Books that have nothing to do with vampires

I just finished CATCH A TIGER BY THE TOE by Ellen Levine. It’s a middle grade novel set in 1953 about a girl trying to keep a secret of the fact that her parents are Communists. Levine paints a textured historical setting for a character you love, all without beating you over the head with the knowledge that you’re learning something important. I highly recommend it.

I’m having a hard time putting down QUAKING by Kathryn Erskine, about a girl in a Quaker foster family who learns to confront old ghosts and political bullies in a conservative town at the beginning of the Iraq war. Again, I highly recommend it.

I emailed Erskine, and asked her how she pitched a YA novel with political content to agents. (In my experience, politics are a hard sell in times of scary recession and technological upheaval in the publishing industry).

In her encouraging and friendly reply she told me that her editor scooped it up without agent representation. I’m happy when good things happen to good writers–truly–but these catapult-to-publication stories are hard to take when you’re told at every conference to find an agent.

I think I’ll take out my frustration on Stephanie Meyer for whose books I’m feeling a deep and abiding loathing.

Back in the game

The revision is done, the agent queries are going out a few at a time, and two agents have asked to read the full manuscript. This all feels really, really good.

There are hundreds of great agents out there, most of them in Manhattan. I have notes on agents who handled similar books, emails from writer friends who heard so-and-so speak at a conference, Publisher’s Weekly blurbs about people who’ve left their old jobs to start at a new agency, and a solid list of yet-to-be-researched people listed in various writer references. It’s kind of overwhelming.

There are wing-nuts out there, people who try to charge you money to read your manuscript, and agents who never communicate with their clients. Weeding out the wing-nuts is another tricky business, requiring many hours on AbsoluteWrite.com (the writer’s water cooler) and a bunch of other writers’ blogs.

I tell myself that finding an agent is a process, not an end-game.

Right.

Free at last

Yahoo! I finished the revision last Friday, shopped it to two honest friends, and updated my query and cover letters.

I can’t overstate my relief at having this stage of the text-murdering process behind me. I shaved 8,000 words, picked up the pace, and moved the politics into the background. Best of all, I still respected myself in the morning.

Yesterday I sent it out to the agents who had expressed an interest in the revised version.

There are lots of other great agents out there but I have no time at the moment to research them. November is full of client work: I’m writing a workbook on diagnosing mental illness in young children for a child psychologist, fundraising for a human services organization, and writing a donor letter for a women’s clinic.

The amount of obsessive needlepointing I do is proportionate to my fiction-writing anxiety level. I’ve finished half a Christmas stocking in the last two weeks.

Mid-point

I’m one week into my novel-revision.

I sailed through the “isn’t this fun to be back with my characters again?” stage in about five minutes.

Wallowing in the “I’m so bored with these tedious people I want to scream” phase is taking quite a bit longer.

I’m making progress. I am. It’s just that every sentence is so familiar at this point (almost four years into it) that I can’t tell if it sparkles or thuds. I’m sick of each and every syllable.

My friend Amie Klempnauer’s new book SHE LOOKS JUST LIKE YOU, on being her daughter’s non-biological lesbian mom, is about to be published. I’m happy for her. No, really.

Accountability

My friend Sue asked me last night how the writing was going. I told her I planned to execute my quick and painful revision (filed, by the way, under “BF Revision”) in a two-week period starting on the 19th.

She said, “And you really stick to those self-imposed deadlines?”

I told her I do when I’ve told the whole world about them.

Countdown to revision

I’ve blocked out October 19-November 1 as The Two-Week Period During Which I’ll Kick Ass On Revising My Manuscript.

I’m in the “acceptance” stage of grief regarding my paid reviewer’s insightful edits, and think it may be possible to make major changes without selling my soul.

In the meantime, I’m freelancing again in a big way. God, it feels good to earn a paycheck. In these last two years of creative writing I’ve told myself that my professional identity isn’t about my earning power. I lied.

I’m writing web content for a progressive early childhood development non-profit and ghostwriting two books for its founder. It’s a lot to take on while trying to publish a novel but what the hell.

Mulling is work, too.

I always underestimate how much the end of school will affect my work schedule and concentration. Can you call yourself a blogger if you haven’t written a post for three months?

After numerous rejections, I’ve paused in my search for an agent. It occurred to me that the problem might have to do with my manuscript.

I paid a former Harcourt Children’s Books editor and two-time YA author Deborah Halverson to critique the whole thing. A month ago she sent me ten pages of very insightful feedback.

The upshot is that I can, in fact, write but that I need to carve out most of the scenes that made me want to write the book in the first place if I ever want to get it published. She says that the chapters with the most political content slow down the pace. Ouch.

I’ve moved on from pouting to serious thinking. I think I can do a major revision based on her suggestions without killing all of my darlings. I have high hopes for September.

I described my anxiety about getting my book published to a friend of my dad’s. I ended my rant with, “and I’m 40!” He told me that in his professional opinion as a financial planner, I have fifty-three more years to get it done. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Kissing and not telling

The National Endowment for the Arts has been paying me to lay fallow for a month.

Just kidding.

