Instead of a lunch date, an editorial director and I went for a manicure. Indulgent? I like to think of it as multi-tasking. I promise you, once we picked our color (“Nasty” for me and “Tea Time” for her), we did not exchange notes on waxes and weaves. Rather, our conversation turned to the author we have in common, to new books on the Fall list, recent firings and the depressed job market, Kindles, and the recent sale of a novel that has industry tongues wagging — for the money it fetched, of course. Except for the women pushing our cuticles back and the complimentary back massage I received, it was like any other publishing lunch. And since everything sucks anyway, you might as well have a decent manicure. ?

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Tomorrow we’re interviewing six candidates for an assistant position at the agency. Without even looking at their resumes, I can bet they’ve gone to good colleges, speak Swahili and know Quark. I’m telling you, these kids today are sharp. Why then do they want to work in publishing? Because they love literature? I repeat: why work in publishing? Didn’t they get the memo, god and the book are dead.

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I’ve been trying to remain upbeat, but another week of firings — this time at HarperCollins — makes it impossible. Too many of my friends have lost their jobs and in the game of musical publishing chairs, too many chairs have been eliminated. More than a few people have said that I was smart to get out when I did. At the time, it was terrifying. I felt that editing was my calling, and that agents were a necessary evil. I am relieved to have a share in my own company, to not worry about that moment when the boss comes in your office, closes the door, sits down with a grim smile, and you know the rest. It doesn’t mean that we are free from financial worries; it just comes in a different shoe size. I’m very sad for my friends as well as the whole damn business.

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I heard from a new client today who remarked — it seemed somewhat wistfully — that we hadn’t emailed or talked for over a week.  I am familiar with this phase in the agent-author relationship. We go into the selling mode after many weeks, sometimes months, of working on a proposal together. During this time, we speak or email many times a day as editors call with interest, or to reject, and sometimes we grumble about why no one is calling. The point it, contact is intense and frequent especially when interest from publishers is shaping up into an auction.

After we sell the book, we talk about the contract, and a few other details, but basically, it’s time for the writer to go write her book, and for the agent to work with another writer. It’s like breaking up with someone but staying friends. Not quite. The relationship can stay very close, but there is nothing like that intense period during which you are selling a proposal for a writer. They entrust you with their baby and your professional abilities are on the line. It’s the high-wire.

For the writer, it must feel, in some way, to be in free fall after the sale. All that attention and focus suddenly turned elsewhere. The idea that somehow your life will change when you finally get that book contract, and, unless you’ve gotten an advance in the millions, life is pretty much the same: Cheerios for breakfast, check e-mail, procrastinate with random household chore, teach a class or whatever, go to a movie, be irritable with spouse. Hey, doesn’t anyone see I’m going to be PUBLISHED?!?

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Between us, my associate and I spotted: Nicole Kidman and Mr. Nicole Kidman on the treadmill at the Beverly Hills Hotel spa; Jason Schartzman at a funky breakfast place wearing cut-off sweats and showing off his hirsute legs. His girlfriend was an adorable red head and they were either in love or BFF’s. You know, really comfortable with each other. Joe “the Pen is mightier than the bat” Torre looking slim and tan and not missing the Bronx for one second. John Lovett in tennis whites. And, swoon, Diane Keaton looking like…Diane Keaton. Full flannel skirt, longish jacket with fat belt, and a grey bowler. I love LA.

People never believe me because I’m a card carrying New York neurotic, but it’s true: I love the land of valet parking and Arnold Palmers. I love the funky architecture and signage. I love the way everyone is on the make. I like the names of the streets: Ventura, Van Nuys, Wilshire and of course driving late at night on Sunset, windows down, a canyon of tacky neon pulsing with some Jim Morrison ghost dance, some escaped song.

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I’m going to LA for a few days, you know, to do some business on the coast. LOL. Seriously, I’m taking some “meetings.” My clothes are all over my bed. My 11 year old daughter is laughing at me. I don’t know how to dress in NYC, let alone LA. I mean, of course, all black in NYC, but LA? Is white the new black?

