Fuck the Forest, Let’s Talk about Me: A Writer’s Advice to Agents —GUEST POST by AUGUST
1) Never forget that we’re children. Needy, needy children.
2) Never say ‘draft.’ Nothing we give you is a draft, because everything we give you is perfect. Say ‘manuscript.’
3) Never say you ‘haven’t finished reading the manuscript yet.’ First, because it’s a lie. You haven’t started. And second, what we hear is, “I abandoned your novel without the slightest hesitation, because it defines ‘putdownable.’ I can’t remember a story that affected me less.”
4) Practice the ‘shit sandwich’ form of criticism. First a tasty hunk of bread: “You’re a genius. This is what Shakespeare wanted to write, but never did.” Then move to the shit. “But readers are morons. They won’t understand your intent, when you start referring to Frederick as ‘Joseph’ halfway through the manuscript. They’ll think you need rising tension instead of 100 pages of Anastasia’s journal from the 16th century.” Then finish with more bread. Favorable comparisons to famous writers is a plus. “After reading this, people aren’t gonna say you’re the next Harper Lee. They’re gonna say, ‘Harper Who?’”
5) Don’t explain. There is no good way to tell me I need to lose the melancholy bus driver, but the best is, “You need to lose the melancholy bus driver.” After that, any explanation just sounds like a wasp crawling around my ear canal, preparing to sting.
6) When you explain anyway—you can’t help yourself, you’re a special kind of idiot who believes that forthright, honest communication actually solves problems—keep it bone simple. Otherwise I’ll pore over your comments, trying to decipher the imaginary code. If you say you don’t like the bus driver’s moustache, I’ll delete the chapter about the Treaty of Versailles.
7) Underpromise and overdeliver. If an editor tells you she’ll know in a month, you know she’ll tell you in two months. So tell the shmuck of a writer it’ll be three months and thrill him by being one month early.
8 ) There is a good way and a bad way to use social media. The good way is to sing my praises. The bad way is anything else. I don’t want to know you’re on vacation in Nantucket. I don’t go on vacation. I don’t go to Nantucket. I write in a garage with an extension cord running in through the window. And think before you tweet that you just finished the best manuscript you’ve read in five years. Think about every one of your clients hoping you’ll lock your babies in an overheated car.
9) Hate with us. When I slam the door and flop onto my bed shouting “I hate him,” because my editor queried my use of semicolons, don’t explain his perspective. This isn’t about grammar, I’m trying to make you choose between us; there is only one correct answer.
10) Lie to us. The agent/author relationship is like a happy marriage: based on supportive falsehoods. Tell us you love us. Tell us nobody’s ever made you feel that way before. Shudder a little. Maybe weep.
After writing half this post, I realized I’d written it before. I searched, and sure enough, it was my second or third post on Betsy’s blog. Then I cannibalized. I’m my father; my stories aren’t done until I’ve repeated them so often that no meaning remains.
What stories do you repeat? What subjects won’t leave you alone? What axes do you grind?
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You get on a plane. The person you’re sitting next to sees that you are reading a manuscript. You can feel their eyes on the page, you know they are trying to say something. They will either blurt it out or start with some small talk. But you know what they’re thinking. They have a story to tell, they survived something, or went somewhere or ate something. Or they know someone who went somewhere or ate something or survived something terrible. Then, it happens. They cross the line and ask what you do and you think about lying, about saying anything: you’re a post partum doula, you’re a designated hitter for the Tampa Bay Rays, you own a ribbon shop in Santa Barbara called Ribbons! Ribbons! Ribbons!. You ask god why he made you an agent, why people think that whatever happened to them is of interest, no matter that they have never written a word. Can’t you just hire a ghost, they ask. Isn’t that what editors are for? Please, 24B, do not tell me that your son-in-law is a writer, that your mother escaped Poland, that you love Harry Potter and always thought you could write a children’s book. Would you ask a dermatologist to look at a pimple on your ass, would you ask a banker to evaluate your portfolio? Please wannabe writer don’t sit next to me, don’t ask me what I think of electronic books, don’t tell me how much you love your Kindle. Don’t ask me how publishing works or if you can give my name to your colleague who is writing a memoir about her herb garden. Just be quiet and enjoy the in-flight magazine’s cover story about Bobby Flay and leave me the fuck alone.
