My Publishing Journey #3: Stumbling Towards Success

Today's story reveals a few of my naive escapades when I first entered the publishing world. You may find them amusing... or cautionary. :-)

In June 2007, I found two critique partners in my hometown. We met once a month to exchange constructive comments on each other's work.

Two of us signed up to attend a local conference. I was enthusiastic about my appointment with one agent who would be attending. She was a general market agent but had brokered a few CBA deals.

By the time the conference finally rolled around in April 2008, I was ALMOST finished with my novel.

Do not use an impending conference as a deadline to finish a novel draft.

Why?

Because if you stay up late at night finishing your draft the night before the conference, you may be in a slightly emotional state when your agent appointment rolls around.

NAIVE MOVE THE FIRST: THE WEEPING WRITER

Squirm.

Yes, it's true. I stayed up far past my bedtime finishing that novel. I didn't realize how sleep deprivation plus the emotional wallop of completing such a long project would affect me.

It wasn't the best pitch you've ever seen. Ha ha!

I knew what I was supposed to say, in theory, but when I actually made it to my place in front of the agent, I sensed that my general pitch might not be exactly what she wanted to hear.

"What else would you like to know?" I asked, staring at her like a deer in headlights.

"Tell me about your heroine and your hero."

"Well, they're both based on real people who lived in a small town in Ohio in 1854..."

So far, so good. But as I described these real people, I choked up and my eyes watered. I was overwhelmed by the realization that my long, solitary work was finished and it was finally time to share it with the world. I really, really loved these characters, and I couldn't believe I had made it to this point.

Fortunately, I recovered myself sufficiently that I didn't burst into a full sobbing fit during the pitch, but it was very embarrassing nonetheless.

The agent was nice enough to request a full manuscript. I was overjoyed! But I was also a little nervous. What if this agent made me an offer? I hadn't really clicked with her on a personal level. All sobbing aside, I sensed that our personalities probably were not a perfect match, and I knew nothing about how she would work with a client.

About a week later, my little family headed to California for the annual Pepperdine lectures. Before we bunked down for the night in a hotel room, I checked my email.

Lo and behold, an announcement from American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) had arrived in my inbox. A friendly fellow writer wanted to pass along a message from Rachelle Gardner, who had recently joined Wordserve Literary as an agent after many years as a high-level editor.

Rachelle was seeking quality manuscripts in my genre.

I immediately went online to investigate her credentials, and found that she was my dream agent. Her editorial background was superb. I could trust her to know good work from bad, and to care about quality as well as commercial appeal.

NAIVE MOVE THE SECOND: THE STINKY QUERY

I wrote a really, really awful query letter in the darkness of that hotel room, while my family slept.

Oh, the pitch was OK, if not perfect. I presented my novel well.

It's the OTHER stuff that stunk to high heaven.

Some of it I can't confess even now, though you would howl with laughter if you heard it.

Here's just a teeny, weeny sample. In my ignorance, I told Rachelle that I really wanted her to be my agent, but that another agent already had my manuscript, and I was afraid she might take it before Rachelle could respond.

(Pause here while I simultaneously cringe and chuckle at my own foolishness.)

NOW, in hindsight, I know that publishing moves at a glacial pace, and that there was almost no chance that the other agent would have responded to me in a week, or even three weeks.

THEN, I was honestly filled with dread that the other agent would call me up, drooling over my manuscript, and I would miss my chance to sign with Rachelle, the agent I really wanted.

Double cringe.

Ever gracious, Rachelle said nothing about my faux pas at that time. After reviewing my query and sample, she requested that I send her a partial manuscript.

O frabous day! Calloo! Callay!

Despite NAIVE MOVES THE FIRST AND SECOND, I seemed to be headed in exactly the right direction.

Next: My Publishing Journey #4: In Which Our Hapless Writer Faces a Reckoning

My Publishing Journey #2: What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

When I was eight, I took a series of tests in school that included a self-esteem test. The test administrator asked many of the questions orally, and some of them, he asked three times in order to prompt a variety of answers.

"What would you like to be when you grow up?" he asked.

"A playwright."

When he asked twice more, I did not change my answer, but reiterated my desire to be a writer.

For most of the rest of my life, my dream of being a writer has drifted at the edges of my vision, never disappearing even when other priorities took precedence for a while.

A few years after I finished undergrad study, I took a stab at playwriting. I never completed any of my projects. In retrospect, I understand that my life was chaotic and unfocused. I couldn't see myself clearly, so I had no chance of being able to write with insight. I still had the ability to write nice prose, but I didn't have the life experience to create a coherent larger vision.

Sure, I might have been capable of writing chick lit about twenty year olds in New York, but that wasn't the type of material that called to me. I wanted to write about dramatic, life-changing events, but I wasn't equipped with the spiritual tools to do that. In fact, I was agnostic at the time, which had a great deal to do with my confusion.

The kind of writing that called to me was spiritual writing, but an empty spirit has nothing to offer to readers. Beautiful language alone is not enough.