The downside to keepng a wannabe author’s blog that may or may not be viewed by potential agents, I’ve realized, is that it would be tacky to disclose the details of my search for representation.

Without naming names or numbers, here’s the deal: I don’t yet have an agent.

I do continue to receive encouraging, detailed feedback from cool people. One guy, a well-known, mid-career agent, just read the first 50 pages and emailed: “It has all the earmarks of a hot property, and I think you’re going to have no trouble finding an agent and publisher for it—it has a sort of Juno-esque feel that is very timely.”

Then he said he didn’t think he would be a passionate representative for it.

I fought the impulse to stalk him with an email reply saying “WHY? WHY? WHY?”

He told me I was “one to watch, and best of luck with your career.”

This kind of feedback is way better than, say, a kick in the head, but not nearly as cool as a signed contract of representation.

I send out another query with each rejection, and seem to have four agents reading the full manuscript (which can take months) at any given time. I’m nowhere near done querying my non-ranked A-list of superstar agents, the result of months of reading interviews, Publishers Marketplace, and “water cooler” reviews by fellow writers; attending conferences; and researching a handful of friends-of-friends-of-friends.

This is all well and good but I turn 40 on Monday.

Fictional marketing conversation with Bob the Agent

Me: I think we’re in the middle of a huge political moment. The rules are changing, the parties are changing, and America’s trying to make sense of it all. Is it me or is this a great time to market a teen love story set at the end of the Cold War, our last big watershed moment?

Bob: Don’t tell me how you think your book should be marketed!

Me: I thought you guys wanted writers to be savvy about marketing and build platforms like..uh..blogs.

Bob: Right. Platforms are good. Blogs are good. I need to know you can develop an audience for your novel!

Me: But teens who don’t remember America’s last big watershed moment would likely read a fun book about it as they try to make sense of this one. Don’t you want me use my policy geek experience to point out trends that may be producing an audience for me, with or without my platform?

Bob: Nope.

Me: You want to be the one to figure out the marketing angle.

Bob: Right.

Me: Even though I have twelve years of public affairs experience, including marketing.

Bob: Exactly.

Me: But I should be prepared to speak confidently in public, do interviews, and do readings to market the book?

Bob: Now you’re getting it.

Me: I think so: before I get published I’m supposed to be an artist with nothing on my mind but the glory of polishing my craft.

Bob: Yep.

Me: Then after I get published, I metamorphosize into a publicity and sales machine with my finger on the pulse of the Obama generation.

Bob: I’m so glad we had this little talk.

Me: Right. It’s all so clear now.

Bob: Great. Go back to your garret.

Me:

Mixed messages bug me

Four agents are reading my full manuscript. A few more are reading a partial manuscript. I’ve had two live phone conversations. I’m researching agents’ recent deals and author lists, have a dozen queries out in the universe, and still have yet to contact over half of the people at the top of my favorite agents list. So far, so good.

The rejections get taped to my office wall: most have been in the form of personal notes with encouraging advice. “I’m not the right agent to represent this but good books will find a home” kind of stuff. I really can’t complain.

But what the hell.

Mixed messages bug me.

If I could take what I get from the friendly feedback, the occasional slam, the advice at conferences, the online news, and the magazine interviews, and boil them all down to one conversation with Bob the Agent, here’s how it would go:

Bob: I’m looking for that fresh new voice telling a story I’ve never heard before!

Me: Here you go.

Bob: But this is a political novel.

Me: Right.

Bob: But teens don’t read political novels.

Me: What about Joan Bauer? Mitali Perkins? David Levithan? Janet Tashjian? They’ve all done well with their political themes.

Bob: Well, yeah. But kids don’t want to read any more political novels.

Me: The same generation of young adults that just turned out in record numbers to elect Barack Obama?

Bob: Right.

Me: You’re saying they won’t want to read about the very subject that’s galvanized them for the past two years?

Bob: Exactly. Kids these days are reading LOOKING FOR ALASKA and THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS. I’m looking for those books.

Me: Um, yeah, but John Green and Ann Brashares already wrote those great books.

Bob: Well, I’m looking for the NEXT one of those.

Me: Here you go.

Bob: Teens aren’t interested in reading a book set in 1989.

Me: How do you know? Historians are sure taking a hard look at 1989 these days. Maybe you’re underestimating your audience?

Bob: What do you think I am? A taste-maker?

Me: Um. Well. Yeah. Kind of.

Bob: Kids these days want to read TWILIGHT! They want another HARRY POTTER!

Me: But publishing insiders have been telling us not to write any more vampire novels. I thought that trend had peaked.

Bob: Right. It has. No more vampire novels. I want something fresh!

Me: Here you go.

Bob: But this is literary. In these tough times kids want to escape! No more downer novels!

Me: This isn’t a downer novel. It’s actually an upper novel with a fun, steamy sex scene at the end.

Bob: I can’t sell sex to school libraries!

Me: I thought you wanted us to write the books that librarians love and kids hide from their parents.

Bob: Right.

Me: Here you go.

Bob: Publishers in this market want commercial fiction.

Me: Wasn’t the Depression was the best market Americans have ever seen for literary fiction?

Bob: Right! I’m looking for the next GRAPES OF WRATH!

Me: