“They already give money to lazy-asses, cowards, and scammers…”
“I’m not talking about welfare, I’m talking about a grant. A grant to support creation, to be precise.”
“Literary creation?”
“Yes, we’re going to write up our trip and submit it to publishers, but the problem is that to be eligible you need to have already published a book. You’ve published two—which, incidentally, makes you a mid-career writer—so I was wondering…”
“You want me to apply for a grant for you?”
“Not even that, we’re organizing everything. We just need your permission to use your name. In fact, the only thing you’ll need to do will be to cash the cheque and transfer the money to us.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a very strange girl?”
“Once or twice, yes. So what’s your answer?”
“Well…yes, why not? On one condition: that you don’t send your manuscript to my former publisher.”
“No, that’s fine. But otherwise you’re really on board?”
“Yes, I don’t care, if it helps you out…”
“Of course, we’ll let you read our manuscript before we send it.”
“There’s no need.”
“What! You wouldn’t care if a book you hadn’t even read was published with your name on the cover?”
“No, I think I’d find it funny. Anyway, they’ll reject you.”
“Yeah, Jude said we don’t actually need to get to the publication stage to get the grant. But how can you be so sure ahead of time?”
“They reject just about everybody.”
“Just about…”
“Publishers accept approximately one per cent of the manuscripts they receive in the mail. But like you say, that doesn’t matter, since you’re just doing it for the grant.”
“No, it doesn’t matter.”
Ò...15...Ò
There’s No Accounting for Taste
He insisted on walking me home. I wasn’t especially keen for him to know where I lived, but I couldn’t work out how to say no. Before we said goodbye, he said, “Now that you’ve asked me your favour, I suppose I’ll never see your face again.”
“Oh, come on, we’ll get together again. Whenever you like.”
“Can I have your number?”
“I haven’t got one, but I check my email all the time.”
“All right. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Damn! Here was something I hadn’t thought about: from now until the cash was in our hands, I was going to have to be nice to Sébastien. I didn’t know how far being kind to him might stretch, but definitely not as far as he hoped. In fact, right then, I really wanted to strangle him. But why? He’d agreed to be our frontman without any fuss, he’d totally saved our lives. Under the circumstances, surely I could have summoned up a little gratitude. But no, I resented him. It’s no use beating around the bush, I know perfectly well why I’m so annoyed: it was his “They’ll reject you.” He’d announced it as if it was a foregone conclusion, calmly, without any malice in his voice. A simple observation.
When he saw me come home in such a bad mood, Jude immediately concluded that the plan had bombed, that we’d be forced to move on to our second-worst idea (selling a kidney on the black market?), so I immediately rushed to reassure him: no need to fret, everything was in hand, we could start filling in the application. There was just a little adjustment to the program. What kind of little adjustment? Just that the idea of scribbling down a manuscript and sending it any old where, fraudulent and chock full of errors, on the pretext that all we needed was a rejection letter proving that we really had submitted a literary work to a publisher, well, that wouldn’t do, we’d have to make an effort (and at the word effort, I saw his face fall, but I didn’t let myself be swayed) and we’d write a real book, a good book, or at least good enough to fall into the “one per cent accepted” category, and exactly one year from now we’d be on display in the local bookshop, I give you my word. He didn’t grumble, he knew I wouldn’t change my mind: like all people who have no backbone, I rarely make a decision, but on the rare occasions that I do, I will stick to it come hell or high water, even if it flies in the face of common sense.
That same evening we set out our game plan. Rather than simply telling the story of our trip, the narrative would also cover the preparation period, which meant we wouldn’t have to wait until we’d come back from Bird-in-Hand to make a start on the task. I planned to get going with it the next day, and to write as much as I could think of, before handing the baton to Jude, who would give it back when he in turn ran out of inspiration. We would make the style and the formatting consistent during rewrites. And the very next day, after pottering around for a bit, I made myself a pot of tea, sat down in front of the computer, opened up Microsoft Word (which took it upon itself to call our work Document 1, but it won’t stay like that), and I began to write down this story you’re reading. Do you know what you call it when an author talks about the book she’s writing in her book? A mise-en-abyme. Truly there’s a word for everything. (You can also write it as abîme, but it looks more stylish with the y.) As it happens I’ve learned a bit about the writing process and style these last couple of weeks. I even know what is a hyperbaton. And a hypotyposis. (That last full sentence contained a hyperbaton. Impressive, right?)