Last week, a fifty-something producer from LA came to our office. He was wearing jeans, a cashmere sweater, and ginormous white leather sneakers (Converse?), and he had the most astounding case of bed head, as if he set up a little tent on his head. I want to wear jeans and sneakers but something tells me I have to wear slacks, a jacket and SHOES. WTF, I’ll figure it out.

More important, what am I taking to read on the plane? 80 pages of a client’s new novel. 150 pages of the end of a client’s memoir. And a huge manuscript by a novelist who has turned to true crime. I’m totally psyched. Great stuff.

What do you have on your Kindle? (I actually don’t have a Kindle.)

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People keep asking: how bad is the publishing world? It’s really bad. Too many firings, too many publishing divisions merged, too many budgets shredded, too many disgusted shareholders, too many book stores closing, and too many book reviews folding. Though I’ve been asking friends if anyone remembers a time when the book business was thriving, when poets got fat and journalists lived like kings? As one of my first bosses was fond of saying, “it’s a nickel and dime business.” She got that right. The question now is how to stay afloat, how to maintain, how to do your best work when no one wants to publish, stock, review or even slam your book down on the remainder table. How to marshal your talent, ego, desire, and will, and at the same time quiet your insecurities and doubts long enough to write? I always hated it when famous authors were interviewed about their writing habits and they’d say, “I have to write,” or, “if you can do anything else, do it.” There was this false note, I felt, imploring people to do something else as if the writer wished he or she wasn’t burdened by this writing jones. Maybe it bothered me because I was able to do something else and did. Maybe it bothered me because it’s obnoxious. I’m getting off the point here. It’s really bad out there. You should only write if you have to write. And if you can do anything else, do it.

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Sold my first book of the new year. There is no better moment in an agent’s life than when you make that call to a first time writer with the news: we have an offer. For just one brief spell, you are a fairy godmother. And in that one sentence, a writer becomes an author. Getting published for the first time is a bit like losing your virginity except it hurts more.I’m wondering how you deflowered authors out there feel.

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It dawned on me this morning as I rejected nine submissions that it’s a bit fatuous, to say the least, to critique the rejecting habits of editors without looking at my own. One of the worst moments of my publishing life arrived when I met a writer, now a McArthur Genius Grant winner, who reminded me that I rejected his first novel some years earlier. Cringe. He even remembered what I said. More cringing and self-flagellation. Apparently, I said the book didn’t have a domino effect. A domino effect!? What, did I go to college at the University of Milton Bradley?What was I thinking. I’ve passed on some other big writers in my day, but he’s the one I’ll live to regret.

But back to my rejecting style. Well, all I can say in my defense is that I look at everything that comes my way. When I was a young editor I learned that Ordinary People was found in the slush pile and that had been one of my favorite books in high school. So I look at everything. And I know pretty quickly if it’s for me. And if I don’t have anything nice to say, I say it’s not for me. And if I have something constructive to say, I try to add that. I get a lot of thank you notes for my rejections which leads me to think I’m being too nice. When I mentioned this to another agent, she was astonished. She’s never received a thank you note for her rejections and she looked at me as if I were an imbecile. I’m sure I’ve sent some curt notes and I’m sure some manuscripts have fallen through the cracks.

I think writers suffer enough. But it’s also important to get your shit together and only send out material that is the best it can be and that you’ve crossed all the t’s and all that jazz. There are really good proposal writing books out there (I think Susan Rabiner wrote one), so familiarize yourself with the process; in other words when you send something out, make it your best shot. And if you get rejected, fuck em. No one can stop you but yourself.

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Ah, the avoider rejecter. This type truly is like the guy who fucks you and never calls back. At least it feels this way. Either way, he’s really, really just not that into you. With every submission we make, we find there’s always at least one editor who goes completely MIA. Even after you’ve called and pitched them a book about Hamas and they tell you they worked on a Kibbutz in high school and would be fasinated by anything about Israel, yes, even these folks sometimes completely disappear. There’s one editor who goes by the nickname Bermuda Triangle because everything you send her gets “lost.” Some editors don’t think they particularly need to respond. Deal with it. Most people don’t like conflict, except those who relish it, and I understand the desire to avoid rejecting something. But again, this is why god invented email, so that writers don’t have to suffer quite as much. After all it’s better to be rejected than to be left hanging. Though for that brief period in between, hope.

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