt humbled that my book had resonated with them. As long as real readers kept reaching out,  I cared less and less how many copies we’d sold. 

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I realize this all sounds a little convenient. What else would you expect an author to say if his book doesn’t catch fire? Of course you’d cling to the few readers you have. 

But here’s the difference.

When you are the parent of a complicated kid, you are thrust into an unfamiliar world. You need to learn how to balance medical obligations with family life. You need to learn to talk to doctors and learn from fellow parents. You need to know this world as best you can, because your child’s life literally depends on it. And along the way you develop a sense of pride. It becomes part of who you are — as a parent, and as a person.

And then, when it all ends — as it did for us — you are cast out of that world, almost immediately. Your hard-earned skills are suddenly rendered irrelevant. You no longer need to deal with doctors, or network with parents. And that part of your identity is suddenly gone. It is like losing a limb.

I knew I needed to write this book, but until recently I’d never realized why. Now I do: writing it made me whole again. Its existence allows me to return to that world, and gives me a reason to re-inhabit it. The connections and conversations that result are more valuable to me than any prize; they help me feel familiar ground below my feet. I don’t need to be admired from afar. 

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I have seen the lists of people who sit on the Pulitzer board. They all seem like very nice people, and I’m sure they are excellent judges of quality. I hope that a few of them read my book, and liked it. 

I do wonder what they did with my seventy-five dollars. Did Columbia buy them coffee and donuts while they deliberated? Did they bundle it into the $15,000 awarded to the winner, along with a shiny medal? Or was it put towards a bottle of celebratory champagne at the awards dinner? 

It doesn’t really matter. I’m sure the committee got it right, and I hope the winner treasures the honor. I’ll definitely order a copy of her memoir — and maybe even drop her a line.

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James G. Robinson is Director of Data Products at The New York Times and author of the recently-published memoir MORE THAN WE EXPECTED: FIVE YEARS WITH A REMARKABLE CHILD (Post Hill Press), on sale now. For more information, please visit morethanamemoir.com.