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shalannaI wrote this post yesterday, but held on to it so I could reduce the Drama. That didn't work. But I decided to post it anyway.
- - -
I just got off the phone with Yet Another Very Nice New York Literary Agent. She called me to reject _Little Rituals_. However, we had a lovely chat. For about an HOUR. On her dime! What a lovely person. Too bad I had a breakdown, as usual.
This "live one-hour phone call to reject an author" deal doesn't happen to anyone else, and I asked her about that.
Asked her why this has happened with three agents and two editors (so far).
She said, "I can see why! They are calling because you are so talented and the work is so good and you've obviously worked hard on it. And they're hoping that you have something they think they can sell, just as I do." Unfortunately . . . _Little Rituals_ wasn't it.
This was a New York agent with a major New York agency, before you ask. She was VERY nice. I kept telling her she didn't have to be nice, and she said she wasn't being nice, that she truly believes that my writing IS GOOD. However, the BOOK is not one she thinks she can sell. And she didn't have time to look at another of my books for a while.
She's going on a two-week vacation starting *now* (as soon as we hung up, around 5 PM Dallas time), then heading to the RWA conference in San Francisco. After that, she's going to the U. S. Open tennis thingie. (I never go anywhere except the grocery store, the pool hall, and Chili's Bar and Grill.) So . . . she told me to send the Marfa Lights mystery around mid-August. Along with the synopsis for _Camille's Travels_. Not the book, as she only wants to deal with one book at a time. Fair enough.
The bad news--aside from, of course, the news that we're not engaged and that _LR_ isn't something she would take on (more on this later)--is manyfold. She spoke a lot about why she doesn't take on certain genres often because of current market conditions.
Of course those are the genres I have worked in.
Mysteries are not so hot any more. Right now a cozy is a terrifically tough sell. Traditional mysteries aren't even doing too well. In the five years that it took to teach myself to write mysteries correctly (planting clues, structuring things properly, and basically making it not just what Sue Grafton's novels have degenerated into--detective walks up to suspect, talks to suspect, then drives to next suspect, talks to suspect, gets into car, thinks about shoes, eats, talks to henchman, lather, rinse, repeat), mysteries fell from "hot stuff" to "eh" to "nearly out of favor." So those contests I'm sending my mysteries to are probably a good bet. There, they actually get read.
Now, this doesn't mean (as Hubster claimed it must, at first) that no mysteries should be written. It simply means that there are not so many slots any more. Now you have about four lines that put out a mystery or two a month. You used to have many more lines putting out more novels. For a while there was the serial killer party--serial killer everything, serial killer cookbook, etc. That puttered out. The "CSI" crime and police procedural trend peaked and went. So now mysteries are back to their core audience. This is a faithful audience, but it's not a big market.
"Fad" books (as hubby termed them) such as Harry Potter or the Da Vinci Code mess are the ones that'll burst onto the scene, dominate it, sell big, spawn action figures and T-shirts, and then fade away into being yesterday's big news. But (as I told him) that's a way for publishing to make a lot of money with just one book, and that's why they are constantly hoping to trip across one like that. That is what they are looking for. However, nobody knows what the Next Big Thing is going to be. Your job is to convince them that yours is it . . . but that's not easy.
Anyway. _Little Rituals_ strikes people, at first glance, as glorified chick lit.
Chick lit is absolutely dead. Even if you do not call your book chick lit, if it has a first-person chicklitty voice, it will be harmed. They are now calling it "women's fiction with attitude," but the editors are still VERY wary of it. That's one of the obstacles _Little Rituals_ faces. But it's all voice. It's an old-fashioned BOOK book in which we spend time in the head of the lead character, and there's no plot in the sense of a chain of events you could extract from the character's life and have any meaning.
The agent praised my writing. She said she loved the "little asides" and the facts she learned from reading the book, but then turned around and said she liked to be turning pages quickly and zipping through a book. This is a bit contradictory (just like people), but I know what she meant. It's the difference between reading a classic novel for class or a discussion group and hauling a novel in your purse for reading at the beach or reading yourself to sleep. As I said, the good parts of this book ARE those little asides, so you can't take them out and have anything left.
Another obstacle that LR faces is that it's got a literary tone and literary pacing. It is a literary novel. It's sort of like _The World According to Garp_ or _The Adventures of Augie March_ and stuff like that. Problem here is that the market likes one literary novel a year. If someone who's already a big shot literary lion puts one out that year, then you will not get much interest. She suggested university presses, but said she didn't know how that works because she doesn't work with them.
