Writing, as they say, is 1% inspiration, 99% sussuration? — no — usurpation? — no — constipation? … perhaps I should look it up … aw who am I kidding, I’m too lazy to look it up. Besides, the quote is probably not even about writing. It’s probably about cooking or origami or that type of genius typified by the invention and occasional theft of new and exciting technologies related to sound, light, projection, and flouroscopy. The point is … I’m too lazy to remember my point.
Still waiting on word from the publisher…. My agent tells me the editor who wants to acquire my book is getting second and third reads — a process that apparently takes infinity. In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed being reminded by friends and loyal diascribe readers (both of them) of all the many rejections other writers have received. So, in the spirit of celebrating the way the publishing industry has so often failed to embrace greatness on first read, I present the following tales of rejection.
NOTE: Instead of conducting careful research and then artfully crafting these stories into a cohesive whole, I’ve gone ahead and just cut-and-pasted willy nilly from Wikipedia. I hope this is legal. If not, please address all complaints to my attorneys, Chris Mandeville and Bill “Papa Bear” May.
#1:
“The novel was rejected by twelve publishers. It was finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company publishing house, thanks mainly to a member of the editorial board, Archibald Ogden, who praised the book in the highest terms (”If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you.”) and finally prevailed.[23] Eventually, The Fountainhead was a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial security.”
#2:
“It was then rejected by nearly twenty book publishers before finally being accepted. One editor prophetically wrote back “I might be making the mistake of the decade, but…” before rejecting the manuscript. Chilton, a minor publishing house in Philadelphia known mainly for its auto-repair manuals, gave Herbert a $7,500 advance, and Dune was soon a critical success. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965 and shared the Hugo Award in 1966. ”
#3:
“In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on an old manual typewriter.[34] Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evans, a reader who had been asked to review the book’s first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript.[29] A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a small British publishing house in London, England.[35][29] The decision to publish Rowling’s book apparently owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next.[36] Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books.[37] Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.[38] The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. Rowling has said she “nearly died” when she heard the news.”
#4:
“For two years, Butcher floated his manuscript amongst various publishers before hitting the convention circuit to make contacts in the industry. After meeting Butcher in person, Ricia Mainhardt, the agent who discovered Laurell K. Hamilton, agreed to represent him, kick-starting his writing career….Six months after Butcher was signed by Mainhardt, Storm Front, the first novel in The Dresden Files, was picked up by ROC for publishing. It was released as a paperback in April of 2000.” (For those of us who attended last year’s PPWC — we know that it took several unsuccessful novels before Jim Butcher got The Dresden Files underway. What I don’t recall from his speech last year was that he was only 25 when he wrote Storm Front. Bastard.)
#5:
Okay. I’m bored and disillusioned now. While I’ve found several other rejection stories over the last five hours I’ve spent reading Wikipedia instead of working on anything productive, none are quite as compelling as those above and there are a great many famous authors who did just fine without being repeatedly rejected. Perhaps being rejected is not as sure a sign of success as…say…success. Perhaps I should consider the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of authors who ONLY receive rejection letters. And what about those writers who get published and even get a nice advance, but then fail to sell out their advance and then fail to get another contract? Ever. Or authors who publish book after book, year after year, and yet never make enough to commit wholeheartedly to writing, instead needing to work as janitors or customs officials? Yes, what about dear Herman Melville who died penniless and ignored on my birthday in 1891 and whose obituary in the New York Times named him Henry Melville?
Which brings me back to my original point…perspiration. When good ole’ Thomas Alva Edison, or–as I like to call him: Thomas Alva Edison–made his quote about genius being largely a function of perspiration, he was probably referring to exertion-related sweat–the pure and manly kind that comes from hard work and dedication. But what about the cold, sticky, slimy wetness that comes of fear and trembling, disillusionment and disappointment. Perhaps Thomas Alva Edison should have said: genius is 1% inspiration, 90% manly perspiration and 9% flop sweat — or 1% inspiration, 2% manly perspiration, 17.3% stick-to-itiveness, and 437% holy-crap-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life- I-have-two-kids-and-a-mortgage- and-I-don’t-even-really-want-to-be-a-writer-when-I-grow-up- because-I-can’t-take-the-godawful-loneliness- oh-the-terrible-loneliness- besides-I-feel-a-call-to-do-so-much-more-with-my-life- such-as-becoming-a-Unitarian-Universalist-minister-or-maybe-even-a-taco-barker-at-the-state-fair sweat.
