Here’s to a spectacular 2010 for all of us, including the economy. I’m taking the day off, and hope you do, too!
Archive for December, 2009
Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 31st, 2009What do you bring to the table?
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009One of my favorite bloggers, Cal Newport, writes about how to succeed at college. And yes, I’ve been out of college for donkey’s years, so what am I doing reading his blog?
I’m getting really good information on things like hard focus and how to excel. A case in point: his recent blog post – which he says is about not quitting your boring job if you’re nervous, because there’s probably a good reason why you’re nervous, but which is really about developing the skills and abilities that separate you from the pack.
Time and again, I’ve tried to help writers understand that they have to offer something not everyone else can offer in order to succeed. Anyone can write “Ten Ways to Organize Your Garage,” but not everyone can tell us about the costs of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley for small businesses.
On a writer’s forum, a writer recently posted about how an editor expressed concern that she wouldn’t be able to ghostwrite a book she wanted to ghostwrite because she’d never written a book before, and writing a book is a very different endeavor from other kinds of writing. The poster was discouraged and wanted to know how she could overcome this objection. I understand that this is frustrating: how can you get published if being published is a requirement for getting published? But the fact of the matter is, there are ten gazillion writers who have written books, any of whom would be a better bet for this editor. There’s nothing you can say that will change that.
But there are things you can do. You can develop a proposal based on a book that only you can write, because you have expertise in x, fluency in y, or access to z. Beyond that, as a writer, you need to recognize that “I can write about anything” isn’t the kind of calling card that gets you anywhere.
Merry Christmas!
Thursday, December 24th, 2009To everyone who celebrates Christmas, may you have a particularly merry one!
I will be slower to respond than usual to queries but I am not closing up shop, so do feel free to submit.
“You’ll regret it!”
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009Like most agents, I have to reject the vast majority of pitches I get. Even if I loved them all, I simply don’t have the time to represent three hundred thousand writers, give or take. So I have to pick the writers I think have a good, salable project and — here’s the key — aren’t going to drive me insane. I’m already close enough to the edge, thank you.
So, a tale of two rejections. Author A sent me a proposal, which I rejected. She sent me a follow-up note asking a question. She was gracious, polite and obviously appreciated that I’d taken the time to respond to her original query. (I’ve had enough pitches land in the Black Hole of Non-Response that I wouldn’t do that to other writers.) I responded to her follow-up note and invited her to pitch me again any time she had another project. I wasn’t rejecting her, personally, and she understood that. She was intelligent, professional and the kind of person I would take on as a client in two minutes, just as soon as she had a project I thought I could sell.
Author B also had a project that I rejected. In her follow-up note, she abused me, the industry and all of the other writers who are achieving umerited success, then implied that I would regret passing up the opportunity to represent her.
Are you kidding me? Even if some other agent takes on this project, sells it to a huge publishing conglomerate for a significant advance AND it’s a best-seller, I am ALWAYS going to consider Author B a bullet dodged.
In fact, I’m starting to think about rejecting everyone who queries me just to see how they take it. The ones who don’t lose their minds will pass the test and be invited to submit again.
I know rejection is hard. I was getting rejections when half the people who read this blog were still writing with crayons. I cannot count the number of times I’ve written the “I’ll show you, you dimwitted asshat!” letter. But I have never sent it, and I never will. And neither should you.
“Thank you for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever.”
Thursday, December 17th, 2009A colleague of mine passed this saying along to me some years ago. It seems his martial arts grandmaster would greet each morning by speaking those words to the universe. For some reason, this struck me as a beautiful thing to do and I’ve taken to making this my own ritual.
Which is not to say that I actually have no complaints whatsoever. I have plenty of them, many of which I’m tempted to share with the universe (“Thanks, but I could have done without the food poisoning last week.” “Thanks, but I really liked that car and wanted to keep it.” You know.)
The truth is, complaining about those problems doesn’t get me any closer to solving them. Sure, we all need to vent sometimes, and frequently it’s harmless – and can even keep us from taking an action that we might regret. If a friend tells me how irritated she gets with her son’s behavior, maybe the vent will help her clear her mind and find a better way to interact with her son (i.e., better than screaming at him about his behavior.)
On the other hand, complaining about a problem to the wrong person often doesn’t help anything. If I’m disappointed in how a colleague treats me, then complaining to my friends about his behavior isn’t useful. I might ask for their feedback on a course of action, or if they think I’m overreacting, but until I tell my colleague that his behavior is disrespectful, I’m accomplishing nothing – and will have the same complaint the next time I deal with him.