So instead of pursuing my dream, I entered graduate study, as I described in my previous post.

In spring 2006, I walked across the stage in what my daughter called "my bat costume" and received my doctoral diploma.

During those seven years in graduate school, I found my faith again, discarded many attitudes that hindered me in my twenties, married, had a child, and, in short, grew up.

I was finally ready, artistically AND spiritually, to pursue my writing dream.

At the time, we lived in Ohio. I began to visit historic sites to help me envision the setting for the nineteenth-century novel I planned to write. I sorted through plot ideas in my head. I would use my knowledge of nineteenth-century America to create a historical novel with inspirational themes--or so I hoped!

In May of 2006, I walked into a historic home and found my story.

I won't go into detail about it in this post, but I consider this story a gift from above: a piece of hope from the past for our sorrowful world...a story to "bind up the brokenhearted."

I outlined the story according to my dramatic training and parts of Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method.

I began to write.

I had made it through a first draft of two chapters when I found out we were going to relocate to the Southwest, fifteen hundred miles away.

My husband left immediately for his new job: I stayed behind to sell the house.

With all the work and upheaval, I didn't write again for about a year.

But in June 2007, six months after our relocation, I encountered two women who would become my critique partners. With their support, I began to make substantial progress on the story that had dropped into my lap a year before.

I asked in the title of this post "What Happens to a Dream Deferred?"

My dream of writing has been a deferred dream for most of my life.

Sometimes, that delay has been frustrating. I've chafed against the wait.

But my writing journey has now given me a different perspective on deferred dreams. Sometimes dreams lurk in hidden places, like seeds underground. If you dig them up prematurely, nothing will ever come of them. But if you patiently and faithfully wait, and continue to water and fertilize the soil, a deferred dream may shoot up and burst into flower long past the time you thought it should happen.

Next: My Publishing Journey #3--Stumbling Towards Success

My Publishing Journey #1 - The Apprentice

I'm going to tell you the story of my adventures in publishing little by little, in the hope that in a few weeks, I may have some news to share with you.

My education as a writer has been a lifelong process, as it is for most writers. But instead of telling you my whole autobiography, I'll start with my graduate school experience.

I studied for a doctorate in English literature at Emory University from Fall 1999 until Spring 2006, when I received my Ph. D..

I knew from the beginning that I might not want to be an academic, for several reasons too complex to explain here. I wanted to go to graduate school because I loved literature and I was good at analyzing it. I just wanted to study.

And study I did! For three years I took classes and the dreaded comprehensive exams, first written, then oral. Many parts of grad school were grueling, but I was blessed with a wonderful group of peers and a great faculty. Almost everybody in my program was pretty humane, which is not true at many other grad programs. I'm especially grateful for my dissertation director, who taught me a great deal. I really needed his support when I relocated during my fourth year of grad school and ended up writing my dissertation long-distance, while caring for a baby!

I'm happy with the work I did in graduate school. Thanks to my dissertation director's guidance, I produced a quality dissertation that ended up winning a prize. More important was my immersion for seven years in literature of all kinds. I read, and read, and read--classic works from the Renaissance to the present. (I skipped Medieval--had enough Middle English as an undergrad, thank you very much!)

These long years of studying great writers became my creative writing apprenticeship. In conjunction with my undergraduate study of theater and poetry, my graduate school experience gave me knowledge--both intuitive and analytical-- of the elements of great stories.

I haven't been through an MFA program, so I can't compare a Ph.D. program in literature to an MFA. I can vouch that a Ph. D. program of literary study can do wonders to prepare you for working as a novelist. The catch is that if you're going to consider it, you have to really enjoy literary criticism. No one who only wants to create is going to make it through the rigors of a seven-year program in analysis.

Next: My Publishing Journey #2 - What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

News

I have some news that I hope to be able to share with you soon.

Watch this space for updates.

Marchin' Like a Saint

My husband and hundreds of thousands of other Saints fans rejoiced last night.

We were watching the game with friends, and in the middle of the fourth quarter I piped up with some bemusement:

"I just can't believe it's the Saints. It's as if a brand new team put on their uniforms and took the field."

Saints fans have been the most long-suffering, die-hard, paper-bag-on-the-head fans in the NFL. Year after year they have watched their team come in last or close to last in the rankings.

That's why it's even more rewarding to witness their joy in their team's victory.

This morning, we are all Saints. We can get out of bed brand new, and we can go put on our uniforms and play like different people.

We're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, invisible thousands in stadiums of air.

Let's do it.

This Week's Challenge

A friend of mine gave a two-minute talk yesterday.

When he spoke the following words, he did it with such sincerity and compassion for the people he was addressing that you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium. I think more than a few of us had tears in our eyes.

Love is patient and kind.
Love is not jealous, or boastful, or proud or rude.
It does not demand its own way.
It is not irritable,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
Love never gives up,
never loses faith,
is always hopeful,
and endures through every circumstance.

My challenge for this week is:

Love is not irritable. It keeps no record of wrongs.

I'll keep you posted on how I do.