I am to jobs what last week’s featured guest on Jerry Springer was to his 11 wives, 31 children and 2 girlfriends: trouble. My résumé resembles a hobo’s wardrobe–ill-fitting, mismatched and full of holes. I have been a bookstore clerk, an office lackey, director of multimedia development for a software company, a waiter, CEO of an internet startup, a moving estimator, center manager for a tutoring company, a model, project manager for a web development company, (okay–the model thing is a bit of a stretch–I was nine years old and I did an hour of modeling for a math text book–but I got paid $75, which was a fortune to a third-grader and damnit, it made me feel good), a substitute teacher, executive producer of a youth television show, a journalist, regional academic director for a leading test prep company, and a landscaper.
Just as Buford Leroy Jones III earned the devotion of his many chubby trailer tramps, I have seduced many an interviewer into hiring me. While Buford Leroy clearly excelled in charming the extra large panties off his beloveds, I have always been a star employee in my first few months, winning rapid raises, shining reviews, and the respect of my superiors. Inevitably, however, Buford and I remember our real purpose, our one true love. For him, it’s the newness of a fresh-won fanny. For me, it’s writing.
At a certain point, I simply can’t stand not having sufficient time to write and I tender my resignations. I then spend as many weeks or months as I can writing as much as I can before my financial fears catch up to me and I am forced to seek out my next great sugar mama. And yet, as bumpy a ride as it’s been, it’s been a good one–a fulfilling one–and for all the voices that’ve reminded me how foolish the writer’s career is and how silly I am to leave good jobs for total uncertainty (or rather: certain poverty), I simply can’t help myself. In the words of the inimitable Buford “I gots to get my thang on. I just can’ts help myself.
P.S. — No news is no news from the publishing house. I continue to wait eagerly for word, but have given up expecting anything any time soon.
During his wonderfully well-polished and well-delivered seminar last weekend, Jeffery Deaver said that he’d heard it said that being a writer is like always having homework. How apt! During my first few months in my first real job after college, I reveled in the thought that the end of the workday meant the end of work for the day. How nice that was, after sixteen years of school in which I routinely procrastinated and subsequently constantly worried about homework…to finally relax. But then, growing quickly bored and annoyed with my job (a pattern that has come to define my “career”), I decided I had to make it as a writer. Ten years later, Jeffery Deaver’s statement reminds me that it has been a full ten years since I’ve been able to fully relax–to feel like my work is done for the day at the end of the day and that I’ve earned some time off. Instead, every moment not spent working on my writing is a vaguely troubling moment in which I regret my lack of progress. Then, when I do write, I’m always in a hurry to get as much done as possible since I’m already SO far behind. So, thanks Jeff, for reminding me of that.
I would also like to thank Mr. Deaver for helping me better define my work. I’ve struggled for some time to accurately identify what it is I write. Is it literary fiction? Is it mainstream? Experimental? Is it post-post-modern, neo-deconstructionist, disestablishmentarian seriocomic realist fantasy? No. Thanks to Mr. Deaver, I now know exactly what I write. I write ham toothpaste. Or rather (protests my inner vegetarian)–I write broccoli toothpaste. When friends in my writer’s group suggested that my work seemed to belong to a new genre, I’m not sure that’s the classification I would have preferred, but perhaps it fits.
Mr. Deaver’s point, and it was a good one, is that if you want to make it as a writer and lead a writer’s life, it’s best to think of your work as a commodity. Your job as a writer is to craft books that appeal to the largest possible audience and that consistently meet people’s expectations for enjoyable, page-turning stories. Having just finished reading “The Blue Nowhere” (staying up late to get to the end), I am very impressed by Mr. Deaver’s ability to do just that. I’m also impressed by the discipline the man seems to have in regards to his work. From what I could tell, he treats his profession very…umm…professionally. In fact, I’d almost guess that he’s the kind of guy who gets to the end of a well defined workday and feels he’s done with work for the day. Imagine that? In case you’re wondering, I’m not in any way trying to cast aspersions on Mr. Deaver’s commitment to his work, nor am I being the least bit sarcastic. With sincere admiration, I can see that Jeffery Deaver has found a way to succeed in an industry with a .0001 percent success rate. This is why I hate him.
Ha ha. I am kidding of course. In no way do I feel jealous of Mr. Deaver and his 24 books, many of them bestsellers. I don’t envy his trips around the world on book tours, his movie deals, his…Motha’-fu#$@ @@#$%#%!&*&(*!@##@$!…numerous writing awards. Indeed, I wish him continued success in all his endeavors and I very much (honestly) look forward to reading the next book of his that’s sitting on my night table.
