The waiting is the hardest part.
About two weeks ago, maybe three, maybe four, I sent the plot treatment and 100 pages of novel number two - which I am tentatively titling The Gods of Arizona - to my agent.
My fantasy is this. He loves it, he sends it to my editor. She loves it and offers me a decent advance (by decent I mean larger than my first advance....Okay, who am I kidding? Much larger). The advance buys me time away from the freelancing to devote the to the book and then, bingo bango, I get invited to a nice writing colony. Like Yaddo. Or Ucross. Or Jentel. And I go there for a chunk of time this summer, finish the book. When the first book comes out it does well (Who am I kidding? Very well) and the second book is already in the pipeline, locked and loaded and ready to follow shortly on its heels.
That's the fantasy.
The reality, at least for now, is that I'm waiting. Waiting to hear from my agent which is step one of a sequence of events which may or may not go the way I'd like.
After a couple of weeks I sent my agent an email asking if he'd read it yet and he said that no, but he'd get to it asap and in the meantime a couple of other people in the office "Had read it and enjoyed it very much." Hard to know how to take that. While it's certainly good news that someone somewhere has read it and likes it and certainly good news that David will pick up the pages with a positive first impression there is always the paranoia that a) no one has read it and he's just trying to humor me b) the reason he personally hasn't read it is that I am his 3956th most important writer c) these unnamed people who are enjoying the book are the non-English-speaking office staff who are using the pages as cleaning supplies or the ever-popular d) an asteriod is going to hit the earth the day before my first book is due to come out and this whole process is inherently doomed.
In the meantime, I wait.
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May I offer three author’s viewpoints that may tip the scales even further towards optimism?
ReplyDeleteThe first is Andrew Sullivan’s recent post “Self-Branding And Writing” on the /Atlantic Monthly’s/ blog /The Daily Dish/. He opines that the publishing industry deserves the rapidly decline that we are witnessing. Because “the establishment” is no longer the /only/ conduit for authors to reach their audience, blogs and other digital media are creating what Jill Priluck calls a paradoxical relationship that is killing the traditional industry that feeds authors, but lets them thrive more immediately to their audience.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/02/self-branding-a.html
In that sense, this blog looks ahead of the curve – Wait, are we participating in your branding!?!
The second viewpoint kinda reaches back to The Great Escape. Joseph Cambell's words focus on the human eliment of any such journey (creation, tunneling); that the spiritual meaning and value only can accrue through the struggle. It can be a little hokey when people claim “Struggle builds character” -- that’s an oversimplification of what is offered here. Instead, it could be argued that Cambell points to archetypical human experiences in the nature of the struggles we take on, and that the articulation made in your struggle adds detail to our understanding of this condition.
Continuing the spirit of this second viewpoint, maybe Joseph Cambell’s observations were updated in Lewis Hyde’s /The Gift/. Mr. Hyde posits that an author’s message (or gift) wasn’t really meant to participate in traditional commerce (cash-for-publishing), but participates in a wholly different Gift Economy, where critical human experiences are traded where no real "price" can be set. How can one set a value on being affected by Huck Finn?
Hmm… is optimism the right word? Waiting is also about being judged.
One day without me and all of a sudden there's an asteriod.
ReplyDeleteI can't set a value on being affected by Kim Wiley. If I HAVE value it is as much due to an author who is inspired by poop and spoon tunneling as it is to any other influence in my life.
I also can't pay Kim Wiley's power bill, either.
And since the power bill has value, it makes sense to blend reality into fantasy (something I as a Piscean have trouble doing).
Here's a thought: Remember the Bruce Willis movie with the asteriod? And did you know Mother Theresa was a Virgo? And that Bruce Willis's birthday is March 19th? Follow me now, I'm on a roll. You, as a Mother Theresa type, have given the world a gift they get to open this Christmas and you are going to continue to give these gifts that both trade in critical human experiences and participate in traditional commerce. Reality is going to smack you in the head with a big check and an even bigger following. I, (it's always about me anyway) as a Bruce Willis type, am going to demolish every asteriod that threatens any of your book releases. I am confident in my ability to do my part. (For a small finder's fee, once you get rich and famous. And I'm not kidding.)
if we're branding you, who gets to hold the iron? I'm not.
ReplyDeleteBarbecue, anyone?
Thanks, guys, for giving me more to mull. Jason, the link you posted was really interesting. Funny how some people define this blog as "a rant" while others have told me "it's a great marketing tool." One notion seems so out of control and the other seems so calculated.
ReplyDeleteI for one am thrilled that you found a way to work a Tom Petty quote into this blog about the lit world.
ReplyDeleteHuh, are you sure you didn't mean RICHARD Petty?
Waiting must've been tough for him, too.
Rants are angry. your posts are definitely not.
ReplyDelete