[I know how those work. Generally, a university press publishes its professors, their proteges, their grad students, and a very FEW others. Also, there's no prestige or future in that, most of the time. It's as if you're admitting you're not good enough for prime time. I appreciate what she wanted to convey in saying this, but it's not a route with potential, IMHO. I want New York. That is what I strive for. I'm not going to settle for karaoke night and amateur hour when I want "American Idol." Then, if I sing off key and out of tune, so be it. I had my chance. *flashes chest*]
She gave some specific reasons why LR wasn't for her. They're perfectly good personal preferences. I couldn't rewrite the book to "fix" it, though; I couldn't speed up the pacing so that it's a page-turner because it's not supposed to be a page-turner (it's just a different kind of book), and I can't figure out where I would give information early on about the reasons that Daphne doesn't think she's worthy and why she doesn't dump the guy she loves who doesn't love her and the boss she admires who treats her like 3@$*#&$%. (I asked where I could put in about the childhood trauma and how, without having a flashback--anathema!--or a Sgt. Exposition moment with some character that really doesn't know the trauma stuff--and the agent didn't know where, either.)
Of course I've been thinking about how to insert such a clue early on without slowing things down even more. I came up with a couple of ideas that I'm trying out. But they may not be the answer.
Besides, even if I did figure out how and where to give information about why Daphne still loves a guy who doesn't love her any more (and why she doesn't want bad things to happen to him--because she still loves him, and what love means is that you want the best life for that other person), it still wouldn't necessarily take away the problem that the agent had with Daphne's core personality not being someone she could see herself as. And it would slow the forward action even MORE. It was just an idea she threw out.
Sometimes a reader simply isn't in a book's audience. You can't please everyone.
She wondered what else I had. I talked about _Pundit's Corner_, because I really believe that people would enjoy reading it, and that it would appeal to people who like thrillers AS WELL AS people who like comedies. However, she said, as have the other agents and editors I've spoken with, "I stay away from domestic terrorism stuff." New York is still too flinchy about that. So is Oklahoma City, for that matter, although the rest of the country has forgotten about *that* episode. I understand this. But the book doesn't HAVE any terror attacks in it. The group gets tracked down and stopped through the efforts of my main characters. The good guys win. You'd think this would make a diff, but it don't. Nothin' make no diff. NO terrorists evah.
Of course I have the mysteries . . . I have the urban fantasy (which she agreed to look at later) . . . I have _Starla's Version_, the funny Southern gothic. She had me explain about Starla, and what I said was that I got the idea from reading Updike's _Roger's Version_, but my main character is a small-town waitress instead of a preacher. The thing that intrigued me about _RV_ was that the main character there was an unreliable narrator. Readers could see that the way HE saw the world was not accurate--that he was actually immoral, hypocritical, and inconsistent--but that his version represented reality to HIM, Roger's version of reality. Starla's is a character-driven story in that various things that happen to her do help her become a more activated person (and possibly illuminate the eternal human condition), but there's not really much of a PLOT in any external sense. The agent said she isn't into Southern novels at all, so this wouldn't be for her. The pacing is also literary-pace, which is another no-no. It wouldn't be up her alley. So we were stuck with ONLY the mysteries and Camille, if she even likes those at all.
What *IS* selling?
* Erotica/romantica, such as the stuff of Ellora's Cave. (If I want to read perverted sh^t, I'll reread Henry Miller, thanks. No, seriously--have you ever READ Henry Miller? Screwed-up dude. And no shame or compunctions at all about describing it. Then he will go on to tell you about dinner and a walk he took, all in the same this-is-perfectly-normal tone. Try the two _Tropic_ novels, but don't miss the three volumes of his diary, because they're weirder. And don't miss D. H. Lawrence, one of Rich/Rachel Veraa's old favorites that he/she had to defend fairly often on the old WRITING echo. Or you could go all the way and pick up _Justine_ by the Marquis de Sade. Stand on the shoulders of giants.)
* Paranormal, in the sense of vampires and werewolves and ghosts that have sex with living humans. *UGH* That's just not my thing. Every other elementary school girl loved Barnabas Collins of "Dark Shadows," whereas I spent my time explaining we were not related.
* Nonfiction by entertainers and political operatives. Tell-alls.
* They have no idea what is "next."
* Memoir may be on its way out.
She said I should write a book of my heart and not try to aim at the market, as the market is fickle and by the time you have a book finished, what WAS selling is no longer selling. Fine, I know this. But then she turned around and told me that the market drives what the editors buy, and therefore drives what the agents try to sell to them . . . so that means you HAVE to write to the market, in another sense. This is such a contradictory business.
I think I should go into the scam-artist business instead. Was it Soupy Sales who said, at the end of his TV show sometime in 1961, "Kids, go get a dollar out of Mother's purse and send it to me at this address!" And kids DID IT, and he got into plenty of trouble. But, hell, it worked! Sounds like a more effective use of a person's time than this typing stories business.
She talked to me for almost an hour. They don't talk to you for an hour unless they do see potential. She emphasized that my family is wrong to assume that just because I can't get published the writing is crappy or that the books are bad . . . saying that the thing I so often hear, "If THIS got published, and it's bad, then yours must be EVEN WORSE," is not true in this case (in her opinion.) The "Just write a better book" advice that I constantly hear from the published contingent in the blogosphere (you know, the people who say, "You would be published if you wrote a better book") is not useful, in her opinion, as this book IS a good book . . . it's just not the kind of book that she thinks she could sell. And it's not the kind that she finds a personal favorite that she would want to fight for.