While I don’t think I’ll ever write the literary equivalent of Crest or Colgate, I do think I can learn a great deal from Jeffery Deaver’s approach. One of his most significant pieces of advice was “Promise and don’t deliver.” I’m an impatient person. When I write a conflict, I often resolve a great deal of it as quickly as the story allows. I do this in part because I’m always in such a rush when I write since I always feel so far behind. Still, regardless of the reason, this lets me and (unfortunately) my readers, put my books down. But, I can fix that.
I can also fix my workflow. The trouble with feeling like I’m always behind schedule, always a week late on a homework assignment, is that I rarely feel I have the time to take the time to do things right. In school, one of the reasons I always did my homework at the last minute was that doings so forced me to do the minimum to get a good grade rather than letting myself get carried away with any particular assignment. But writing is not just some assignment. I want to get carried away. I need to. When the odds are a hundred thousand to one that you’ll be successful as an author, you not only need to be good, you’ve got to be brilliant. Jeffery Deaver was 40 when he began to write full time. I’ve still got time to “make it.” Perhaps instead of spending 8 minutes on a book outline followed by 8 years frantically trying to write said book, I can spend closer to Deaver’s 8 months. I can chip away and make gradual, but steady progress…while I keep my readers turning pages.
My books might not turn out to be pulse-pounding thrillers. They might be thought-provoking tragi-comic literary fiction instead, but if they’re compelling and well written…
When Jeffery Deaver polled the audience about what kind of toothpaste they used, most people used a major brand. But some of us, enough of us to be counted, used Tom’s.
My two-year old sometimes has trouble pronouncing the “s” at the beginning of words. She also inhabits a very elaborate fantasy world where she and those close to her are assigned the roles of characters from her favorite books, TV shows and movies. While this is generally pretty cute, it also produces quite a bit of anxiety around our house. On the one hand, I worry that I rely on the electronic babysitter too much and am therefore a bad parent. On the other, I really, really want the good roles.
When Callie started to be Dora the Explorer, I was very excited because I got to be her super-cool animal-adventurer cousin Diego. (My wife became Boots the Monkey (Dora’s best friend) and our new baby Wyllie, for a reason I’m not clear on, became Abuela (Dora’s grandmother)). Unfortunately, Diego has his own show and Callie soon wanted to be him too. This led to a very significant and troubling career change for me as I was demoted to Swiper the Sneaky Fox. Jen, of course, got to stay Boots the lovable monkey.
I scored a major coup, however, when Callie decided her little red jacket made her into Little Red Riding Hood. I became Mr. Whittle the Heroic Woodcutter, Wyllie became the Grandmother (typecasting’s a killer in this business) and Jen became the Wolf. Ha ha. Take that, Boots.
When Callie started showing signs of interest in Mulan, I immediately started lobbying for the role of the Heroic Captain Li, with such subtle enticements as “If you’re Mulan, maybe I could be Captain Li and maybe you could have an extra cookie.” This left Jen as Mushu, the Eddie Murphy-voiced dragonlet. Another victory. Unfortunately, Callie took the cookie and forgot our arrangement. Soon enough, I became the Big Dragon. This is not nearly as cool as it sounds. The Big Dragon has about two minutes of screen time, mostly consisting of him crumbling to dust when Mushu tries to wake him up. Blast it!
But today’s diascribe is not really about the politics of fictional-character assignments in my home. As I mentioned earlier, my daughter Callie has trouble with “s.” This means that when she becomes Scooby Doo (or rather, ‘cooby doo) and I become Shaggy, and Jen becomes Velma, and our dog Zaida becomes Fred, and our dog Turtle becomes Daphne, baby Wyllie–showing serious range–becomes Scooby Doo’s nephew, that spunky little pugilist: Crappy Doo.
My point is–and yes I have one–that very subtle differences can make very big impacts in the world of language. For the last few days I’ve been preparing for a workshop I’ll be co-leading this weekend with the incredible Chris Mandeville. We’re opening for Jeffery Deaver who will be conducting a seminar about writing commercial fiction. Deaver is a bestselling author of thrillers and mysteries who, unlike many of his peers, manages to write very successfully in numerous sub-genres of his category.
To begin the workshop, I will be leading an analysis of the first pages of four of Deaver’s books. What has amazed me in my preparation is how perfectly Deaver sets up tension from his very first words and does so in a style that’s elegantly consistent with his sub-genre. He achieves his effect, among other things, through exceedingly fine-tuned word choices. For example, consider the second line of Deaver’s book The Blue Nowhere: “Lara Gibson sat at the bar of Vesta’s Grill on De Anza in Cupertino, California, gripping the cold stem of her martini glass and ignoring the two young chip-jocks standing nearby, casting flirtatious glances at her.” Let’s analyze, shall we?