At the beginning, I didn’t worry about such things, I just started muddling my way through, my only rule being to not piss off my reader (even though this reader was still a theoretical creature), writing something that I might want to read myself. I decided to divide my books into chapters of different lengths, each corresponding to one writing session. It was only at the end of the fourth of these sessions that I started to have doubts, to wonder if it had really been wise to appoint myself the judge. Being judge and defendant is never comfortable. I told myself that my personal tastes frequently matched up with those of publishing professionals, since all the good books I’d read had previously been accepted by a publisher. Yes, but so had the bad ones. To take an example close at hand: if I’d been on the editorial board and 13 Mechanical or The Death of the Pterodactyl had landed on my desk, would I have given them the green light? Not on your life! I’d have shouted, “This is such a mess! I can’t make head nor tail of it!” and I’d have moved on to the next one in the pile. And let’s be honest, I’ve not exactly read tons of Québécois books this past year. So how would I know what today’s publishers mean by a good manuscript?
So I went to find out right from the source. Credit where credit is due, I started by searching the Éditions du Boréal website (www.editionsboreal.qc.ca). On the home page there are links to “Current Titles” and “Recent Releases,” as well as a series of scrolling menus giving access to different sections (“History,” “Our Team,” “Collections,” “Events,” “Prizes and Honours,” “Catalogue,” “Our Authors,” and so on), but nothing about the kind of manuscripts they were looking for. It was only after a good bit of trial and error that I finally unearthed a short paragraph in the FAQs: “If you want to send us your manuscript (all fiction—including crime—and essays1), you can either deliver it in person to our offices or send it by courier (we only accept hard-copy manuscripts—no disks or email attachments). In either case we will acknowledge receipt and send your manuscript on to the editorial board for evaluation. Please do not send originals.”
At Québec Amérique (www.quebec-amerique.com), they are slightly more welcoming to budding authors. First of all, there’s a link on the home page to a section called “Manuscripts,” and they kindly take the time to explain exactly why they’ll most likely reject us: “Last year Québec Amérique received, across all categories, some 800 manuscripts and proposals. (…) When we point out that barely four per cent of these proposals will make it to publication, it is perhaps unnecessary to emphasize how important it i
s for authors to give themselves every chance.” There are several recommendations regarding the presentation of manuscripts (no electronic formats, print on one side only, sensible line spacing, etc.) but, once again, nothing about the literary qualities they’re looking for. Same goes for VLB, who want pages to be numbered but not joined, printed on one side only, on 8.5 by 11 paper, and, they add sententiously, “Any manuscript not respecting these instructions will be automatically rejected and destroyed.” As far as their preferred genres go, they stick to the same line as their colleagues at Boréal: “The Ville-Marie Littérature Group publishes mainly novels, poetry, essays, reportage, as well as short stories and biographies of famous people.” Well, geez, surely that’s pretty obvious: what kind of fool would write a biography of some unknown person? Over at Marchand de Feuilles (www.marchanddefeuilles.com), they’re much more easygoing. Not a word about pagination and line spacing, and they even accept manuscripts by email. What’s more, they’re open to discovery: “Marchand de Feuilles is always on the lookout for new authors and illustrators. Our company is open to all innovative projects.” Bring it on! They finish off with a cheerful, “Looking forward to reading your work!” Okay, so it’s not particularly illuminating, but it’s certainly welcoming. At HMH (www.editionshurtubise.com), they have more or less the same basic demands as the others with regard to format, but are equally quiet on the subject of content. (However, if you go to the trouble of studying their catalogue, you’ll note that they have something of a weakness for retired French teachers churning out eighteen-volume historical sagas.)
Let’s have a look at the Quebec City publishers now. At Septentrion (www.septentrion.qc.ca), they’re pretty hardcore: under the section “Submit a Manuscript,” there’s a link to a six-page PDF detailing all their desiderata, of which a few examples: “Do not justify the text”; “buzzwords and neologisms should be enclosed in French quotation marks (e.g., <
* * *
1 “Boréal does not accept manuscripts in the following genres: poetry, plays, science-fiction or fantasy novels, or practical or esoteric books.” No science fiction, noted. But what else?