Poor agent. She had to serve as psychotherapist as well. I wondered why I always miss the trends.
She actually said, "Five years ago this would have been a Scribner's book, a lead title. This is exactly what they were publishing at the time. But now the market has changed."
So, no deals now.
However, she did tell me to send the mystery and Camille in mid-August. I hear tell that many New Yorkers leave the city for part of July and most of August because it's so hot and uncomfortable, and that publishing shuts down in August, so I can see why she'd want me to wait. She deserves a vacation, too!
And so do I. I always find these kinds of conversations very draining, even though what they are trying to do is pump me up. I don't think I can be pumped up. I'm already overinflated, anyway.
The most depressing part was that she kept saying, "Try nontraditional methods. Your voice deserves to be out there. Have you thought of serializing the Unpublishable Pundit Novel on your website?" Well, what that would do is put it "out there" so that somebody else who has an "in" could steal the plot and whatever they liked out of it and publish a book and get all the glory. Or else it would just result in a bunch of people downloading it and reading it or not reading it. What good would that do? I don't see the benefit in that. I mean . . . I just don't. (I DID NOT SAY THIS. I just said, "Uh-huh," because she really was trying to help.)
"Have you thought of maybe looking into e-publishers?"
Well, that goes over with me 'bout as well as, "Just take magnets and stick your little artwork on the refrigerator! That's just as good as getting it published as the cover of 'Rolling Stone'!"
I realize she didn't mean it that way, but hell, nobody takes that stuff seriously, and most of the free stuff is downright bad. It doesn't get people anywhere. Now, in NONFICTION it can, as I saw several people, including Rob Rummel-Hudson and Pamie, both parley their sites into books, but that's still rare. They had appealing content that people were drawn to because it was from real life (in part), I believe. Fiction is different. E-publishing, to me, says that you don't know any better than to give your stuff away, and it's not good enough. Tell me about one e-book original that is an overlooked _Garp_ or _Shogun_, let alone a _To Kill a Mockingbird_ or _Breakfast at Tiffany's_, and we'll talk.
Really bad writers who don't know they're bad are always posting their fiction on their websites. Why would I want to be like them, rather than like a pro? You get dismissed with an, "Oh, she puts her stuff on her webpage. Probably fanfic."
Also, whenever I post fiction up here, y'all don't particularly like it. *sh^t-eat^ng gr^n*
$ $ $
"Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it."
-—Jules Renard
"Jules Renard is absolutely full of shit."
--Shalanna Collins
$ $ $
What I want doesn't want me. Ha! It has less than no interest in my fat, lazy slob self or any of the elitist pig bullcrap that proceeds out of it. I shouldn't WANT what I want, because that's like a pig wanting to fly. I need to find what my mission in life IS. Why was I created and put on this earth? "To help others" is an obvious platitude, but there has to be a specific venue I'm intended for. This isn't it.
Nothing I've tried so far has been.
So I turned to the Devil cards. Evil!!!
What the Devil cards said: (I didn't ask a question. I just said, "How do you like that? What do you think of that?")
How you feel about yourself now: The Devil.
The temptation of a certain relationship, pastime, or other form of pleasure is too hard to resist; it's addictive. Question your motives, as these sorts of situations aren’t generally good news. You may also have rather low self-esteem and feel that there’s not much hope for the future. Don’t doubt your abilities, and try to be more positive. Think carefully: you can still change direction.
What you most want at this moment: The Hierophant.
You wish for someone you can trust and confide in, someone who won’t let you down. There are moral issues here, knowing right from wrong, and you may feel that you need some advice or wise counsel from a teacher, priest, parent, or someone you have a lot of respect for in order to help you make the right decision.
Your fears: Strength.
You are fearful of lacking the willpower and strength to deal with someone or something that concerns you. Feeling negative and listening to all your fears will only cause failure and lost opportunities. Be as brave as a lion but work compassionately, and you’ll be fine.
What is going for you: The Hermit.
You are instinctively taking time to relax and reflect, drawing on your inner strength and wisdom to guide you through these difficult times. Time is a great healer, so if you don’t know quite what to do now, in time you will. The Hermit signals a warning not to make hasty decisions, and if you have been unwell this is a time for rest and recuperation.
What is going against you: The Tower. Hello, card that always comes up!
However hard you try to control events, they just won’t go your way. Unexpected challenges, upheaval, and disappointment will bring expectations to an end. Subconsciously you may have wanted a solution--you just didn’t expect it to happen this way. Use this period of change as an opportunity for a new beginning. If you have been planning to move, you will be experiencing setbacks.
Outcome: Justice.
Justice will be done. Decisions will go in your favour, particularly regarding partnerships or legal matters. A time for some good luck and reward for your good deeds in the past.