First, the name: “Lara Gibson.” I may be reading too much into Deaver’s thinking here, but “Lara” is the first name of the ultimate techno dreamgirl Lara Croft and “Gibson” is the last name of the greatest hero of cyberpunk, writer William Gibson. Whether intentionally (as I suspect) or unintentionally, Deaver has created the perfect name for an intelligent and attractive woman in the milieu of the techno-thriller.
Next, the location: a bar on De Anza in Cupertino, California. We will later learn this spot is directly across the street from the headquarters of Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems, and thus a perfect place to kick off a book about computers, high intrigue, and murder.
Then comes my favorite part of the sentence: “gripping the cold stem of her martini glass.” When my college writing professor lectured about salient details, he couldn’t have picked a better exemplar than this. Our cyberbabe (whose attractiveness is confirmed in the final part of the sentence by the flirtatious chip-jocks) is not just holding or touching her glass, she’s gripping it. This single word gives us desperation, fear, and when you note that she’s gripping the mere stem of a glass, small comfort. If I were in the mood for gripping, I’d much rather be gripping something significant, something mortared to the steadfast earth. But the stem of a glass…? Inwardly, subconsciously, I cringe, imagining that delicate stem snapping in Lara Gibson’s tight-fisted grip. And, of course, it’s not any old glass in Lara’s hand. It’s a martini glass. So, we now know our heroine’s drink of choice and it confirms her stature as a suave cyberbabe, otherwise at home in this fancy Silicon Valley grill. Finally, showing how a single, tiny adjective can dramatically enhance the mood of a sentence…we get that the tightly gripped stem of the martini glass is “cold.” Perfection.
A decade ago in the California desert, I had the opportunity to go horseback riding with my uncle. He gave me a choice between a very passive older horse who didn’t much like to run and Sneaky Snip, an ornery former race horse who’d been abused in his racing days and, as a result, was now “a bit unstable.” With all the confidence of a 21-year-old convinced of his infallibility, I chose the latter, not bothering to ask what exactly “a bit unstable” meant.
Having ridden horses fairly extensively during my tenth grade year, I considered myself quite a horseman. I knew, for example, to always keep the ball of my foot in the stirrup (rather than the back of the foot, because if you get your foot hooked in the stirrup and then get thrown, you’ll end up with at least one broken bone if not several). I knew that riding is all about your legs and the reins; hanging onto the saddle with your hands when a horse takes off not only surrenders control but can also potentially loosen or shift the saddle (not a good thing). Finally, I knew to be extra careful when heading back toward the stables, since horses like to get home quickly when they know they’re on their way.
The ride started off fine. We made our way through some brush-covered hills and then galloped for a while down a long sandy wash. On the way back, cocky about how well I’d done with the infamous Mr. Snip, I took the lead on a particularly narrow and treacherous stretch, one that skirted a ridge with a steep drop on the right. On the left there was a rocky, cactus-, scorpion- and rattlesnake-filled deathyard. The sun blazed overhead. The wind stilled. Just as we were passing the vultures perched on a pile of human skulls…(okay, okay, I’m exaggerating a bit–there was actually a slight breeze)…Sneaky Snip took off. Bucking wildly, he darted through the deathyard, trying his damnedest to get me off so he could enjoy the rest of his trip home. I dropped the reins and grabbed the pommel of the saddle like a fundamentalist grabbing her Bible at a nudist, gay Wicca convention. My left foot lost its stirrup while my right foot got tangled in the other. I took a moment to wonder whether it would hurt more to have my leg broken or my head crushed and whether there was such a thing as being drawn and halved. I also noted, with a wee bit of concern, that I was no longer in the seat of my saddle, but rather sitting on the horse’s rear end. This made the bucking action even more…well…fun. Indeed, for the flicker of a second between flashes of my coming doom, I realized I was having fun. That’s about the time Sneaky Snip stopped bucking, slowed to a bumpy trot and then, just like that, stopped.
For the last two months, between caring for the brand new baby, struggling with a massive escalation in work load at my job, taking the GRE, GMAT, and LSAT back-to-back, getting sicker than a plague monkey with irritable bowel syndrome and a head cold, and volunteering as a precinct captain for Obama–I’ve felt a bit like I was back on that horse’s ass being bounced toward oblivion. And yet–with 99th percentile scores on the tests, a blowout for Obama (he got 8 of 8 delegates in my precinct), and watching my newest daughter learn to smile–I have to admit the last month’s been perhaps even more fun than that ride from hell. Of course, I’ve mentioned nothing about my writing.
