Better Late Than Never… (Part Three)

If you would have told me in the tenth grade that I would sit down one day and write something, anything, for the pure satisfaction of it, I wouldn’t have believed you.  Writing was paramount to things like cutting the grass or changing the oil in my 1979 Ford Fairmont – dirty, difficult things that were only done to avoid being evicted from my parents' house or to keep my meager social life going.  It was that very year that I had Mrs. Smith for English Literature.  Back then, to graduate, we had to take one semester of American Literature and one semester of English Literature.  Considering that I had pledged to never read a book, this was more than a challenge.  The American Literature class had slid by without incident because the teacher, my track coach, had a fondness for reading each of the assigned books aloud.  This was not the case with Mrs. Smith.  To call her a shrewish old lady would be putting in mildly and I think she relished in punishing anyone that wasn’t born with a book under his nose.  She sniffed me out right away.  My reviews of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Canterbury Tales each came back with more red ink than black.  I thought she was particularly unfair because I had gone to a lot of trouble to read those Cliff’s Notes and chapter summaries.  I had even used a thesaurus to find some big words to throw off the scent of my plagiarisms.  She saw through it all and seemed to relish in scribbling the large C- across my prose.  I had fancied the girl sitting next to me and she was way out of my league.  Not just in looks but brains.  She was one of those strange beings that actually liked reading all the assigned books and wrote her papers effortlessly, always getting an A+.  Mrs. Smith missed no opportunity to let the class know who had received a good grade and who had not.  She may as well have posted the grades on the chalk board.  I did my best to hide my poor grades from this girl and I even went out of my way to discuss the books with her.  I think my ruse was mostly working until the day that Mrs. Smith left my red-ink-stained paper on my desk while I was in the rest room.  The girl tried to act like she hadn’t seen it but all was lost.  Let’s just say that my ambitions were not fulfilled.  She went on to be the valedictorian and not my prom date.  Since that little run-in, I’ve been a little shy about sharing my work and deathly afraid of people with red pens.

After I finished One Step Ahead, I spent weeks editing it.  My method was to print it on three-holed paper, put it in a binder, and re-read it with a red pen.  The red pen was OK if it was my pen.  I would mark up each page until I got to the end and then sit down at the computer and fix it.  Then, I’d re-print it and do it again.  After about three rounds of this, I had perfection.  Of course, I hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do next.  Send it off to a publisher?  I was pretty sure there was an agent involved but I wasn’t quite sure of whether the agent did the editing (not that there was anything to edit of course) or the publishing house.  I just needed to get it in front of someone.  I spent some time surfing around on the Internet and realized that I was in way over my head.  I found a least a dozen books on the subject and purchased them all from Amazon.  When they arrived, I knew I was out of my depth.  People, it seemed, spent their lives unpublished!  There was an entire industry built around just trying to GET an agent, let alone getting to a publisher.  Well, I’ve never been one to let this sort of thing get me down, so I sat down with my copy of Guide to Literary Agents.  I put little stars next to the ones that sounded like people that I’d like to get a beer with and figured that I’d write them a letter.  Not a “query letter” mind you, because I had no idea of such a concept.  I guess I just figured that they were simply waiting to hear from me.  Imagine my surprise when nobody wrote back.  When I purchased “the Guide,” it came with a free membership to Writer’s Digest.  I was now on the other end of their marketing machine and getting emails daily about “How to Succeed in Picture Books” or my favorite “Break into Copy-editing!”  I was about to permanently relegate them to my spam folder when the offer came declaring “Have Your Novel Critiqued by a Real Agent and Lean to Write a Perfect Query Letter.”  Well, sign me up!  I was so excited that I took a day off work and sat in the nearby public library with headphones just to sit through the live webinar taught by literary agent Kimerley Cameron.  To make a long story short, I quickly learned that I was doing just about everything wrong.  She gave all sorts of helpful hints about how to find an agent, how to write them a proper query letter and most importantly – what not to do.  At the conclusion of the class, we were permitted to write Ms. Cameron a query letter, which she would read and critique (a privilege I was learning) and submit the first ten pages of our manuscript for critique.  She would give us some tips on the letter and if she thought the ten pages were any good, she reserved the right to ask for more.  I think I spent more time going over that letter and first ten pages than I had in all of my last edit.  Imagine my surprise when I found more mistakes!  Anyway, after holding my breath for nearly two weeks, she asked for the next fifty pages!  Ha!  I was on my way baby.  I changed the font and margins to cram in an extra ten pages.  I figured that the more she read, the more she’d want to see.  A week later, the response came; polite and curt.  Thank you, but no thank you.  Actually, her direct quote was “you have talent but your work could use the gentle hand of a good editor.”  An editor?  I had edited it!  Not a spelling error in there!  I replied and asked her if she could suggest any, which she did.  I got a short list of five editors and at the top of the list was Alan Rinzler.

I have to say that Alan’s bio was more than a little intimidating.  This guy was the editor for Hunter S. Thompson!  Toni Morrison!  Now that I was starting to realize that I was in a little over my head with this whole writing thing, the last thing I needed was another slap-down.  I went on and explored the other editors and even sent one of them a query letter that got no reply.  Feeling frustrated, I decided to fire off a letter to Alan.  What the hell?  I might as well get ignored by the best.  I sent it in the morning and got a reply that evening.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had put a brief synopsis in my letter and his reply was “sounds interesting, send me the whole manuscript.”  The whole thing?  My Writer’s Digest had told me that they nearly always wanted it in pieces and it might take weeks to get back to you – if ever.  I sent the whole file that night with high hopes.  High hopes of hearing from him eventually.  Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next day with another reply in my inbox.  “… I've read the draft with interest and respect. I can see, however, why Kimberley suggested you work with a developmental editor, since you're having major problems with character development, structure, narrative arc and literary style.”  Yikes.  He went on to suggest a Skype session and laid out his terms.  It was basically a take it or leave it scenario.  I took it.  He made me essentially start over.  He even made me write an outline before beginning again and he edited the outline! 

About midway through this process I was feeling the anxiety that I hadn’t experienced since Mrs. Smith’s 10th grade English Lit class.  Except this time, it wasn’t the girl at stake, it was the thought I may never get this done and that it wasn’t that good to begin with.  I had a bit of a breakdown and wrote him a long letter.  I don’t know what I was thinking or what I expected in return but he was rather kind and reassuring.  I told him that I really just needed to know one thing.  I wanted to know, I needed to know, edits aside, whether he thought any of this was any good.  He sighed (we were on Skype) and said that he only takes on about twenty percent of the requests that he gets and asked me if we were proceeding or if I was quitting.  I decided that was all the reassurance that I was going to get - I proceeded.

Over the next several months I came to realize that writing a manuscript is like making a blue print of the house that you’re going to build.  Editing it is building the house.  You really have to get your hands dirty and it both takes longer and costs more (of your soul in the case of writing) than you had budgeted.  I don’t know if One Step Ahead will ever see a publisher or that glorious front rack at Barnes and Noble as you walk in, but I do feel really proud that I’ve done something completely.  If I could find Mrs. Smith or that girl from class, I’d like to send them a copy.