Well . . . that last bit sounds promising.
"Francis Bacon said, 'Some books are to be tasted, some to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.' It's pretty funny that he talks all about food and his last name is a food."--one of's students, whom I predict will enjoy great success
"Now when I bore people at a party, they think it's their fault."
—Henry Kissinger, in conversation with Barbara Walters
"Patting pregnant stomachs is even worse than nose-tweaking and yanking somebody's hair when it's long. WTF is wrong with people? Is there a tattoo reading 'I HAVE AN UNUSUAL PHSYICAL FEATURE: PLEASE TOUCH IT' somewhere? One I can't see?"
--Daphne
"Yes."
--People who pat pregnant stomachs and think it's funny to grab the ends of someone's long(ish) hair and shout, "Gimme the scissors!"
I just got off the phone with Yet Another Very Nice New York Literary Agent. She called me to reject _Little Rituals_. However, we had a lovely chat. For about an HOUR. On her dime! What a lovely person. Too bad I had a breakdown, as usual.
This "live one-hour phone call to reject an author" deal doesn't happen to anyone else, and I asked her about that.
Asked her why this has happened with three agents and two editors (so far).
She said, "I can see why! They are calling because you are so talented and the work is so good and you've obviously worked hard on it. And they're hoping that you have something they think they can sell, just as I do." Unfortunately . . . _Little Rituals_ wasn't it.
This was a New York agent with a major New York agency, before you ask. She was VERY nice. I kept telling her she didn't have to be nice, and she said she wasn't being nice, that she truly believes that my writing IS GOOD. However, the BOOK is not one she thinks she can sell. And she didn't have time to look at another of my books for a while.
She's going on a two-week vacation starting *now* (as soon as we hung up, around 5 PM Dallas time), then heading to the RWA conference in San Francisco. After that, she's going to the U. S. Open tennis thingie. (I never go anywhere except the grocery store, the pool hall, and Chili's Bar and Grill.) So . . . she told me to send the Marfa Lights mystery around mid-August. Along with the synopsis for _Camille's Travels_. Not the book, as she only wants to deal with one book at a time. Fair enough.
The bad news--aside from, of course, the news that we're not engaged and that _LR_ isn't something she would take on (more on this later)--is manyfold. She spoke a lot about why she doesn't take on certain genres often because of current market conditions.
Of course those are the genres I have worked in.
Mysteries are not so hot any more. Right now a cozy is a terrifically tough sell. Traditional mysteries aren't even doing too well. In the five years that it took to teach myself to write mysteries correctly (planting clues, structuring things properly, and basically making it not just what Sue Grafton's novels have degenerated into--detective walks up to suspect, talks to suspect, then drives to next suspect, talks to suspect, gets into car, thinks about shoes, eats, talks to henchman, lather, rinse, repeat), mysteries fell from "hot stuff" to "eh" to "nearly out of favor." So those contests I'm sending my mysteries to are probably a good bet. There, they actually get read.
Now, this doesn't mean (as Hubster claimed it must, at first) that no mysteries should be written. It simply means that there are not so many slots any more. Now you have about four lines that put out a mystery or two a month. You used to have many more lines putting out more novels. For a while there was the serial killer party--serial killer everything, serial killer cookbook, etc. That puttered out. The "CSI" crime and police procedural trend peaked and went. So now mysteries are back to their core audience. This is a faithful audience, but it's not a big market.
"Fad" books (as hubby termed them) such as Harry Potter or the Da Vinci Code mess are the ones that'll burst onto the scene, dominate it, sell big, spawn action figures and T-shirts, and then fade away into being yesterday's big news. But (as I told him) that's a way for publishing to make a lot of money with just one book, and that's why they are constantly hoping to trip across one like that. That is what they are looking for. However, nobody knows what the Next Big Thing is going to be. Your job is to convince them that yours is it . . . but that's not easy.
Anyway. _Little Rituals_ strikes people, at first glance, as glorified chick lit.
Chick lit is absolutely dead. Even if you do not call your book chick lit, if it has a first-person chicklitty voice, it will be harmed. They are now calling it "women's fiction with attitude," but the editors are still VERY wary of it. That's one of the obstacles _Little Rituals_ faces. But it's all voice. It's an old-fashioned BOOK book in which we spend time in the head of the lead character, and there's no plot in the sense of a chain of events you could extract from the character's life and have any meaning.
The agent praised my writing. She said she loved the "little asides" and the facts she learned from reading the book, but then turned around and said she liked to be turning pages quickly and zipping through a book. This is a bit contradictory (just like people), but I know what she meant. It's the difference between reading a classic novel for class or a discussion group and hauling a novel in your purse for reading at the beach or reading yourself to sleep. As I said, the good parts of this book ARE those little asides, so you can't take them out and have anything left.
