From 1998 to 2003 I worked on what would become my first finished novel. This book, set in 1960 (I was there before "Mad Men"!), was about a fictionalized Joey Bishop, his relationship to the other members of the Rat Pack, and the 20-year-old would-be dharma bum he hired to drive him back and forth from Hollywood to gigs in Las Vegas.
The book was called Make Nice, and it was good enough to get me a literary agent.
It was wonderful to actually have an agent. For a few years I could go to literary readings and conferences and feel like I belonged a little, even if my book wasn't published yet, because a professional did have confidence in it. She did a fantastic job. Editors at a dozen top New York publishing houses looked at it. Then... none of them bought it. Came close a couple times, but no dice.
While she was flogging Make Nice, I was working on another book, a comic novel about a San Francisco office worker who gets sent to India to help open an offshore call center. I completed a couple of drafts and gave it to my agent. She gave me a critique and sent me back to do more work. A couple drafts later, I was ready for her to look at it again... and then she quit the literary agenting business.
So I'm trying to find a new agent for my book Mango Rain (which has had other working titles, but we won't go into that). About ten days ago, I started sending out queries to potential agents; yesterday I got my first form-letter rejection. With this fresh in my mind, I found these words by the writer Augusten Burroughs encouraging:
As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward. I believe that if you have real talent as a writer, a true gift, you will eventually be published. But it may not happen according to your schedule. And it may not happen with the first manuscript you create. Or the second. So you have to be, if not patient, at least endlessly tenacious.
Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen. I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen. The reason I was so confident is because I knew I wouldn't stop trying until it happened. And this is the secret. You don't need to be confident. You just need to be stubborn.
Ordinarily I'm not one for inspirational passages, but I think these words pass the bullshit test. My favorite part is where he says if he continues to read great books, he'll write a good book of his own. Nowadays, it's reading that inspires me, not news of book deals or visits to bookstores.
Maybe my novel Mango Rain is worthy of publication; I think it's pretty good. It's funny and topical and I even went to Bangalore to research it. At least it should be worthy of an agent's confidence. I'm giving it a shot.
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Martha Nichols
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Comments
Best of luck, truly. I empathize.
When I was shopping around "Beer, Blood and Cornmeal," I didn't really like the direction that agents seemed to want the finished product to go in. They wanted it really short, light and vignette driven. One agent told me to go indie with it and that turned out to be the right choice for me.
Rated.
Truer words were never spoken. To paraphrase Syd Field, a good book doesn't go unpublished. Keep at it Mark, and thanks for sharing your experience. Its inspiring in its straightforward reality.
I'm sure Mango Rain is a worthwhile read, if for no other reason than this post is entertaining and well written.
Keep bangin' on doors. One day, the right one just may open for you.
I feel your pain R.
So yes, hang in there and keep working. And...have you seen "Outsourced"?? A sweet little movie that sounds similar to your novel.
And so it goes....to quote Kurt Vonnegut
I went to a local writer's conference and my suggestion is to find published authors that you like and ask them to recomend an agent. You will probably want an agent that is experienced and can rattle off a few good authors that they handle.
In retrospect, given that my agent never did succeed in selling that book, it might be said that those agents who read the book (or part of it) and rejected me were right the first time. I dunno; I thought it was a really good book. Anyway, I'm trying again with a completely different project.
Writing hasn't been a paying profession for years, and it won't be ever again. If your stuff is good, people will read it on the Internet for free. Your publishers will rip you off and critics will rip you up to prove THEIR "superior wit." If I were you, I'd give up and just keep practicing your Wal-Mart Greeter Smile.
Just keep plodding. It will happen and please try University Presses--University of Michgan, Louisiana State Univ Press, Northwestern.
Best of luck
Why am I writing novels, you might then ask. I guess I should write another post about that.
I had a friend many years ago who I hadn't seen for a while. I asked what he'd been up and he said, "I've started writing." "Fantastic!" I said. "What are you writing?" "I've had idea for a novel that I'm sure can be a best seller."
I didn't say anything but you can guess what happened. He spent 2-3 years on it, paid several editors to help him revise it, had agents look at it, never got anywhere. His focus the whole time was that it was a bestseller-in-the-making, and he really wanted to earn money from it, even though it was his first written work. He ended up spending money (as well as tons of time, of course) on it rather than making any.
And I'm betting he's one of tens of thousands of people with similar tales.
Multimedia publisher only interested to publish saleable books he do not care new talent or new knowledge.They make publishing just like vegetable market.Can these multinational corporation publish book of NIETZSHE OR Dostoevsky.A genuine writer write book because of urge, he donot care people read or not only independent publisher understand their urge,commercial literary angent are joker they are born only for dancing tune of market economy.Can they understand the urge of Gustave Flaubert who wrote "I your satisied what you wrote than donot care if even single reader got your book ornot..
And I'm not talking about the blue-sky million-dollar advance. I'm saying you won't be paid back for anything you do. "Thanks for the article. We'll print it. Why should we pay you for your paper, toner, or effort? You're just a writer. You're not worth anything. In fact, you're a pain in the ass. Go away. There's thousands of people just like you who want their ego stroked. Get out and don't use our bathroom on the way out."
That is not the far-flung future of writing. That is the present. You just don't realize it. And the people running writing magazines and writer's workshops want to keep you from realizing it as long as they can.
1) Anyone with a computer and a little persistence can turn out a 300-page manuscript of something in a year or so.
2) Lots of dreck gets published as it is.
3) Some of that dreck sells a lot of copies.
These facts make people think that if they have created a simulacrum of a novel, have given it their best shot, and their spouse thinks it's wonderful, then they are somehow entitled to a publishing contract. Even if they cheerfully admit that it's not the greatest book ever written, because after all, see no. 2 and no. 3. These are the people who wind up paying editors to help them with their manuscripts, and who fall prey to "agents" who demand money up front.
This syndrome is part of the great American delusion that someday you will be rich and famous, the same delusion that makes people go on reality TV, or even more pathetically, fail to get on reality TV. It's also part of the great American democratization of what were once elite occupations. Seventy five years ago, only a few people were mountain climbers, because it was so impossible given the technology of the time. Now any idiot with a thousand dollars worth of equipment from REI can get himself stranded at an altitude of 18,000 feet -- and he's probably calculating what kind of book deal he can get out of the experience, if he survives.
Writing a novel should be hard, the equivalent of climbing Mt. McKinley in the 1930s. Getting an agent and getting published should be even harder. Because the problem these days is... see no. 2 above.
"I always encourage people to write. I think it's a fantastic thing that most people can do -- it's therapeutic, it's creative, and what you write may help others as well as yourself. I just think people confuse writing and publishing.
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Yes, I believe that it is the “journey rather than the destination” that matters. But I also wanted to share my story because I believed it might help others. So I chose self publishing my book. At first I thought there was a stigma attached to self publishing, as if those who go that route are the rejects, failures, marginal writers whom agents and 'respectable' publishers don't even look at. The lepers of the writing world. But, I don't care what anyone thinks, I had a story to tell and I told it- not for narcissistic reasons or ego patting. If I get my small investment back I would be happy, but I'd be happier if my story reached out to many readers.