Your First Novel

  2. Too nerve-wracking? If you discover that this whole waiting game makes you feel too dependent and out of control, you might be a candidate for self-publishing, where you'll be able to handle or oversee every detail of your book's publication yourself. If you choose this route, consult as many guides and articles as possible, discuss the option on Internet message boards, and check out self-publishers with places like the Better Business Bureau. In addition, these two Web sites—Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (http://www.sfwa.org/) and Preditors & Editors (http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors)%e2%80%94carry warnings and alerts as well as articles about how to spot scam publishers.

  3. Too debilitating? Maybe you sent it out at the insistence of friends and family, even though the thought of strangers reading your book was an agony to you. If that's the case, you might not have the stomach to go through with publication, which is in many ways even more demanding than the attempt to find an agent or a publisher. You should consider having your book privately printed and circulated among family members and friends.

  4. Too exhausting? You might need to think twice about writing as a career, while patting yourself on the back for writing an entire book. If the act of writing and completing a book was satisfaction in itself, there's no shame in deciding not to pursue publication.

  IN THEIR OWN WORDS: ADAM FAWER

  Adam Fawer, a former dotcom executive who had previously written only for business publications, had always wanted to write fiction. His first novel, Improbable, was published in 2005.

  After the longest weekend of my life (the weekend they—the editors, the all-powerful, the dream makers—were reading my book), the news wasn't good. My

  agent gently informed me, in an encouraging, don't-give-up-now voice, that no one wanted to buy my novel. I was stunned.

  I don't think I believed that it was over until I got the e-mail my agent forwarded from one of the rejecting editors—and all I can say is ouch. It was filled with eviscerating criticisms that have since been burned into my brain. I must have read that e-mail fifty times. The first time I was numb. The second mildly annoyed. The third irritated. The fourth angry. The fifth enraged. And then it got ugly.

  It took about twenty-five readings before the criticisms started to sink in. Gradually, I saw where the editor was coming from. He wanted something different than what I had delivered. Not better, necessarily (or at least that's what I told myself), but different. Okay, I thought, I can give him something different.

  It wasn't until I was into the second month of rewriting my novel that I realized not only were most of his criticisms right, but the resulting book would be better than the original. If only I could finish it. At first I thought I only would have to rewrite the first 20,000 words, but after I completed an entirely new first act (50,000 words), I realized I had only just begun.

  Five painful months later, I emerged from the rubble of book number one with a brand new 134,000-word novel loosely based on my first effort. It contained only about 25,000 words of the original text. But it was better—and more importantly, my agent sold it.

  RECOMMENDED READING ...

  Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote. For what the "mean reds" are like.

  Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet. Why? Because it's a play about ruthless, scamming salesmen who are desperate to make a commission. A good read when you're feeling down about the agents who reject or ignore you.

  ... AND VIEWING

  Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson, based on the novel by Michael Chabon. Michael Douglas plays an aging writer who can't finish his enormous manuscript. If waiting to hear back from agents is difficult, and

  reading rejection letters is worse, see this film to comfort yourself with the knowledge that at least you were able to finish your book.

  RECOMMENDED WEB SITES

  Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (http://www.sfwa.org/). This indefatigable and ever-helpful Web site has a sample author/agency contract with explanations of each of its clauses.

  PublishLawyer.com (www. publish lawyer, com). Another helpful site, created by a publishing attorney in Maryland. Clicking on the "articles" link will bring you to a list that includes a good article on "The Author-Agency Agreement."

  CHAPTER 17:

  working with an agent through thick and thin

  Not only did you write an entire novel, you rewrote it—seven times.

  You found other writers and made time in your life to meet with them regularly and to read their work as they read yours. You wrote a query letter—and then rewrote it —and then rewrote your novel—and rewrote your query letter twice more. You networked to get referrals to agents, and you researched many others, developed a list, and began submitting your novel. The word submission took on a whole new meaning as you suffered the humiliation of being ignored or rejected, of having your name misspelled or not used at all, of having your work pigeon-holed or misunderstood or lost.

  Yet somehow, perhaps by using the same passion, grit, determination, and creativity that made you a writer, you persevered, and you got an agent you trust, respect, and believe in. You trust he'll find a publisher for your novel. You respect his ability, his track record, the other writers

  he represents. You believe his commitment to your work. And you're ready to sit back and wait for the call that says, "Random House wants to publish your book!"

  Not so fast! There's plenty to do before that call comes. To put it another way: There's plenty you can do to help make that call come faster and with greater enthusiasm.

  WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP_

  First off, you will probably need to rework your novel yet again. With editors under greater pressure to find books that are ready to go, and with their time chopped up into innumerable meetings, agents now routinely work editorially with their clients well before an editor gets involved. Yet all too often I've met and represented writers who respond to an agent's request for changes with the remark, "I'd rather wait to make more changes until I have a real editor."

