submissions

A flawed but earnest study of publishing methods

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

I have begun an unscientific experiment in publishing. It’s unscientific because the sample size is statistically insignificant, and I am comparing a nonfiction guide to a novel. But bear with me.

Participant A is my yet-unpublished novel, THE IDIOT’S TALE. I know you won’t take my word for it if I told you it’s a good book, so I’ll just say that by my own measures, it is a manuscript that I will still be proud of in ten years. Much like an intergalactic space probe, it is traveling through a great silent void known as the New York publishing industry, and we hopeful scientists can do nothing but wait a long time for word of its happy landing somewhere.

Participant B is my soon-to-be-printed THE EDITOR’S LEXICON: ESSENTIAL WRITING TERMS FOR NOVELISTS. It is a very brief dictionary of writing terms meant for fiction writers who have not studied writing in school, and early reviews by other editors and writers are strongly positive. I have decided to publish it independently, as an e-book through Smashwords, and as a print book through Lightning Source. My sole companion on this journey is my friend, client, and now publisher, William Campbell of Glyd-Evans Press.

As a writer, my three main goals are to (1) dedicate as much of myself as possible to a craft without losing my sanity, (2) be read, and (3) make a living at it. Therefore, this experiment will take many years to complete. It will compare ease of publication, the effort and expense to promote each book, profit, and my overall satisfaction with the final result—in other words, “Was it worth it? Should I have done it differently? Do I feel like I’ve connected with an audience? Which route would I recommend to others?”

Right now, I can only collect data from Participant B. I will be posting it over the next few weeks, as THE EDITOR’S LEXICON approaches its publication date. As for Participant A, it has entered a shaky orbit around one particular agent, but it’s traversing the dark side of that moon and we can only hope that a positive signal will reach our satellites by this time next month.

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On backing off

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

This Christmas Santa brought a heart rate monitor. Putting the pointy-headed intricacies of heart-rate training aside for a moment, what the numbers showed me was that my normal workout pace is a hair’s breadth away from my normal quitting pace.

Ask E, who trained with me most of last summer. Many of those workouts were shaded with intervals of sullen trudging, or once, my earnest threat to chuck an expensive titanium racing bike by the roadside and hitch-hike home. The solution has been to back off, keep my heart rate in check, and enjoy the scenery.

Fast forward several weeks to today: E, a friend and I finished our first half-marathon of 2010 at a respectable pace. I had fun, and could have kept going. At some point during the race–while running in wind and rain through the Willamette farmland–it struck me that ignoring a certain few of my writing goals would make me a much happier writer.

I have been looking for a better way to end my novel before re-submitting it to an agent, and been driving myself through a breakneck series of revisions since early December. But in order to rewrite the final two chapters, and to write them richly, I need to back off and enjoy the scenery.

Even if running is ultimately incomparable to creative writing, I suspect that this is probably right. As an editor as well as a writer, I know that rushing makes for empty fiction. Now for the test: Give me five writing days, and I’ll report back.

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To: North Pole

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Dear Santa,

Please overlook the things I overlooked in 2009. Overlook the horrible cursing at Sam Adams when my car got towed last week for street sweeping, because I overlooked the big warning signs on the sidewalk. And whatever you do, don’t white-glove the apartment, because E and I get busy and don’t like to clean.

Direct your attention, if you can, to the worthwhile things I’ve done this year–because it’s the holidays, and even the vainest and most preening bugger who’s snarling for the last parking spot in the gym garage has done something selfless in his life. Remember that it’s human nature to be pushy; but also to get joy from making someone’s day a little easier. To hold a door. Or even to give books to a kid you’ll never meet.

I don’t need anything for Christmas. Life is fine. I will ask one thing, though, even though I know you’re not usually in the business of bringing luck.

So, you’re surely aware that I deal with a lot of writers; heck, I’m even one myself. You also must know that I read a lot of unpublished manuscripts this year, and that no writer’s keyboard produces an uninterrupted stream of genius–we’re all human here. But I will say, every single one of them had something inhumanly wise to say. In every single one, there was at least one line that had the power of genius, which made everything go quiet for a second. Those lines are magic doorways in a noisy, crazy landscape and there are not enough of them in the world.

As 2009 winds down and we start another one, give those manuscripts a chance. If you can make reindeer fly, maybe you could spare some of that magic sparkly Christmas dust for those yet-unpublished stories. (Or, if you’re short, you can borrow the dust that is coating the tops of our furniture and windowsills.) Anyway, the more open doors in the world, the better.

Fly safe, avoid the Duraflames,

Sarah

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I give thanks for good readers.

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

I’m blessed with some very good first readers. They’re all great writers and editors, and their responses helped me get out of my own head and tell a better story. I’m also blessed with a partner who is not a writer, and as I learned this week, that opinion is worth a manuscript’s weight in gold.

Every writer needs someone to treat the characters like people, and express dismay when they do things that pull their story off track. Every writer needs to know when the novel stops working, even if the reader can’t explain why. Sitting at the breakfast table yesterday, talking over sticky plates, a few leftover pumpkin pancakes and coffee, I learned that when all other revision efforts have failed, the best critiques sometimes look like a shrug, sound like an, “I didn’t get it, sorry,” and are offered with love.

So, now having more or less figured out what an agent was saying when she said the novel comes apart at the end, I am revising it one more time and will resubmit it in December, and send it to other agents if I can. I also have to clean up the synopsis of the next novel, so that while THE IDIOT’S TALE is on submission, I can make progress with something else. But first we have to eat sweet potato casserole and pie. Happy Thanksgiving.

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…longed for the rhythmic pounding of the surf, and the salty sea air.*

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Pacific Street, Rockaway Beach, Oregon

Pacific Street, Rockaway Beach, Oregon

What news? Pending my annual, five-day writing retreat at Rockaway Beach, I wanted to update my blog in grand Internet fashion: using a lot of words to say, basically, nothing much. Reseach on Book 2 continues at a loping pace thanks to Matt Beynon Rees, the prolific former Jerusalem bureau chief for TIME, whose information-dense Website and Palestinian mystery novels are giving me a lot of reading to do.

The weeklong retreat is meant as a turbo-outlining session, which means I ought to know what the novel is actually about in ten days or fewer. However, an agent promised to send revision notes on THE IDIOT’S TALE, and if those show up before I shut down my e-mail for a week, I will instead be knitting loose seams in the novel’s final third — all the while burning palm leaves, chanting quietly, Dear God please let it be good enough.

What other news? I finished my longest bike ever, at 80 miles. I turned the heat on in my office for the first time. E and I made killer fajitas, grilled corn, and mulled cider. Hello, autumn.

* We continue with our nascent endeavor to title every post using narrative cliches.

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