This has been a tough year for all of us – people have lost their jobs, or are doing the work of three people, or find themselves with their toes hanging over the side of the abyss. What worked before doesn’t seem to be working now. Ranting about those idiots in Washington who let it get to this – and who still seem remarkably clueless about what life is like for the average individual – can make you feel better momentarily. But in the end it just reinforces the idea that there’s nothing you can do about any of it.
By focusing on what’s right with my life instead of complaining about what’s wrong, I feel happier and more powerful. I feel stronger and less battered by unpredictability. And I see that even the less-than-stellar events in life can have something to teach me. So whenever I start to get frustrated and feel a rant coming on, I try to stop myself say, “Thank you for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever.”
It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try.
Finding the time
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009This is the time of year when everyone else in publishing seems to take the month off and drink a lot of eggnog. I, on the other hand, always find myself scrambling to get everything done and feeling overwhelmed by the effort.
-
Partly this is because I’m thinking, “The year is almost over! I didn’t do every single one of the things on my to-do list!” What can I say? I like having everything crossed off my to-do list.
-
Partly this is because I like to celebrate the holidays is if it were 1952 (”Let’s string popcorn!” “No need to buy that! I can make it!” “Let’s make a really complicated candy recipe that fails six times but we can’t give up until we get it right!”), ignoring the reality that I have a job or three and that to-do list competing for my time.
-
Partly this is because my daughter has so much time off from school and I work from home, and you do the math.
But as ever, I have a solution to my time-crunch problem. I just have to dig it out and remember what it is.
1. Step back. I ask myself, “What are you doing, why are you doing it, what fills up your day?”
2. I figure out what I can drop, which is usually the least rewarding thing, like watching relatives fight.
3. I ask myself, “What can you hire out/get help with?”
4. I look over my to-do list carefully for the ”shoulds” that don’t really matter to me.
5. I try to become more aware of what’s wasting my time. For example, spending the morning surfing the web when I should be finishing a proposal.
6. I schedule the time. Whatever is important needs to be put on the calendar.
7. I consolidate. For example, when my daughter has time off school, I like to plan a few things for her to do so she doesn’t get bored and whiny while I’m trying to work. (Not that my daughter would ever be bored or whiny.) I have cookies that I want to bake. I have a friend who’s also a single mom and who needs a break to do holiday shopping. I need to give said friend a present. So, I’ve invited my friend’s daughter over for a cookie-baking session with my daughter, which will accomplish all of these things at once.
What are your strategies for making the best use of your time?
Update: What I’m Looking For Now
Thursday, December 10th, 2009I’ll start with what I’m not looking for. I’m not looking for children’s books, whether fiction or non-fiction. Please don’t query me for these projects, even if yours is different and wonderful. That may well be; I’m just not the right agent to figure it out or advise you on any matter pertaining to writing for children (or young adults).
I am still interested in seeing memoir, but it does have to be extremely well-written, have a story that relates to larger issues (that is, it’s about something greater than some bad things that happened to you) and also isn’t on a subject that hasn’t been done ten thousand times. I know, I know, I’d like a million dollars, too, please.
I would love to see more serious, narrative non-fiction in addition to self-help and how-to. For these, I do need to see either a good platform or the willingness to get out and build one (this is best shown with evidence that you’re getting out there and building it).
I’m not seeing as much fiction as I would like, which surprises me since I thought everyone on earth was working on a novel. I love genre fiction, but it has to be really well done to stand out. I am also eager to see women’s fiction, especially what we might call “book club fiction.”
As always, please send a pitch letter with either the proposal (for non-fiction) or a few pages (for fiction) attached. Your email should be your pitch letter; don’t ask me to open an attachment to read your pitch letter. Before I open attachments, I want some evidence that you’re a real person with a real project and not some computer hacker trying to infect my desktop with a virus.
For non-fiction, if you don’t have a proposal ready, don’t query me. For fiction, if you don’t have a full manuscript polished and ready to go, don’t query me. If you will have a heart attack if I suggest edits to your material, don’t query me. Other than that, I’m really not hard to get along with.
Thanks for listening.
Being a professional
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009Today I was going to write a gentle blog post about how to conduct your relationship with your agent/potential agent, but Jessica over at Bookends beat me to it.
Two of the most important things she says are, “I don’t want an author who disrespects me” and “agents are only as successful as their reputations.” The latter is the reason why an agent will suggest revisions to your proposal/manuscript before sending it out; the former is the reason why an author and an agent will go their separate ways if the author is unwilling to listen to the agent’s feedback.