How’s that going, you ask? The short answer: about as well as Hillary did in precinct 747 last night inasmuch as I’ve produced bupkus. The long answer: tomorrow, I’ll be sufficiently caught up on work to take a couple of hours in the morning to write. Perhaps Friday will give me a couple of hours as well. And heck, my tests are done, grad school applications are the better part of a year away, and my new assignment as a delegate for Obama and Congressman Udall doesn’t require anything from me until March 8th.
Eventually, miraculously, if you hang on long enough…the horse stops.
I have wonderful timing. This week’s theme of rejection could not be more apropos. The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award first cuts were made last night and it looks like I’m not one of the 836 people who advanced to the next round. I have yet to receive my official rejection email but I imagine it will come along soon enough. Or it won’t. Perhaps I’ve also been rejected from the rejection email receiving list.
Feeling less than jolly, I called my very good friend Todd Fahnestock (who is one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever had the fortune to know), and he told me about Frank Herbert who spent years trying to sell Dune. After it got rejected by 20 publishers, he sold it to a tiny publisher in Philadelphia that, according to Wikipedia, was primarily known for auto repair manuals.
I tried to read Dune once. Couldn’t get into it. Nevertheless, Herbert’s undeniably a legend who, along with Heinlein, changed the face of the sci-fi genre.
Feeling somewhat cheered, I visited Amazon to check out some of the competition. This was perhaps not the wisest course of action since I was still feeling a tad ungenerous. Not surprisingly, almost all of the entries I scanned were–how to say this in a way that will make me sound enlightened rather than bitter and washed up?–utter crap written by morons with no more understanding of story, pacing, or grammar than the average jelly fish. Perhaps I was not quite as cheered as I imagined.
After a good night’s sleep, however, I’m feeling much better.
The point of the last week’s entries has been to explore rejection. I’d originally planned to lead up to a semi-profound statement about how, in a world with no wild frontiers left for ambitious men and women to explore and conquer, we are left to challenge ourselves–to prove ourselves–by seeking to live the life we truly want in a world that would prefer to make cogs of us all. I was going to write about how the journey to publication and success as an author is truly a mythic journey fraught with endless perils and profoundly stacked odds, wherein one must steel oneself to endure and, one day, triumph. But I’m not going to write any of that. Not today, anyway.
I’m not going to do it because it all rings a little hollow this morning. I think there is only one valid response to rejection. Only one necessary response. Keep writing. So that’s what I’m going to do.
As painful as this is, here goes: rejection a-go-go!
(P.S. - If you’re curious why I’m engaging in this bit of masochism, please see my previous post)
1/9: I must admit that I enjoyed Caleb Cross and Bigger Falkirk as characters, and I thought Brown handled the challenges to their friendship thoughtfully. But after talking about it here, I have to pass: Ultimately, we weren’t convinced we could sell this as successfully as another house might.
11/12: I am sorry to say that after much deliberation I am not going to bid on the Warrior’s Son. This was a maddening novel–at times brilliant, at other perplexing, and in the end I did not figure an elegant editorial solution to tie the disparate elements into a cohesive whole. The author can write well, but at times, it seemed his writing got in the way of the storytelling. I wish you all the best with it, but I will pass.
10/30: Many thanks for giving me the chance to consider The Warrior’s Son. I was hugely impressed by the imagination and narrative energy Brown has packed into his tale. I especially liked the parallel stories of Julio & Jose and Caleb & Bigger and the way the “historical” story commented on the (our?) modern one. I loved that Brown made that loquacious and deadly book a character–and a likeable one at that! While I suspect that much of this novel went over my head, I nonetheless applaud Brown’s obvious belief that there is a place for religion and mysticism and parable within a “commercial”–and often profanity-laced–story. He’s a writer full of contradictions and I think there is something intriguing and appealing about that.
My problem is that I’ve never had a good handle on commercial fiction…and I think I’m the wrong person to steer this book to its widest possible audience. As out-of-touch as I am with the market for commercial fiction, ****** Press is even more so. We’re all about serious, review-driven literary fiction and left-wing political nonfiction. I’m trying to get the Press to stretch in some ways, but I think The Warrior’s Son is just too far afield from what we do well.
10/22: I read THE WARRIOR’S SON this weekend, and while I liked the premise, I’m afraid I didn’t feel that Bigger and his childhood friend were compelling enough as protagonists for this to have a Gumplike appeal; and ultimately I’ll have to pass– just didn’t quite love the characters enough to feel I could pursue here.
10/17: Thanks so much for sending this to me. I can see why you’re so taken with it, and I found it truly original, but I didn’t fall in love. Please send me something else very soon, and I really appreciate having a chance at this one.
