The Literary Tango

Yesterday, I should have dealt with the taxes.  Well, I already did most of the number checking in January.  Now comes the packaging up of the paperwork, the labeling and organizing for the accountant.  I’d do these taxes myself but, when my tax forms come in the mail there is a sticker on them: do not try this at home.

And  yesterday I was going to write something about delivery vectors for certain nutritional elements that seem to have an inhibiting effect on the beta amyloids that characterize Alzheimer’s. And about delivery vectors in general.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t write about that.

Instead, aside from feeding the freezing horses and cleaning out the dishwasher and color correcting a couple of pages of images, I read.  I was reading myself.  And now I am writing about why.

Writing books.  Not easy.  A strange amalgam of processes. There’s the story.  Then there’s the writing.  Then there’s the re-writing (repeat these three steps for a number of years).  Then there’s screwing the courage to the sticking place.  (I think I’m not really sure what that means.)  And the picking of houses and the sending to houses and then – oh then – the waiting.

The book biz seems to be ailing.  I don’t know if its lagging is as inevitable as the death of print journalism.  In my mind, you can’t ever replace a book with a PDF file.  PDF files don’t look at all interesting lined up on a shelf. Nor are they that fun to manipulate, or to smell, or to curl up with in bed.  Newspapers actually annoy me.  You get the print on your hands, and they’re sloppy and lurpy, and then you have to do something with them if you don’t want your house to look like a million seagulls just crashed and died in it.  I do like the sound of a newspaper.  And I like to spread them on the table when I’m soldering.  But I don’t like reading them.  Journalistic style isn’t that satisfying a kind of story telling.   I’d just as soon use the internet and do my news hunting there.  Certainly, it’s nice to be able to read a month’s comics at one time.  Oh – but you can’t make a piñata out of blog pages, either.  There is that.

Books are a tough sell these days, I guess.  I have a whole box full of opinions about literacy and the internet, and the slant may surprise you.  I don’t think that’s the problem here.  I think it’s accessibility.  It’s easier to watch a movie that netflicks sends you overnight than one you have to drive to some rental store to pick up, especially when you have to drive back to return it.  Maybe it’s easier to download a book (even if you have to read it on a lighted screen) than it is to do what you have to do to get one in print form.  I don’t know.

Maybe the publishing industry, like the car industry, is suffering because it keeps turning out so many duplicate stories, just slapping new names on them.  Or because there’s so much ugly writing out there—too many books that just aren’t that great.  I am always just amazed that some publishers actually spend money on what is just so obviously bad, stupid, vapid writing and storytelling – when I know there’s got to be good stuff out there going begging.  Maybe people just like reading bad writing better?? 

I guess that could have been true all along,  I mean, look at Penny Dreadfuls.  And Nathaniel Hawthorn.  Look at him.

Finding a publisher is anything but a hard science.  There are Pulitzer Prize winning books that were turned down by nineteen, sometimes twenty five houses before somebody picked them up and turned them into gold.  I don’t find this all that surprising actually, considering the few Pulitzer winners I’ve read; yawn, eye-roll.  This kind of books exist on a plane that demands a certain freakish acrobaticism—more about LOOK AT ME WRITING QUIRKY than about a transparent author telling a substantial tale.

I wish every book were as beautiful and as meaty as To Kill a Mockingbird.  But then, if that were the case, I’d never sell a word.

The point is – you write a book, and you hope your pacing, your style, your plot, your characters, your language, all magically come together hot at the same time, just like dinner (but how can you ever really know?).  Then you try to find an editor who will “get” the menu.  Except – how do you do that?

I remember being told a story once about a graduate paper, circulated through the college of Humanities at BYU—graded by every single professor.  It garnered everything from accolades to letters threatening extinction.  Again—writing is no hard science.  Neither is reading.  At book club, we walk away from every meeting having really enjoyed each other, but at the same time, we are amazed at the really basic differences we find in each other—in the way we see the world, in our expectations of things, in the different styles and organizations of function in each of our brains.  What I love to read—and can make cogent argument as to its virtue and quality – you may just think stinks.  And vice versa. 

Of course, I am the one who is going to come out right—just giving you a heads up on that one.

So there are all the editors, living in New York (most of them), each one with a different brain, a different closet full of memories and endocrine sets and needs and expectations.  And you, living thousands of miles away, are supposed to find the one that will fit.  By accident.  The One.  And the right one is almost always going to be sitting two desk down from the one you end up choosing.  I’m just sayin’.  Even if you find an angel who loves you and gets you down to the ground, she will not always love what you do.  As the buying public will love one of your things and not another.

And once you do settle on a desk, and send your little packet of hope, years of sweat, polished rhetoric and characters (now personal friends of yours) – assuming that you have actually been asked to send (because otherwise, at the very least, you find yourself languishing on a slush pile that nobody has time to glance at)—you wait for months.  Sometimes for a year or more—to find out if the Person of Power liked what she read.  No.  Loved what she read.  And if that is the glorious case—this further thing: will she feel like it’s commercial enough to merit the investment the house will have to make in time and money.  And if she feels like all those duckies are in a row – will the executive editor see it that way?  And if they ALL love you – will there turn out to be enough money to buy you?

And if there is enough money, and all rams and water-bearers align—how many years out will you be on the up-coming lists?  Unless you are writing hot scandal—you can count on being two years out.

Kind of like needing a heart transplant.  It happens.  Just not very often.  And sometimes, too late.

Here’s wisdom:  it’s good to let a manuscript sit for a while.  Have your intelligent readers read.  Listen to what they say.  Re-write a dozen times.  Then let the thing sit.  For a year.  Maybe two.  Then read again.  Read after reading things you know are good.  You can feel what’s wrong, then – feel the slow parts, the sticky out things, the holes.

And that’s what I was doing yesterday.  Reading.  We are soon to bundle this story off to an appropriate house, Chaz and I.  And I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t wantonly asking somebody to burn hours of their lives on something stinky.

The happy fact is:  as I read, I loved the story.  Nobody else on the planet may (except that’s not true, because I know that Toni and Rachel and Savannah and Melissa – and very importantly, Sharon and Rosemary – loved at least big parts of it), but I really, really enjoyed it.  Here’s the funny thing: I made myself cry twice.  Not at sad parts of the story, but at MAGNIFICENT parts.  Courageous, generous, stalwart parts.  And once because the writing itself was so blamed beautiful (half of that was Chaz).  This could be a very good sign.  Or a very bad one.

So now, I am sitting at Cam’s house, listening to the baby monitor, writing this, and feeling hopeful.  Hopeful again.  So many times, I’ve set myself up over the years.   And really, most of the time, it’s turned out well.  And the books have sold, and lived long, productive lives.  Even so, it’s hard to pound the pavement.  It’s humiliating. And submitting something nineteen times (which I have never come remotely close to doing) must be miserable.  Like trying to get outside by walking forehead first into a solid wall, over and over till the wall gives.

But here we are, ready to load up and try again.  And we’ll see.  It’s a lousy time, with money the way it is.  But Miko, our heroine,  doesn’t care about money—for her, it’s just discovering her place in the world.  So maybe that’s why we do it.  Discovering our place in the world.