Here’s the thing: a professional is able to accept feedback, criticism and suggestions without taking it as a personal attack on her worth as an individual. I understand that this is hard to do: I have received any number of edit letters that have made me seriously consider joining the Peace Corps, where at least they’d appreciate me. But I’m a professional, working in a highly competitive business, so here is how I respond, no matter what I think of the feedback:
Thank you so much for your suggestions. I can see that you have thought them through carefully and I’m sure they will be an enormous help in the revision process. I will consider your feedback carefully as I get to work and will let you know if I have any questions.
Then I shut the hell up for about three days.
By that time, I have eaten enough chocolate and drunk enough tequila that I’m willing to entertain the idea that perhaps my agent/editor does have some worthy ideas for how I can improve my project. Then I start making the requested changes. I make them even if I don’t agree with them.
It’s that last that many writers find impossible to do, and since they don’t agree with anything the agent/editor says, they respond to an edit letter with, “Nah, I don’t wanna.” Which is not the response of a professional. Trust me on this.
Once I have made the requested changes, I very often see that the agent/editor is right, or at least not wrong, and so there’s no problem. I submit the revision and collect a check. But sometimes, not as often as most writers would like to believe, the agent/editor is wrong. But by having made the change, I can show that I tried, explain why it’s wrong, and then begin a discussion about what else could be done to fix the weakness the agent/editor sees.
This is how I show respect for my agent and the editors I work with, and it’s what I expect from my clients (who are all so wonderful that this post is absolutely not about any of them). Graciously accepting agent/editor feedback on your work is basic professional behavior; don’t personalize it. And for heaven’s sake, keep some Ghirardelli on hand for all such emergencies.
Thank zeus for newbies
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009I have a colleague who sometimes grumbles about newbie writers. “There’s another nurse/teacher/yoga instructor/high school dropout with no relevant credentials. What makes her think she can break into freelancing?” This is a point of irritation for a lot of established writers: just because everyone can write, everyone thinks they can be writers — as if learning the craft and the business were mere trivia. I admit to being amused by people who freelance part-time for a couple months, land an assignment, and then think they’re in a position to tell others how to freelance. In all honesty, though, I was one of those people once — I had more enthusiasm than actual knowledge or experience. There are days when I’d be happy to trade some of my knowledge and experience for a big dollop of that wide-eyed excitement.
Here’s the thing. I’d much rather talk to the person who thinks she can be a writer just because she wants to be than to the one who only whines about how she’d like to be a writer but ten thousand factors keep her from pursuing that career. One is active, if potentially misguided and naive; the other is passive, a victim who won’t do anything about it.
When I talk with a newcomer who has more ideas than any actual ability to implement them, I get inspired. I remember what it was like to feel as if anything is possible. It helps me shed some of my cantankerous “We already tried that and it didn’t work” attitude. It helps me recall why I started writing and freelancing in the first place. These are good things.
So keep the newbies coming. We all need them.
On getting to the next level
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009Every single stage of my writing career has been a pain in the ass. I think the last time my love of writing was pure and unadulterated with any concept of “why does this have to be so hard?” was when I was five and the lightbulb went off in my head and suddenly I could write in sentences. All of the labor that had gone before — identifying the letters of the alphabet, naming their sounds, sounding them out into words, figuring out how to hold the number 2 pencil in my hand so I could form large, awkward letters on my Big Chief tablet — all of that was overshadowed by the fact that I could make sentences that anyone could read: my parents, my teacher, my siblings, a total stranger whose name I didn’t even know. Just as intoxicating was the fact that I could make things up — I could lie through my teeth — and no one got mad at me as long as I prefaced the bald-faced lies by saying, “This is a story.”
Sometimes I forgot to preface the lies, but I was five, what do you expect.
From then on, though, the process of getting to the next level — figuring out how to put those sentences into paragraphs and the paragraphs into chapters, how to make a plot work, how to create characters, how to write dialogue — has been a pain in the ass. On the non-fiction end, it’s been the same: figuring out how to write effective queries, putting together book proposals, writing and promoting books — all one enormous pain in the ass.
Which is not to say that the process has been unrewarding. Obviously it has been or I’d have given up a long time ago. I’m just saying that getting to the next level may be joyful, it may be fulfilling, it may feed some deep inner need for meaning, but it is also plain hard work. A lot of the time the work goes nowhere. Half the time I’ve got nothing to show for all those words I spill on the page except the understanding that this is not working. Which, in the end, isn’t all that useful a piece of knowledge.
Because I have a bizarre affection for the Stoics (”be of good cheer, all men are mortal”), I found it very comforting when a friend of mine recently pointed out, ”We’re way past the stage where this is going to be easy.” Which, as a mantra, may not be as catchy as “Just Do It” but I like it better.