10/9: ****** of ****** sent a lettter saying he found “the vividness and imaginativeness of the writing delightful, and the characters he’s conjured are fascinating. Caleb Cross especially stands out. Brown, however, tries to cover too much in this novel, leaving the reader unsatisfied.”
10/3: Mr. Brown is such a delightfully quirky writer, and I really enjoyed the strangeness of this novel. I liked, too, the story within the story, of Julio and Jose and Las Mil y Una Noches.
But in the end, I just didn’t find myself responding to Caleb’s voice—which is what drives this—enough to think that I’d be the right editor, and so I’m going to have to decline. I’m sure you’ll soon find someone else who feels differently, so let me wish you and Mr. Brown every success upon publication. I’m sure you’ve got another hit on your hands, here.
9/25: I agree that Aaron Brown has some real talent – he’s clearly smart, knows the English language, and has a sense of humor. Sorry to say though, that his story failed to sweep me up and carry me away. I got lost in the prologue, then located again as I began to read. But my list is so small, and truly firing me up is so difficult.
9/21: You are an excellent writer and there are places that are laugh out loud funny–not an easy feat. However, this fell apart for me around page 150–I felt like the story should be more plot-driven. Along those lines, I really wanted the revelation about Bigger and ***** to feel as central to the book as Bigger and Caleb’s relationship. It ended up feeling like too much of a sidelight that came out late in the game. I think that my biggest overarching feeling about the book is that this is a guy’s book that needs a male editor. I just didn’t relate to Caleb’s anxiety or the friendship as much as I wanted to.
I do think that this will be fantastic with a little more tweaking, and I would be happy to refer it to a male editor here at *****.
So there I was, Salt Lake City 1997, final round of interviews for the Rhodes Scholarship. I shouldn’t have been there. The previous rounds had included enormously talented individuals from Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the like. As an example, one of the guys at the State level, a Harvard chap, had started a non-profit whose board members included Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter AND he was a nationally ranked squash player with something like a 4.0. There was NO way I should have made it this far. And yet, there I was. I now had a 1-in-4 chance of claiming one of the most prestigious academic prizes in the world and setting on a path that would undoubtedly lead straight to the White House and from there to various Nobel prizes and, probably, the establishment of world peace. All I had to do was charm a room full of former Rhodes scholars who were all highly accomplished judges and CEOs and college presidents and the like. I had one of the last interview slots and when my time came…how shall I put this? Have you ever laughed at the raving trailer drunks on COPS who scream incoherently whilst tearing their clothes and flinging random objects at the camera guy? I wish I’d been that well spoken. The point of revealing this little bit of misery from my past is–I took that loss hard. I won’t go into the psychological morass of why this particular rejection hit me like a bookie’s baseball bat to the knees of my confidence, but let’s just say I returned from SLC a bit of a mess. One of my professors, in an attempt to lift my spirits after the fact, told me: “if you don’t fail and fail dramatically on a regular basis, you’re not trying hard enough.”
Ten years later, I have pulled that statement out to lift my spirits more times than I can remember. Yesterday, upon receiving my umpteenth rejection, however, I found I didn’t actually need it. Instead, I just felt motivated. I just couldn’t wait to finish editing my second book and get it into the hands of my agent.
So, to better make sense of why I’m not a quivering mass of failure jell-o, I’ve decided to devote the next few entries to thoughts on rejection and even to sharing with you the rejections I’ve received. I’ll remove the names of the editors and publishers who’ve sent the rejections, because I bear them no ill will, but since I’m devoting this diascribe to showing the entire path to publication (however long it turns out to be), I need to share the stumbles right along with the victories.
So, stay tuned dear reader, and by the way…if you ever feel inspired to share some of your stories with the Pikes Peak Writers community through this thing that is still not a blog, send me an email. Defeats or victories. The coming week’s theme is all about rejection, but I’ll be moving on to a discussion of how to make a living being an unpaid, undiscovered writer after that.
Toodles!
When I was growing up, my mother seemed to hold a profound faith in the goodwill and active involvement of a just universal power–be it God or the fates or what have you (she was never big on labels). After overcoming a great many significant challenges (cancer, poverty, divorce, and numerous and sundry injustices), my mother was ready for a payout. Thus it was that her retirement plan, investment portfolio, and future well being were all tied up in lottery tickets. I think my mother considered the lottery to be a morally guided institution bound to the laws of karma rather than a voluntary tax for people who were bad at math. Our life of financial struggle and hardship would find meaning on the day the lottery gods finally smiled upon us and judged us worthy to be millionaires. It was only a matter of time, a waiting game. Now…I doubt this is a perfect (or even remotely fair) description of my mother’s outlook, but it’s the outlook that translated to me in my impressionable youth.