  If that's a polite way of saying you don't agree with the suggestions, that they really don't ring true to you and you're afraid of breaking what worked well enough to attract the attention of an agent, that's fine. You'll have to communicate these feelings to your agent, and try to convince him that your instincts are correct. If he doesn't agree, it's quite possible you've signed up with the wrong person. I've heard the horror stories: "An agent told me to set my football novel in a ballet studio." "An agent told me to rewrite my coming-of-age novel as a pirate historical." "An agent told me he could sell my book faster if I made every paragraph no longer than three sentences and reduced its 500 pages to 150." You'll need to determine whether the advice seems particular to your novel or particular to the agent's area of specialty—such as pirate historical.

  A good revision is one where you find creative solutions to problems your trusted readers have identified in the work, not one where every suggestion is slavishly and literally carried out. So if the agent has raised a series of questions or concerns about the book, he's not saying he wants everything changed or he'll wash his hands of you. He's asking you to make a good or promising book better. Make it the best you can make it. If you resist the suggestions even though you know your novel needs some work, however, you're only hurting yourself and your novel's chances in the marketplace.

  Perhaps you have a romantic fantasy of how publishing works: You meet your editor, who is wearing a well-cut tweed suit, for lunch at a hushed and understated midtown restaurant, where she tells you a few things you could do to make your novel better, has a couple of martinis, and tells you over coffee how bright your future is. I do know at least one writer who had a lunch like that as recently as twenty-five years ago, but it's no longer common—if, indeed, it ever was. Or perhaps you have the "diamond-in-the-rough" fantasy of publishing: that editors sit at their desks, which are lit only by a green-shaded lamp, poring through manuscripts in the hope of fi
nding something brilliant within the many badly typed pages lying before them. In a world dominated by e-mail, overnight delivery, and instant messaging—indeed, instant everything—does this seem likely?

  I think you're getting the picture now. So, when your agent says, "I'd like to see another draft. Could you get the action moving before page 100, and reduce the number of characters by a third?" you are going to get to work. Have you taken Laura's excellent advice on rewriting from the first half of this book? Have you gone through the "Ten Ways to Go From Good to Great" in chapter twelve? If so, you've become an excellent judge of writing advice and can sort the good from the bad when it comes to your own work. You've also developed the ability to be tough on yourself and look dispassionately and objectively at your work, especially after periods of rest from it.

  This isn't a race. It's taken you this long to get this far. Why should your manuscript suddenly be rushed into the arms of editors? A premature submission might result in the kinds of rejection letters that say, "I'd be happy to take a second look should the author revise," but it's rare that the second look results in a contract to publish your book. It does happen, but more often the editor has lost her initial enthusiasm for your writing, or has even forgotten what she saw in it the first time around. If you think about it, the only two winners of a premature submission are the U.S. Postal Service and Kinko's!

  BIO NOTE

  The next thing you can do to help is to write a terrific bio note for your agent. You may have described yourself briefly in your initial query letter and you may even have enclosed your resume or curriculum vitae. Yet neither of those things includes the kinds of facts about you that make you sound really interesting—like someone the publicist assigned to your book could talk up when trying to get publicity for it. So don't do the usual list of dates and jobs. Write about yourself as if you were a character in a Russian novel. Or have a friend interview you to pull out the kinds of things in your background you take for granted but others might find fascinating. Find bio notes of some of your favorite authors and see what makes them interesting. Many books just have a line or two about the author on the jacket, but the more successful and well-known the writer, the more likely you'll find a variety of bios on the Web or in the library.

  Recognize that it's to your advantage as a novelist to be or to have been a jack- or jill-of-all-trades. A varied life experience speaks of many qualities. It tells us that here is someone who's seen enough to take us places we haven't been. It indicates that writing has been more important to the person than the development of another, more stable or conventional career. If the variety of odd jobs, residences, and aborted careers is due more to the fact that you had no direction or life plan or even that you were in the grip of an alcohol or drug addiction, don't be ashamed. These are the forces that have shaped you, that have given you empathy or insight, an appreciation for or experience of the kinds of characters more conventional people—like agents and editors—don't meet regularly. These experiences may have made you less likely to waste the time you have left than someone who's lived comfortably or without much incident, trouble, or change.

  When you're published, you'll be the kind of writer who is more likely to garner "off-the-book-page" publicity than the person who graduated with a degree in creative writing or got an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. And you will undoubtedly be the kind of writer that readers empathize with, care about, and want to see in person at readings and other events if you've had life experiences that have proved difficult, tragic, or just plain colorful.

