The Vacuum and the Sparing of Expectations

I want to know everything about what is going on with my agent's efforts to find a publisher for my latest manuscript - the big one - the one I took two years to complete. It's only natural to want to know the potential and the realities: how long it will take to get it under contract, how much money I can expect for the advance, who he's talking to, what they think. But I don't get to know these things, and I know why. My agent has been in the business for a long time - more than half a century, in fact. He's got it down. He knows what he's doing, and what he's not going to do. He's not going to set bars of expectation. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense. From my personal perspective it is sheer agony. The vacuum of information is killing me.

This is how it goes and how it is. I am paralyzed by this lack of information. I can't write with all this doubt - not much anyway. What I do manage to write is pure garbage. It is distracted nonsense, gibberish. Kind of like this post.

Still, it is a lesson-learned for me, and should be as well for the new writers following this blog. Don't expect to know what's going on. I'm sure each agent is different, but I'm guessing that the more experienced ones pretty much follow the same mantra. Don't set bars of expectation because chances are your client will be disappointed with the ultimate results.

So I'm going to have to put up with the vacuum and live with my own expectations and get back to the gibberish. I can always edit it later.

Edits Across the Pond

In my website, I answer a question about how I go about writing. I liken it to oil painting. The idea is the blank canvas. The first blush of words is the primer, also known as gesso. I always try to get that part done as quickly as I can. Basically, like brushing on the gesso, I go for it. I know that it is really important to have that primer on so that there's something to build on - something solid - but it doesn't matter too much how it looks yet. Just get it done and get ready to paint in all the wonderful colors and textures. Once the gesso is on I take the opportunity to type "The End" on the last page of the work. I'm far from finished and in fact, I'm just getting started, but the psychological benefit of typing those words in is huge - especially for my delicate psyche.

Now it's time to do the real work and, in writer's parlance, it's called editing. I spend as much time editing as I do the initial writing, sometimes more. After I've submitted my 'final' script, I wait a while; an eternity it seems. Then guess what? My editor comes back to me with comments and suggestions (also known as ripping the heart and soul out of your work, with special emphasis on passages and characters you hold most dear). And then - you guessed it - I'm back to editing and rewriting. This back and forth will go on until the publisher gets what they want and the finished product looks nothing like the product you had in mind when you first pulled out the canvas.

I just sent my first rewrite (of the Avery McShane script) back across the pond to my publisher in London. We may go back and forth a few more times. After that, the really, really nit-picky grammar editors will get a hold of the script. That ought to be fun.

The Edits Arrive

Two days ago I learned that the edits to Avery McShane would be "...with you by March 10th." I received them yesterday. That is a new record. I never expected them so soon. I never really expected them by March 10th, to be perfectly honest. Not based on past history.

I scanned the edits and I almost had a heart attack. I've calmed down a bit since. I've got some work to do, and I'm going to get to it. Right now.

I'll let you in on the reasons for my nearly fatal response to the edits after I've gotten into the project a bit deeper.

Nose to the grindstone.

The Next Stage

I received an email this morning from my editor at Bloomsbury Children's Books. We are now at the next stage in the process of getting my first book published, and it's all new to me, and I'm excited, and I can't wait, and I'm scared, and - I guess - all of the rest of the same things that all of the new writers before me have felt.

I had emailed her yesterday about the timing of everything, so I could plan ahead. She's in London, so I didn't receive her response until this morning. She said that she had just started reading through the Avery McShane manuscript again, and had started her editing, when she received my email. What a coincidence. She will be sending me her edits in the next few weeks which, I am learning the hard way, is not the same 'few weeks' that most people know. In the publishing business, it means that I will receive it probably some time this year. No matter. I'm stoked.

She would like me to respond to her edits by April 11th, so maybe there is hope that the few weeks timeframe will hold up this time.

She is an amazing motivator and she makes me like a real author that's written something special. Some of the snippets from the email include, "...you have done a tremendous job..." and "...very exciting again to be picking up properly with Avery!"

Well, I'm excited too.

The Check

It's been on my desk for months. In fact, it is still in the same envelope with the Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. logo emblazoned on the upper left hand corner. It is the check from my first book deal advance. Weird isn't it? I apparently value having it on my desk more than depositing the money into my account at the bank.

I will make the deposit later today. I will miss the comfort of seeing it there. It served a purpose lying there in plain site. It reminded me that I could do it. I could write, and I could do it well enough for Bloomsbury to pay me for it.

I guess I will now have to draw that comfort from the framed letter from Sterling - the one that reads:

"Dear Leigh,

Here is your copy of our representation agreement for your files.

I look forward to working with you for many years to come.