Another obstacle that LR faces is that it's got a literary tone and literary pacing. It is a literary novel. It's sort of like _The World According to Garp_ or _The Adventures of Augie March_ and stuff like that. Problem here is that the market likes one literary novel a year. If someone who's already a big shot literary lion puts one out that year, then you will not get much interest. She suggested university presses, but said she didn't know how that works because she doesn't work with them.
[I know how those work. Generally, a university press publishes its professors, their proteges, their grad students, and a very FEW others. Also, there's no prestige or future in that, most of the time. It's as if you're admitting you're not good enough for prime time. I appreciate what she wanted to convey in saying this, but it's not a route with potential, IMHO. I want New York. That is what I strive for. I'm not going to settle for karaoke night and amateur hour when I want "American Idol." Then, if I sing off key and out of tune, so be it. I had my chance. *flashes chest*]
She gave some specific reasons why LR wasn't for her. They're perfectly good personal preferences. I couldn't rewrite the book to "fix" it, though; I couldn't speed up the pacing so that it's a page-turner because it's not supposed to be a page-turner (it's just a different kind of book), and I can't figure out where I would give information early on about the reasons that Daphne doesn't think she's worthy and why she doesn't dump the guy she loves who doesn't love her and the boss she admires who treats her like 3@$*#&$%. (I asked where I could put in about the childhood trauma and how, without having a flashback--anathema!--or a Sgt. Exposition moment with some character that really doesn't know the trauma stuff--and the agent didn't know where, either.)
Of course I've been thinking about how to insert such a clue early on without slowing things down even more. I came up with a couple of ideas that I'm trying out. But they may not be the answer.
Besides, even if I did figure out how and where to give information about why Daphne still loves a guy who doesn't love her any more (and why she doesn't want bad things to happen to him--because she still loves him, and what love means is that you want the best life for that other person), it still wouldn't necessarily take away the problem that the agent had with Daphne's core personality not being someone she could see herself as. And it would slow the forward action even MORE. It was just an idea she threw out.
Sometimes a reader simply isn't in a book's audience. You can't please everyone.
She wondered what else I had. I talked about _Pundit's Corner_, because I really believe that people would enjoy reading it, and that it would appeal to people who like thrillers AS WELL AS people who like comedies. However, she said, as have the other agents and editors I've spoken with, "I stay away from domestic terrorism stuff." New York is still too flinchy about that. So is Oklahoma City, for that matter, although the rest of the country has forgotten about *that* episode. I understand this. But the book doesn't HAVE any terror attacks in it. The group gets tracked down and stopped through the efforts of my main characters. The good guys win. You'd think this would make a diff, but it don't. Nothin' make no diff. NO terrorists evah.
Of course I have the mysteries . . . I have the urban fantasy (which she agreed to look at later) . . . I have _Starla's Version_, the funny Southern gothic. She had me explain about Starla, and what I said was that I got the idea from reading Updike's _Roger's Version_, but my main character is a small-town waitress instead of a preacher. The thing that intrigued me about _RV_ was that the main character there was an unreliable narrator. Readers could see that the way HE saw the world was not accurate--that he was actually immoral, hypocritical, and inconsistent--but that his version represented reality to HIM, Roger's version of reality. Starla's is a character-driven story in that various things that happen to her do help her become a more activated person (and possibly illuminate the eternal human condition), but there's not really much of a PLOT in any external sense. The agent said she isn't into Southern novels at all, so this wouldn't be for her. The pacing is also literary-pace, which is another no-no. It wouldn't be up her alley. So we were stuck with ONLY the mysteries and Camille, if she even likes those at all.
What *IS* selling?
* Erotica/romantica, such as the stuff of Ellora's Cave. (If I want to read perverted sh^t, I'll reread Henry Miller, thanks. No, seriously--have you ever READ Henry Miller? Screwed-up dude. And no shame or compunctions at all about describing it. Then he will go on to tell you about dinner and a walk he took, all in the same this-is-perfectly-normal tone. Try the two _Tropic_ novels, but don't miss the three volumes of his diary, because they're weirder. And don't miss D. H. Lawrence, one of Rich/Rachel Veraa's old favorites that he/she had to defend fairly often on the old WRITING echo. Or you could go all the way and pick up _Justine_ by the Marquis de Sade. Stand on the shoulders of giants.)
* Paranormal, in the sense of vampires and werewolves and ghosts that have sex with living humans. *UGH* That's just not my thing. Every other elementary school girl loved Barnabas Collins of "Dark Shadows," whereas I spent my time explaining we were not related.
* Nonfiction by entertainers and political operatives. Tell-alls.
* They have no idea what is "next."
* Memoir may be on its way out.
She said I should write a book of my heart and not try to aim at the market, as the market is fickle and by the time you have a book finished, what WAS selling is no longer selling. Fine, I know this. But then she turned around and told me that the market drives what the editors buy, and therefore drives what the agents try to sell to them . . . so that means you HAVE to write to the market, in another sense. This is such a contradictory business.
I think I should go into the scam-artist business instead. Was it Soupy Sales who said, at the end of his TV show sometime in 1961, "Kids, go get a dollar out of Mother's purse and send it to me at this address!" And kids DID IT, and he got into plenty of trouble. But, hell, it worked! Sounds like a more effective use of a person's time than this typing stories business.
She talked to me for almost an hour. They don't talk to you for an hour unless they do see potential. She emphasized that my family is wrong to assume that just because I can't get published the writing is crappy or that the books are bad . . . saying that the thing I so often hear, "If THIS got published, and it's bad, then yours must be EVEN WORSE," is not true in this case (in her opinion.) The "Just write a better book" advice that I constantly hear from the published contingent in the blogosphere (you know, the people who say, "You would be published if you wrote a better book") is not useful, in her opinion, as this book IS a good book . . . it's just not the kind of book that she thinks she could sell. And it's not the kind that she finds a personal favorite that she would want to fight for.
Poor agent. She had to serve as psychotherapist as well. I wondered why I always miss the trends.
She actually said, "Five years ago this would have been a Scribner's book, a lead title. This is exactly what they were publishing at the time. But now the market has changed."
So, no deals now.
However, she did tell me to send the mystery and Camille in mid-August. I hear tell that many New Yorkers leave the city for part of July and most of August because it's so hot and uncomfortable, and that publishing shuts down in August, so I can see why she'd want me to wait. She deserves a vacation, too!
And so do I. I always find these kinds of conversations very draining, even though what they are trying to do is pump me up. I don't think I can be pumped up. I'm already overinflated, anyway.
The most depressing part was that she kept saying, "Try nontraditional methods. Your voice deserves to be out there. Have you thought of serializing the Unpublishable Pundit Novel on your website?" Well, what that would do is put it "out there" so that somebody else who has an "in" could steal the plot and whatever they liked out of it and publish a book and get all the glory. Or else it would just result in a bunch of people downloading it and reading it or not reading it. What good would that do? I don't see the benefit in that. I mean . . . I just don't. (I DID NOT SAY THIS. I just said, "Uh-huh," because she really was trying to help.)
"Have you thought of maybe looking into e-publishers?"
Well, that goes over with me 'bout as well as, "Just take magnets and stick your little artwork on the refrigerator! That's just as good as getting it published as the cover of 'Rolling Stone'!"
I realize she didn't mean it that way, but hell, nobody takes that stuff seriously, and most of the free stuff is downright bad. It doesn't get people anywhere. Now, in NONFICTION it can, as I saw several people, including Rob Rummel-Hudson and Pamie, both parley their sites into books, but that's still rare. They had appealing content that people were drawn to because it was from real life (in part), I believe. Fiction is different. E-publishing, to me, says that you don't know any better than to give your stuff away, and it's not good enough. Tell me about one e-book original that is an overlooked _Garp_ or _Shogun_, let alone a _To Kill a Mockingbird_ or _Breakfast at Tiffany's_, and we'll talk.
Really bad writers who don't know they're bad are always posting their fiction on their websites. Why would I want to be like them, rather than like a pro? You get dismissed with an, "Oh, she puts her stuff on her webpage. Probably fanfic."
Also, whenever I post fiction up here, y'all don't particularly like it. *sh^t-eat^ng gr^n*
"Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it."
-—Jules Renard
"Jules Renard is absolutely full of shit."
--Shalanna Collins
What I want doesn't want me. Ha! It has less than no interest in my fat, lazy slob self or any of the elitist pig bullcrap that proceeds out of it. I shouldn't WANT what I want, because that's like a pig wanting to fly. I need to find what my mission in life IS. Why was I created and put on this earth? "To help others" is an obvious platitude, but there has to be a specific venue I'm intended for. This isn't it.
Nothing I've tried so far has been.
So I turned to the Devil cards. Evil!!!
What the Devil cards said: (I didn't ask a question. I just said, "How do you like that? What do you think of that?")
How you feel about yourself now: The Devil.
The temptation of a certain relationship, pastime, or other form of pleasure is too hard to resist; it's addictive. Question your motives, as these sorts of situations aren’t generally good news. You may also have rather low self-esteem and feel that there’s not much hope for the future. Don’t doubt your abilities, and try to be more positive. Think carefully: you can still change direction.
What you most want at this moment: The Hierophant.
You wish for someone you can trust and confide in, someone who won’t let you down. There are moral issues here, knowing right from wrong, and you may feel that you need some advice or wise counsel from a teacher, priest, parent, or someone you have a lot of respect for in order to help you make the right decision.
Your fears: Strength.
You are fearful of lacking the willpower and strength to deal with someone or something that concerns you. Feeling negative and listening to all your fears will only cause failure and lost opportunities. Be as brave as a lion but work compassionately, and you’ll be fine.
What is going for you: The Hermit.
