It’s funny, but I didn’t hate publishing today. A film contract six months in negotiations got resolved and signed. I got to the swimsuit part of the competition for a highly desireable writer interviewing potential agents. A client celebrated a year of sobriety. Our assistant found a novel in the slush that I couldn’t put down. I read a submission of essays that made me laugh out loud. Helped a client think about a new approach to a project that just might work. Got an orthodontist appointment for my daughter. And, best for last, sold a stunning anthology of poems, yes, poems. Oh, and had a delicious turkey sandwich on rye for lunch.
Filed under: Agent |
Betsy Lerner 
Smiled through that whole post, until I got to the end. Haven’t had bread in nearly five months. So now I’m walking away from a paragraph filled with happy news, left only with rye bread on my mind.
But thank you for sharing your fabulous day. Glad to know publishing’s not a hellhole. Otherwise, we’d all be accountants.
Why is Miss Arizona the only one wearing a light-colored swimsuit? Did she think that would impress the Desirable Writer?
I’m glad you had a great day.
Hmmm….swimsuits and heals. That just seems wrong. Is that a metaphor for writing and publishing? Sometimes the two things we choose to wear (put in a story) look great on their own but together they’re completely impractical. Plot holes. Yes. Can’t live with them, can’t write without them.
Wow, that sounds like an amazing day! Congratulations!
One by one, I go across the row of contestants and give them makeovers for 2009. Miss Kentucky is a back-up dancer with a cropped gamine haircut like Jean Seberg who teaches spinning classes in Venice in between tours. She’s bi and has a nose stud and a tramp stamp. Miss Montana is in the new J. Crew catalog. She always stands knock-kneed and shoulders shrugged, with her hands jammed into the pockets of her khakis — the towering school-girl thing is her bread and butter. Miss Wisconsin is Hope Davis. Miss Arizona is completely ambivalent about her choice of career and kind’ve wishes she’d finished studying to be a pharmacist.
I like how Canada’s in there. Not really a state but what the hell.
Poems?
I’m in *awe*