Determined, with all my teenage gumption, to strike out from the nest. I decided I would not be a lottery thinker. I had wanted to be a writer since at least first grade, but after years of hearing how stacked the odds were against my success, I figured I would pursue a much more respectable and stable path first and then, after making my first billion, retire to a writing career in the comfort of my plush, walnut-paneled study.
Perhaps you haven’t guessed, but I do not have a plush, walnut-paneled study. Indeed the only walnut in my house is edible. I’m saving it for protein should our mountain of debt ever erupt, smothering our meager earnings in a river of hot financial lava and forcing my family and I to consider nuts and berries less as ornamental complements to neighborhood bushes and more as a second job.
The trouble was, as I grew into something resembling an adult, despite my stern disavowal of longshot lottery thinking, I continued to imagine that some mystical power afoot in the universe would grant me salvation in a single stroke when It decided I was ready. Throughout high school and college, I dreamed up countless businesses and started a few. Out of college, as the Internet boom peaked, I began installing the granite foundations of my debt mountain whilst trying to start an Internet business of my own. Over the next few years, I tried countless other schemes, some political, some entrepreneurial, all of them bound for disaster.
As I see it, there were three reasons for my persistent series of non-successes: 1) my mostly-unconscious faith that some divine moral hand guided my future led me to believe that if I got a rejection, it was simply not God’s will that I succeed in that manner. In other words, I gave up easily and often. 2) Most of my schemes involved relatively miniscule investments of time and experience, compared to the quite massive hoped for rewards. The world does not often favor such schemes. 3) Indeed, the odds against building a truly successful business are no doubt nearly as formidable as the odds against getting published, particularly if the entrepreneur in question lacks the hard-earned experience or contacts necessary to ensure success. I suppose I just thought that in America, this thriving entrepreneurial promised land, business was easier. I also thought, perhaps a wee bit foolishly, that since I didn’t really want a career in business, I would more easily achieve one–(my version of “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes, you’ll get what you need.”)
In other words, when all was said and done–the blind faith in cosmic kindness, the minimal investment for maximum return, the ridiculous odds–I was betting my future on lottery tickets. Sigh. Stupid hindsight.
Anyway, all these years, as I have been playing the longshot lottery, I have hacked away in the background, slowly and deliberately, at my writing. I tried a couple of queries at various points and allowed the rejections that came through to disillusion me, as though the gods themselves had ruled me unworthy. Finally, however, this summer, inspired about how to write a halfway-decent query, I decided to abandon the notion that divine interference had anything to do with querying and I grabbed Kristin Nelson’s list of agents who accepted online queries (a copy is in the ‘07 PPWC Handouts packet) and, each week, I would research some of the agencies in that list until I found three-to-five viable options and then I would customize three-to-five query letters and send them out.
(A note on customization: for every agency I would read through their list of authors–ideally finding one or two I’d read. If I hadn’t heard of any of the authors, I’d research them until I found some who seemed to write in a similar vein to mine. Then I’d include a line like “Given your representation of so-and-so, I hope you’ll enjoy my…” Through this process I actually found several authors I ended up Amazoning, some of which I really enjoyed. If none of the work represented by a particular agency seemed even remotely similar to mine I wouldn’t waste mine or the agency’s time on a query.)
As I’ve said in prior posts, it took quite a while to hear back from some of the agencies (in fact I just received a form rejection from an early summer query a couple of weeks ago), but when the good news came it was good enough.
It’s possible that all the doubters who’ve tried to dissuade me from this path are still right. Perhaps writing is a mostly impossible dream, a lottery for romantics and the verbally incontinent, but I’ve decided I don’t mind the longshot thinking my mother gave me. I also appreciate the faith she inspired in me. One thing I neglected to mention above: when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, the doctor gave her wretched odds of surviving and only if she underwent very aggressive chemotherapy that would leave her sick and exhausted for months. She rejected the doctor’s treatment plan and decided to cure herself by changing what she ate and how she lived. The doctor called her a fool and told her she’d almost certainly be dead in six months, but she worked hard at her healing day-in and day-out. Twenty-five years later she’s healthy as can be. And, of course, still playing the lottery.
The following is a query I sent before getting help from Kristin Nelson. It’s rather painful for me to post this, because it sucks like a hole in a spaceship, but sometimes we learn from mistakes and it’s more fun to learn from other people’s mistakes than from our own, unless of course, we’re learning what a mistake it is to eat deep-fried brownie sundaes off the naked bodies of hordes of gorgeous plus-sized models, which is a mistake I wouldn’t actually mind making:
Dear Ms. Aragi,
As a big fan of Jonathan Safran Foer and Colson Whitehead, I am hopeful my completed literary novel, The Merchant’s Son, will be a good fit with your agency. I am including the first five pages below.