You are instinctively taking time to relax and reflect, drawing on your inner strength and wisdom to guide you through these difficult times. Time is a great healer, so if you don’t know quite what to do now, in time you will. The Hermit signals a warning not to make hasty decisions, and if you have been unwell this is a time for rest and recuperation.
What is going against you: The Tower. Hello, card that always comes up!
However hard you try to control events, they just won’t go your way. Unexpected challenges, upheaval, and disappointment will bring expectations to an end. Subconsciously you may have wanted a solution--you just didn’t expect it to happen this way. Use this period of change as an opportunity for a new beginning. If you have been planning to move, you will be experiencing setbacks.
Outcome: Justice.
Justice will be done. Decisions will go in your favour, particularly regarding partnerships or legal matters. A time for some good luck and reward for your good deeds in the past.
Well . . . that last bit sounds promising.
"Francis Bacon said, 'Some books are to be tasted, some to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.' It's pretty funny that he talks all about food and his last name is a food."--one of
"Now when I bore people at a party, they think it's their fault."
—Henry Kissinger, in conversation with Barbara Walters
"Patting pregnant stomachs is even worse than nose-tweaking and yanking somebody's hair when it's long. WTF is wrong with people? Is there a tattoo reading 'I HAVE AN UNUSUAL PHSYICAL FEATURE: PLEASE TOUCH IT' somewhere? One I can't see?"
--Daphne
"Yes."
--People who pat pregnant stomachs and think it's funny to grab the ends of someone's long(ish) hair and shout, "Gimme the scissors!"
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 12:16 am (UTC)La la la, I'm not listening!!!!!
Seriously, I'm really sorry that this didn't work out for you. I'm so impressed, though, that the agent saw enough promise in your writing that she spent an hour (the day she left town!) talking with you about your projects. Girl, even if it didn't score a match-up, it's still HUGE!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 12:18 am (UTC)Of course, I was younger then and never bothered with a resubmission; had I done so, I'd probably be published now.
Meanwhile, I'm in the same boat you are, genre-wise. I write Westerns and young adult literature. The first is primarily a man's market even if you write it well, do the research, and know the terminology. The second has been done to death.
Good luck.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-22 02:24 am (UTC)All this takes time, of course. You know what the average lag time from signed contract to book release is. It's clunky and old-fashioned. A year would be lightning-fast; eighteen months to two years comes closer to the mark.
So how do agents get themselves into a position where they can make these carved-in-granite pronouncements that "chick lit is dead," or "mysteries are sagging," or "paranormals are really hot?" It's puzzling. For one thing, does a paranormal HAVE to have a vampire or a werewolf in it? Because that could even cover those creaky old horror tales dating back to the 19th Century.
A long, long time ago, in the ancient world of MS-DOS and the FidoNet WRITING echo, there was an ongoing discussion -- "dispute" might be a better word -- about action, things blowing up, a future filled with computers that resembled slightly faster versions of what we had in 1988. A nice young fellow named Patrick Goodman and I sparred verbally about all that. He, being young and full of his own potential, declared that cutting-edge was the only way to go. I argued that novels were supposed to be about people, not technology for its own sake. I still believe that. And I'll bet that a good chick lit book, a rippingly scary horror tale, or a brilliantly crafted mystery will all find their way to the marketplace and they will all succeed.
The freak shows of the book world, things like DA VINCI CODE and the Harry Potter books (which virtually every child will read, and then refuse to read anything else), will have their day in the sun and then shrivel up and die. DA VINCI is in many ways the grownup version of the Potter books. Marge Simpson described DA VINCI best: "The chapters are so short that they go by really fast and it makes you feel smart."
I'm sure I had a point with all this. Oh, yes. The agents, the editors and the publishing companies are all guessing, and gambling with the stockholders' money. How long has it been since you urged me to start writing my Music Business in Las Vegas memoir? In February, maybe? Okay, I didn't immediately drop everything else and start on it. But already THAT genre is being pronounced dead? Well, I swan!
Lucky me, I have a completed paranormal novel, complete with sex between the living and the dead -- a real laugh riot. (Actually, it is.) Maybe I ought to submit it, based on the "what have I got to lose?" premise.
Thomas Gifford loved it, but said no one would ever touch it...and, for that matter, nobody would publish Noel Coward if he were alive and writing today. Well, come Halloween, he'll have been gone eight years (Gifford, not Coward). The whole literary world seems to have turned around since then.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-22 05:26 am (UTC)>>So how do agents get themselves into a position where they can make these carved-in-granite pronouncements that "chick lit is dead," or "mysteries are sagging," or "paranormals are really hot?"<<
They're salesmen/saleswomen. I finally came to understand this the last time I talked to one on the phone. This last conversation just reinforced it. Let's make a comparison--
Let's say that I am the cosmetics counter manager at Wacker's (an imaginary department store). For some time, our mascara has sold like whoa. Now it's falling off. No matter what I do, I can't sell it. We have about twenty faithful customers who come in every month or so and browse, and I can usually sell them stuff. In fact, I call them when something new comes in that I think they would be interested in. They have been turning down the mascara, even saying they don't want to use it any more, that they are using Avon's or that they are skipping it. Even if I love mascara myself, I have no choice but to quit buying it from our supplier for the store and move on to another product. If customers have been emptying the lip gloss aisle, I start punching that up with them, sending for new lip gloss brands and styles and bringing it up with the regular customers. That's how I make more money.