Ò...16...Ò
My Own Yoda
In short, every publisher has their own preferences about how the manuscripts they receive should be presented, but as far as content goes, they leave that entirely to our discretion. (If I was a publisher, though, I can’t help thinking I’d be tempted to say: “Present it any way you like, as long as it’s legible, you can even write it in ballpoint pen if your handwriting’s decent, but please be advised that any manuscript relating the adventures of a thirtysomething drowning his romantic sorrows in some bar in Plateau-Mont-Royal will be shredded on sight.”) From this I concluded that if I wanted to get some tips on how to appeal to editorial boards, I was going to have to find myself a mentor, someone who knew his stuff, who could do for me what Mr. Miyagi did for Daniel, what Apollo did for Rocky, or Yoda for Luke Skywalker. When I talked to Jude about it, he replied that it wasn’t a very difficult choice because the only published author I knew was Sébastien, but seriously, I’d rather die than ask him for advice. I had no desire to give him a chance to pontificate, and above all I didn’t want to tip him off about my ambitions. In any case, his instruction would be useless to me, since I had no intention of writing experimental shit. So I turned instead to everyone’s favourite mentor, Google, and asked it straight out, “How do you get published?” The first three or four pages of results linked to articles in French magazines, to self-publishing sites, and to forums where total unknowns give infallible tips on how to become a successful author. It was only around the fifth page that the vaguely familiar name of Marc Fisher showed up for the first time, as Amazon was promoting his book The Work of the Novelist followed by Advice on Getting Published and The Art of Suspense in Mary Higgins Clark. All I knew at that point about Marc Fisher was that he was part of a select club of Quebec writers living by their pens, and that around the turn of the millennium he’d made it big with a little philosophical novel called The Millionaire—which had been translated into several languages and had sold well in the US—and that since then he’d been shamelessly repackaging the same material in multiple sequels. I didn’t know, however, that he’d fallen as low as literary theory. The blurb read as follows: “The novelist’s job has always fascinated people. In this little work bursting with relevant observations, Marc Fisher relates the highs and the lows, revealing what awaits new writers. He also gives, with the practical wisdom that can only come from experience, valuable pointers to the beginner novelist in search of a publisher as well as the published novelist in search of…readers. Along the way, he humorously relates all the difficulties he encountered before managing to get his books published abroad (they’ve been translated into more than twenty-five languages) and explains how he snagged an international agent. Finally, in a marvellous little work, he analyzes the narrative processes of the contemporary queen of suspense, Mary Higgins Clark. The three short essays in this book together make up a veritable goldmine of reflections and recommendations that will be as useful to the budding novelist as they are to a writer who is already published and dreams of living by his or her pen.”
Something told me I’d just found my Yoda. That same evening, I went to the Hélène-B.-Beauséjour library to borrow The Work of the Novelist. I also noted that Mr. Fisher had published, several years earlier, another book on the same subject, Letter to a Young Novelist. Cynics will not fail to note the many similarities between these two works, going as far as to say that the second is, for all intents and purposes, a warmed-over version of the first. But that’s true only at the level of content. The covers aren’t at all similar—the cover of Advice to a Young Novelist (published by Québec Amérique) is brown, while that of The Work of the Novelist (Trait d’union) is a lovely azure blue. And, while we’re splitting hairs, it is actually possible to find differences between the two texts. For example, in Advice, Mr. Fisher talks at greater length about writing techniques (which is why I took it for my main reference source), while in Work, he spends more time telling the story of his own professional journey, and I’m really tempted to summarize the whole thing right here. But that would be yet another digression, and my master doesn’t like digressions. Here’s what he has to say, among other things, on the subject: “Pedal to the metal. You must live in step with your era, which is, whether you like it or not, one of speed. Proust, brilliant as he was, would effectively be impossible today, with his half-page sentences, his endless analyses. (…) Avoid overly long descriptions, which are tedious in any case, and which the impatient reader sees as a chore that he or she would happily skip, despite your sparkling style. (�
�) Yes, put the pedal to the metal, like a driver drunk on speed” (Advice to a Young Novelist, page 104). But I dare to think he might forgive me, just this once, for taking the scenic route, especially if I’m talking about him. Anyway, there’ll be time for pruning at the rewriting stage. So, here’s how this modern-day Lucien de Rubempré started his literary career.
The first thing you need to know is that Marc Fisher didn’t start off as Marc Fisher, but as plain old Marc-André Poissant, which, let’s be honest, is not the most successful name you can imagine. Destined by his upbringing for a liberal profession, he started a law degree without really thinking about it, but he’d known ever since his late teenage years that he’d never become a lawyer. Music was his first love. He learned classical guitar and even auditioned for the Montreal Conservatory, although he didn’t get in. Next he turned to chess, but although he had a certain amount of talent, he was sensible enough to know that chess as a career could only work for a few hundred people in the entire world. The career of novelist soon came to mind and, with the beautiful innocence of youth, he launched himself headlong into it, spending two years working on a novel entitled Silène. As soon as he’d written the final period, he hired someone to type it up and sent it to Cercle du Livre de France, a fashionable publisher at the time. A few weeks later he received a rejection letter. He was, of course, disappointed by this, but didn’t let himself get discouraged and sent his manuscript to a different publisher. This last, a relation of his father, agreed to meet him to explain the editorial board’s decision. However, face to face or by letter, the result was the same: the publisher declared the work to be unpublishable and its author completely devoid of talent. “I have no advice to give you,” the editor said, “but I’m going to be like everyone else and give you some anyway… What I’m about to say might seem harsh, but with time you’ll come to see that I’m right… You can stick with it, of course… But in my opinion—and I’ve seen a lot of young people come along before you—you’re wasting your time… You haven’t got what it takes to become a novelist” (The Work of the Novelist, page 26). Fortunately Mr Fisher was gracious enough not to name this editor. Imagine what an idiot he must feel today!
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