Best,

Sterling"


Or maybe I'll take a peak every now and then at the last line in my first book contract, where they welcome me to "Bloomsbury's List."

It's time to move on, I guess, but I'll miss seeing that check on my desk.

Excerpt from The Cowboy of Nicaragua

     "Smoke was always in the air. It came from the hills and mountains, from the burning of felled jungle trees and underbrush and it came from the smoldering carcasses of campesino homes and from the charred bodies of the campesinos huddled in the corners. It came from the camp fire Chicho fed with the wood of the avocado tree he cut down in the afternoon and from the cigars of the two men gathered around the yellow light of the campfire. 

     The brown man with the cowboy hat drank from the bottle of beer in one hand and smoked from the cigar in his other. He sat in his wooden chair hunched over the flames without burning his skin and the smoke hesitated under the brim of his hat before rising into the overhanging branches and vines of the tropical canopy. In his eyes the flames danced and his face showed no emotion. 

     The tall pale man with the short red hair sat across from the cowboy in a wooden chair leaning away from the smoke of the campfire. The metal insignias upon his shoulder flickered with gold light and his face showed little emotion. The cigar never left his thin lips and the ash grew long without falling away to the dirt at his feet. The tobacco smoke rose into the recesses of his blue eyes and he squinted constantly with the sting of it but he did not remove the cigar from his clamped teeth."

Meeting a Legend

I will finally meet my agent in person, in March, in New York City, in Greenwich Village. He is a legend in literary circles. I should know. I have read everything I can about him. Sterling Lord is one of those agents that does not advertise himself, or the agency named after him. He does not need to and, apparently, does not want to, but talk to anyone in the know, and you'll get the picture. I did, and I do.

I am excited, and I am a bit more than a little nervous. Mine is a clear case of "I am not worthy." Still, I am buoyed by the fact that he decided to represent me, so he must see something in my writing. He doesn't need more money, and his list of past and current clients is a Who's Who whose books have sold hundreds of millions of copies, and many of the stories have made it to the big screen.

This legend has taken the time to actually read my work and, incredibly, he has personally helped me edit that work. He is in his nineties, and he has spent precious time working with me. Little ole me.

I have made presentations to shareholders in the boardrooms of big corporations, negotiated hundred million dollar deals and worked on drilling rigs in the middle of guerilla territory in South America - child's play compared to meeting Sterling.

Should be fun.

The Value of Encouragement

I received some encouragement from my agent yesterday. Technically, it was from his assistant, Mary. I have learned over time that he speaks through her half of the time, so I'll take it.

Soon after I completed the final draft of the Paleopeople manuscript, my agent sent it out to his closest and most trusted editors. I assume this. That was back in November. I've been on pins and needles since. That manuscript took two years to complete, and my future as a writer hangs in the balance. Yes, I sold my first book (the Avery McShane adventure) to Bloomsbury, but that won't be published until February 2012, and Paleopeople is an epic that could be big.

It is hard to concentrate on writing when you're dedicating so much thought to something other than what you're currently writing. All I have been able to think about is Paleopeople. It consumes me. It paralyzes me. Despite this malady, I continue writing, kinda. I submitted the first draft of the Achilles Wept manuscript last month. It's a thriller and the target audience is older. It is a new genre for me. Encouraging news part one is that they are reading it now.

After submitting Achilles Wept, I turned to an old project I had started originally called The Journey to Iguazu, which I recently re-named The Pirates of Xingu. Believe me when I say that neither title will survive. Anyway, I just couldn't get into it. I kept on fretting and wondering about Paleopeople. So I started yet another project called Yankee Go Home. It is historical fiction about the roots of anti-American sentiment in Latin America - a collection of short stories following the life of Chicho as he participates in and witnesses the many instances of U.S. intervention in the region. It all starts in 1928, with the Banana Massacre in Colombia. Some of you may recognize event from Cien Anos de Soledad, the classic by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I did my research, figured out where I was going with the project, wrote the first short story, and submitted it to my agent.

Encouragement part two is that they seem to like it - at least that first short story. Mary wrote that "(we) think you might really have something there.  Our advice is to just keep writing at this point." I cannot tell you what a shot in the arm this is. I wish I could get a dose of it every day. I'd put out a book a month, which would really throw a wrench in my agent's slow moving gears (the whole business is slower than molasses, not just my agent). You see, whereas I think that I'm moving slowly and not putting out enough work, they see it differently. Mary finished the email with, "You are so prolific it is hard to keep up." 


I know what she meant with that last comment. They don't really have the time to read everything I'm submitting and still keep up with their other clients. Sort of a veiled "slow it down, will ya?" But I'm going to take it as encouragement (part three), and keep on writing - prolifically. 

Regarding Ellipses

Rein them in. Don't use them.