That's what's happening. Editors (for whatever marketing reason) no longer want to see the manuscripts in that category that the agents send over. It's a waste of time for the agents to send them. So they don't take them on. What they take on is what editors seem to be buying.
More than one agent has said stuff like this. I have no reason to doubt that it's happening.
>does a paranormal HAVE to have a vampire or a werewolf in it?<
Nowadays, that's what they mean--ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and so forth. A good old ghost story may or may not appeal. They look at what is selling. For whatever reason, the old "Bewitched" witch stories are tougher to sell--and fantasy editors don't want them, either. At least not when I pitch them.
You should probably submit your old paranormal book! It really IS like the stuff that I hear about in three-book deals.
I'll get with the rest of the comments in the morning. . . .
no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 12:27 pm (UTC)Couple of things:
She said I should write a book of my heart and not try to aim at the market, as the market is fickle and by the time you have a book finished, what WAS selling is no longer selling. Fine, I know this. But then she turned around and told me that the market drives what the editors buy, and therefore drives what the agents try to sell to them . . . so that means you HAVE to write to the market, in another sense.
Actually, what that means is, there are some things that are completely out of the writer's control. Stephenie Meyers happened to have a vampire story come into her head at a time when teen vampires are still hot. If she'd waited a year or two she might never have gotten published. I think the advice here is realistic, just frustrating: the market controls whether we get published, but there's no real way to guess what the market will want when we're offering. It's hard to write with your fingers crossed.
She emphasized that my family is wrong to assume that just because I can't get published the writing is crappy or that the books are bad . . . saying that the thing I so often hear, "If THIS got published, and it's bad, then yours must be EVEN WORSE," is not true in this case (in her opinion.)
Your family, if you'll pardon my saying so, wouldn't know its ass from a hole in the ground regarding your writing, and it would do you a world of good to discount their opinions utterly. And stop asking them to read your stuff. It gives them power to hurt you, and they reliably use it. I get angry every time I think about that.
The "Just write a better book" advice that I constantly hear from the published contingent in the blogosphere (you know, the people who say, "You would be published if you wrote a better book") is not useful, in her opinion, as this book IS a good book . . .
However, "just write a better book" is and will remain good advice because it's the only part of this process any of us have any control over. I finally shelved my first attempt at a mystery and am trying to write a better one--even though I have this feeling it won't be a book that will sell. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.
And just speaking of the Marfa Lights book, remember that one had plotting issues (like the guess that turned into fact without the character ever learning the critical piece of information) that would have seriously put off a mystery editor but was easy to fix. You know? There are still things to work on, even absent reader preferences. I have a whole element of my plot to rework based on discovered facts. And on we go.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 12:30 pm (UTC)[speaking of university presses. Generally, a university press publishes its professors, their proteges, their grad students, and a very FEW others. Also, there's no prestige or future in that, most of the time. It's as if you're admitting you're not good enough for prime time. I appreciate what she wanted to convey in saying this, but it's not a route with potential, IMHO. I want New York. That is what I strive for. I'm not going to settle for karaoke night and amateur hour when I want "American Idol." Then, if I sing off key and out of tune, so be it. I had my chance. *flashes chest*]
Oxford University Press? Really? :) Honestly, though, I always assume university presses publish mostly scholarly non-fiction. I would never think of sending a novel to one.
With that said, do have a think about why it's New York or nothing for you. I am going to be very presumptuous here... If you want New York publication to prove to your family that your writing is worthy of their respect, that isn't going to work. If they want to abuse you, they will. You'll either have the wrong type of book or not hit the best-seller list or not get reviewed in the right places--they will find reasons to denigrate your accomplishment if they are going to. Sports movies of the 80s notwithstanding, no bully is ever convinced to stop bullying someone by the victim's accomplishments. They either find a new target or grow up enough to be ashamed of themselves.
I have no trouble believing in the state of mystery now, which means small mystery presses--which are prestigious places among serious mystery readers--are far more likely to be interested in publishing the kind of traditional stories you write. The downfall of big publishers right now, it seems to me, is they are either publishing obvious crossover stuff, or (with some exceptions) the kind of cookie-cutter stuff that fills a publishing calendar but is pretty disposable in the genre. Your mysteries would be taken more seriously, and be likelier to find a home, with a mystery-specific press like Poisoned Pen. That could lead to New York, or you could continue to work New York with your other books. But in the current publishing environment, New York seems more like something you could build to than an immediate goal.
I'll shut up now.