The Investment

My wife works as a waitress at a local restaurant.  She is better at her job than I’ve ever been at any job I’ve had.  And I’ve had a lot.  She works the day shift and still manages to bring home a ton of money.  Unfortunately, the owners recently eliminated breakfast from their menu, cutting into my wife’s tips.  Without her regular breakfast customers, business has been a trickle and her tips have suffered.  I feel bad for her because she enjoys her job, and she works her butt off.  She doesn’t work as many hours as I do, but she does a lot more when she’s there.*

The point is, we don’t have a lot of money coming in (through no fault of hers), and as I plunge deeper into the haunted forest that is the road to Publication, only now do I see what a financial commitment it’s going to take.  I knew about the time commitment: writing, revising, research, marketing, but I never realized how damn expensive the whole thing is.  It cost seventy bucks to have five copies of my book printed – single spaced (!) for my beta-readers because I couldn’t afford to double space it.  Aren’t we supposed to be starving artists?  Aren’t organizations like Writer’s Digest supposed to know that? 

I just spent ninety bucks on a writing webinar.  It was worth it; the advice I got took me from not having a clue about querying to potentially writing a killer pitch.  But my point is, I really couldn’t afford it, I definitely can’t afford that next one that rolls around, whether or not that one also could prove invaluable.  I was looking at writers’ workshops online today; so many caught my eye.  Then I noticed the price tag.  What good are workshops if the people who really need them can’t afford them?  Some may say if it’s important to you, then you have to spend the money.  True, but eating is also important to me (and my family).

Anyway, before this turns into Broke Writer’s Lament, I found an online writer’s conference in New York this January.  I can’t afford to go, but in this case, I think I can’t afford not to.  In addition to the seminars, guest speakers, and networking opportunities,** they have what they call a “pitch slam,” where they lock you in a room with fifty agents who slam your pitch.  No, not really.  It’s an opportunity to essentially do what I did with the pitch critique fifty times over (actually thirty-four if you consider three minutes per agent plus “shuffle” time over two hours).  I’ll get a chance to verbally pitch my novel to as many agents as I can, and they’ll tell me what works and what doesn’t.  Theoretically, I could even get an offer for pages, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

I told my wife about it and what it costs; not only is she okay with it, but I think she’s making me go.  I can’t believe how lucky I am to have the support and patience she gives me, and yes, I do appreciate how rare that is.  Maybe that’s my secret weapon.  I can’t afford writing workshops or fancy software or a ton of accessories.  But what she gives me is worth all that and a universe more.  I just hope I’m worth it.  

*I once heard being a paramedic described as hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.  It’s not unusual for us to go for hours on end without a call, then get that one really bad call, where nothing goes right, and the stakes are literally someone’s life.

**Yeah, I don’t ‘network’ well; you should see me at the few parties I attend (“Dan, this is the hydrangea in the corner; hydrangea, Dan.”)

Road Map

I got my critique for my pitch proposal a lot sooner than I expected.  Crushed are my unrealistic dreams that she would be so in love with it that the world would fall away, and only she and the pitch would remain, their eyes locked in a fiery…

Anyway, that didn’t happen.  No short cuts for me; it’s the long and winding road for as long as it takes.  It’s a long road, treacherous and lonely, but at least I know where I’m going and how to get there.  Actually, it wasn’t all bad.  Heck, just getting honest feedback from a professional was worth the price of admission.  I don’t how polite she was in crafting the comments, but she had some positive words.  She complimented two of my sentences (I only had seven, so pretty good batting average) and said the opening was nice, if a little generic.  She was confused about Thea’s attitude toward her home and felt the mission was too vague.  I got the impression she liked it overall, but that it wasn’t specific enough, that it didn’t give her anything to make her want to pick my book out of the hundreds of letters she gets in a week.

Even though the miracle ending didn’t happen, this was a very positive experience.  The hardest thing for me to know is just how much of the Wind Maiden’s world people can “see”.  I’ve been living there with these characters off and on for five years; It’s as real to me as any place on Earth.  More so than some.  To everyone else, though, it’s just words on a page, and my biggest mistake in the pitch was not providing enough words.  I was so worried about overdoing it that I never considered I might under-do it.

Anyway, I’ve got great notes – a road map to along, as well as proof a respected literary agent thinks I can craft a good sentence (hey, we take the victories where they are). 

 

Short but Hard

No, I’m talking about my pitch paragraph.  Our ‘homework’ for the previously mentioned webinar was to revise our query pitch paragraph, and e-mail it to the agent who presented the webinar (I can’t stop saying ‘webinar’) for a personalized critique.  The query pitch can get your foot in the door, or it can kill your chances before anyone’s read a page of your book.  Naturally, I want to do my best.  I’ve been working on it for over a week now, and it’s proven harder in its own way than the book itself.  Eight to twelve sentences to convince an agent your novel is better than 99% of the thousands of queries they get a week. 

No pressure.

The webinar (heh) proved worth the admission fee and more, as I went from describing my novel in endless circles that either drove people away or into deep bouts of I-don’t-give-a-crap, to being able to not only present my story in a tight, coherent fashion, but also to generate actual interest in the book itself.  Until it gets read by industry professionals, I’ll have no idea how good it is – the query or the novel – but on both counts, I know I’ve done my very best.

Well, maybe one more touchup.

First Contact

Yesterday, after six months revising and nearly three years writing my novel and over a decade before that of failed attempts, aborted story ideas, and general foot-dragging, I finally took my first baby steps into the business end of the book world.  No I’m not published yet not by a mile, but for the first time, I interacted (sort of) with an honest-to-goodness literary agent and a tiny piece of the literary world.  It may not seem like anything to those actively immersed in the world.  To me, however, Publication* is now no longer a mythical city on a hill, but an obtainable, albeit challenging, reality. 

I’ve spent the last ten years working on an ambulance.  Wonderful people, but not exactly the literati.  It’s been difficult just finding people to read my manuscript, finding like-minded souls to muse about the peculiar life of a writer, particularly an unpublished one.  I work a crazy amount of hours, and of course there are no writing groups in my immediate area.  My friends are all paramedics, EMTs, and firefighters; it would be tough starting a reading group, much less one for writers.  Therefore, like the solitary witch, I write without a coven; I edit with only an inkling of feedback.  And as I put the finishing touches on my manuscript and prepare with trembling hand to send that first query letter into the world, I do it alone.

Which was why this seminar was so important.  To hear from an agent in her own words exactly what she’s looking for, to have her address my questions and even look at my pitch proposal gave everything weight; it made it all real.  I can get Published; it’s hard work and could take years, but I know it’s possible.  There are people like me, no experience, no background in publishing, that every day are selling  their manuscript, or finding that perfect agent who’s passionate about their work.  I’m in the game now.  It’s the fourth quarter, I’m down by three touchdowns, and my offensive line has snuck off to Applebee’s, but I’m in the game.

As I get older, so much about life seems to involve endings.  This, however, is a beginning, and a big one.  And beginnings are so much better.

*I've decided to capitalize Published and Publication until I am Published.  Or until I get tired of it.