When Caleb Cross’s best friend returns from adventuring in South America, he brings Caleb an old book as a souvenir. Caleb fails to notice the book is cursed. A few months later, Caleb’s friend walks into a Mega-Mart in a suit of armor, slices apart an Olsen Twins Make-Up Kit display and gets shot in the helm for his troubles. Caleb blames himself. He drives into a line of parked cars. As Caleb is being busted out of the hospital by a silver-haired stalker who claims to be Caleb’s real father and who has been anonymously mailing Caleb tarot cards, the cursed book starts chatting.
This is, of course, all part of an elaborate plan by Caleb’s interfering mother to help him learn to see the world as it truly is.
The Merchant’s Son is a tragic story about the stories we tell ourselves and the identities that imprison us. It’s about sacrifice and atonement, the troubles of the world, prophecy, and open rebellion.
Sincerely,
The worst part about this was that it was to humor as bleeding sores are to sexy. As you can imagine, this and several of its close cousins were flatly rejected.
Then Kristin helped, pointing out, among other things, that if you’re trying to sell a somewhat funny book, you should try to be at least a little funny in the query.
This next letter is the one that eventually got me my agent (and a close cousin of this letter got a request for the full manuscript after I’d already signed with my agent–yes, it sometimes takes 6 months to hear back when you query):
Dear Stalwart Query Reader at Levine Greenberg,
Given your agency’s representation of Lawrence Douglas and Gayle Brandeis, I am hopeful you will enjoy my novel, The Merchant’s Son. The novel, which is just over 100,000 words, should appeal to fans of Christopher Moore, Dave Eggers, and Jonathan Safran Foer.
In an effort to cure his normally cheerful best friend of a troublesome spot of depression, Caleb Cross gets said friend shot in the head. Caleb must now cure his best friend of a coma. If only his interfering mother, ex-CIA-agent-turned-Shaman-of-the-Sacred-Owl-Tribe father, biblical nymphomaniac mentor, and Amazon-witch-queen-wannabe girlfriend would stay out of his way, he might succeed. Of course, that’s all assuming he survives the murderous plots of a talking book with a homicidal streak and a love of irony. The Merchant’s Son is about friendship and the search for God, virtual romance and Shakespearean porn, the need for revolution against corporatocracy and the consequences of tearing up a Mega-Mart with a broadsword. Well, it’s like that anyway, but funny.
I’m including the first five pages below.
As I’ll describe in an entry later this week, a few months and several rejections happened before I actually got my first yes, so I revamped the letter once more. This last query (like the others) isn’t brilliant, but it did get me a couple of requests for partials (both of which led to requests for the full thing, and both of which I had to withdraw when I signed with my agent).
Dear Ms. Strachan,
I hope you’ll be interested in my humorous literary novel, “The Merchant’s Son.” Complete at 100,000 words, my novel should appeal to fans of Christopher Moore, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Jorge Luis Borges.
A cursed, talking book might very well be trying to kill Caleb Cross. At the same time, the love of Caleb’s life has decided she finally wants to commit to him. Unfortunately, she’s only ready to settle down in a virtual world, and only with someone she thinks is a wealthy and athletic globetrotting stockbroker from New York City. Caleb is not wealthy. He does not globetrot. Rather, he lives in a ramshackle one-bedroom in Denver and struggles constantly to overcome his costly addiction to starting non-profit organizations. When Caleb’s normally effervescent best friend, Bigger Falkirk, returns from a South American adventure with a spot of the blues, Caleb decides the one thing he can do right in his life is to help his friend get his groove back. Soon enough, Caleb gets Bigger shot in the head. Caleb must now cure his buddy of a coma, assuming the talking book and Caleb’s virtual lies don’t catch up to him first.
I live in Colorado with my wife and daughter. I first published poetry in small literary magazines when I was 12 and then decided to take a short cut to literary superstardom and write a novel. Eighteen years and eighteen thousand attempts later, I’m beginning to suspect this wasn’t the shortest of short-cuts. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy.
Best,
Aaron Brown
P.S. If you’d like a brief sample of the writing, please read on:
Anyway…I hope that all this shows you don’t have to write a perfect, shining query to get an agent. You merely have to write something that piques their interest. And keep sending until you find one kind enough to request your stuff. Later this week, I’ll describe exactly how my query process went.
Also, if you’re curious, I’ll post the first 5 pages of my book tomorrow, since those were also part of the query. If you’re not curious, I’ll post the first 5 pages of my book tomorrow, since those were also part of the query.