  Raymond Carver, author of short story collections including Cathedral and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and winner of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, was one of the most influential American writers of the later twentieth century. Bruce Weber, in a New York Times Magazine profile, wrote that before Carver became established as a writer, he "picked tulips, pumped gas, swept hospital corridors, swabbed toilets, and managed an apartment complex." Carver himself told an interviewer in 1978 that he was also "a saw mill hand, a delivery man, a retail clerk, and an editor at a publishing firm." This peripatetic existence—part writing, part alcoholism—endeared him to his readers, who felt he could speak and write about real people in an authentic way.

  In writing your bio note, you should try to display your appreciation for the varied experiences that have brought you this far. At the bookstore or library, make it a habit to read book-flap bios. Most are dull or brief, but some have at least a nugget of information that's unusual or striking. Read interviews with your favorite authors and note the things about their lives or pasts that interest you most. If you have a friend interview you, let her draw out the quirky, unusual, touching, or courageous notes you've disregarded simply because you're used to them or because you were afraid they were the kind of details that would put off those grandees of publishing.

  Your agent might not include your bio note exactly as written when submitting your manuscript. He might instead draw from it to enliven the cover letter or when telling editors about you when pitching your book. After Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, signed with me, I asked him to write and tell me more about himself. Using what he wrote, I was able to write a cover letter when I submitted his first novel, A Drink Before the War, that read like this:

  As we discussed, I am very pleased to enclose A Drink before the War, a raw, fresh first novel by Dennis Lehane.

  Dennis is twenty-five, a native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and has worked as (among other things) a chauffeur, a strip club DJ (for three days), and a Behavioral Therapist for emotionally, physically, and sexually abused children. (You'll see the significance of this when you read the novel.) He is now absolutely a writer, and in the last eighteen months he's written this novel, four screenplays, a dozen short stories, and the beginning of the next novel featuring the same detective team. Several of his stories have won contests and one of his screenplays has attracted the attention of James Woods. He is now teaching writing at a college in Miami and working closely on the new novel with poet and novelist James Hall.

  You have this exclusively, and I think you'll find it as exciting as I did. I look forward to talking to you about it very soon.

  The unusual mix of jobs and the author's youth, combined with his productiveness and his connection to at least one well-known writer, were important elements in creating interest in the editor's mind. That letter didn't sell the novel—the novel sold the novel—but even today, interviews with Dennis Lehane go back to some of those biographical details (his work with troubled children, his Ritz-Carlton chauffeur's job) over and over again. Interviewers are fascinated by aspects of his past that seem influential on some of his book's themes or characters.

  An agent's job is to provide an editor with as much ammunition as possible so that her job of convincing other publishing house staff—sales, marketing, publicity departments—will be more effective. An agent's job is to know how to sell you as well as your book. Selling yourself isn't easy, but if you can give your agent some good, raw material, he will be able to put it to excellent use.

  KEEPING TABS ON YOUR AGENT

  How do you know what your agent is doing? How do you find out? How do you know what his strategy is—if he has a strategy—and whether it will succeed?

  Agents have different styles and keep their clients informed in different ways. One agent I know sends a weekly e-mail update to her entire client list in which she recounts the editors, producers, or foreign publishers she lunched with or met with that week, any sales she made, and any submissions she made. She is a paragon among agents and basically makes the rest of us look bad. However, we all need something to which we can aspire!

  Other agents send a submission list to their clients, listing every editor who has or will get the manuscript. Others show proof of their activity by sending a copy of every rejection letter; some add a note saying who will see the manuscript next. Some call with each editor
's response; others wait for the author to call and inquire.

  And some, alas, never say a word. I have heard too often of writers who, after a year's silence, asked at least to be sent copies of the rejection letters the agent had received. And even that request went unanswered. In such cases, it's clear the author has no choice but to terminate the relationship immediately. And it doesn't need to be a year's utter silence. On the other hand, I've talked to writers who've told me they never hear from their agent, only to admit when pressed that they haven't made any attempt to get in touch with their agent but expect the agent to get in touch with them at regular intervals.

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  Establish with your agent the best means of communicating. After first taking on a client, for instance, I like to talk on the telephone, not rely exclusively on e-mail. E-mail is an excellent way to communicate all manner of information, but before getting to the e-mail-only stage I like to get to know the sound of the writer's voice. In the voice I can hear a greater range of emotion than I can glean from e-mail, and it's often easier to resolve a problem or put a worry to rest in one conversation, when the same issue might require the exchange of half a dozen e-mails or more. Many writers hesitate to call their agent because they're aware the agent is busy and they aren't likely to get them on the telephone immediately. But a whole series of e-mails, even brief ones, can equally eat up time.

  So how to decide when to call, when to e-mail, when to write, and when to send something overnight or via messenger?

  E-MAIL WHEN YOU:

  • have news to impart

  • have one or two brief and specific questions

  • need to send a document electronically or as an e-mail attachment

  • have been told by your agent that that's his preferred method for all communication

  WRITE WHEN YOU:

  • have a change of address

  • have to send any kind of official paperwork, whether it be a contract, a tax form, or a power of attorney