Let’s get crunchy and talk about flap copy. The two or so paragraphs that are the equivalent of a book’s welcome mat. Editors are generally responsible for the copy, though they usually cadge it from the catalogue copy that they write months earlier. All of the copy writing that goes on is actually very important as it “positions” a book and communicates its salient points. WHen I first had to write flap copy as an editorial assistant, you would have thought I had been assigned to write the inaugural poem. I was petrified. The writing style was completely foreign to me and I had no clue how to boil a book down into a few paragraphs and distill its essence. I started reading the flap copy of every book publishes by the house and I started to see patterns. All flap copy has a certain tone, a basic movement, you want to entice but not be a spoiler. You want to establish the book within a tradition, but make it seem original. You want to cast the basic ideas or story lines in terms both specific and general. You want to flatter and entice the reader who is deciding whether she wants to buy the book. In other words, you want to land the ball close to the cup. Flap copy is a little like American cheese.
Over the years, I’ve received my share of fan letters, marriage proposals from inmates, and the occasional hate mail. But today, I received a really shitty piece of hate mail, notable for its largely incomprehensible thought sequences, forced intimacy, and comparison of my tits to dirigibles or Subway sandwiches. Thank you for taking the time to write. Thank for defiling the beauty of an envelope, the sensual pleasure of opening a letter with a brass and ebony letter opener from Africa in the shape of a pelican. Thank you for taking my baby teeth, my pee in a wax cup, my first dance. Please take this stamp on your tongue like acid, like holy communion, like a child blind with happiness and know that you are not mine.
I got back on the pony this weekend. I realize why I had been avoiding it. Writing is freaking hard. Ha ha! There’s a news flash for you. Two things always happen to me when I sit down to write: I either have to go to the bathroom or I nod out. Why is it so hard? I always hated it when people said relationships were hard, that you had to work at them. Why? I sort of feel the same when people complain about writing. It’s not as hard as laying brick. I’ve also believed that the prolific among us, the truly great, don’t suffer. It comes to them, they go to it. But of course, many great writers suffer horribly. What am I trying to say? What am I getting at? If writing is so hard why do you stick with it? Why not garden, or cook, or soak in a tub? What’s with this shit?
I was invited to give an interview via Skype for a website about publishing and communication. This little turtle tucked her head right back into her shell. It’s bad enough I have to see my trail of slime known as this blog, but I just couldn’t face seeing myself. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most self-loathing of all. There was another invitation for a phoner. Sign me up! I did a lot to promote the revision for the Forest for the Trees, articles, e-cards, snail mailings, panels, workshops. I even sat around with a bunch of writers in Ann Arbor and talked about butt plugs, for chrissakes. And for what: an uptick in sales. An ego hit that doesn’t last as long as a crack high. To spread the gospel according to moi? I’m lucky, yes, for sure. I was a girl intent on other darker things. And somehow I found the words to say something else about life and writing and publishing. Why am I crying? Why do I make myself sick? Bobbi?
I had a really nice lunch date today. What constitutes a good lunch?
Fifty minutes suspended in time. Today, I spaced out, time traveled, went deaf. The carpet has triangles filled with circles. Someone else’s head dented that pillow. My therapist is beautiful. Older, elegant. She wears one perfect bangle. Could you say that again? Where did you go ? Am I getting worse? Am I in the sweet spot? Could you say that again? Is there a river? Are you in my movie? Did you sponge down the counter top? Does the bangle slide on easily? Is time up? What are you feeling? What?
Summer hate list:
Betsy Lerner 