The Elusive Agent

I've been following Cynthia Morris' progress in her quest for an agent. I love her resilience in the face of rejection--how much more peaceful we are when we don't take these things personally! I wrote a little about my own experience of rejection at gresik.ca last week.

I also like Cynthia's suggestions for navigating the submission process, especially the deadline:

My deadline for a fully polished novel is May 28th. My deadline for seeking publication: December 20, 2007. If I haven’t found an agent or signed a contract by then, I’ll move on to something new. Who knows what that would be, but right now, I don’t have to worry about it.

That endpoint gives a sense of freedom, knowing that you're not stuck in this cycle forever, but will give yourself permission to move on with something else when the time comes.

Even the famous and successful have difficulty finding agents. My husband pointed me to the blog of Ken Levine, "an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer" who has worked on shows like CHEERS and FRASIER. In his post "Even I don't have an agent", he describes his own attempts to find a New York theatrical agent:

I made a few calls and found no one was interested. The fact that (a) I wasn’t 25, and (b) they couldn’t cash in on movie rights made me persona non representita. And this was before anyone even bothered to read my play.

Through a playwright friend, I was referred to one agent – we’ll call her Beth B. I had a nice conversation with her, she said she really wasn’t looking to take on new clients but wanted to read my play. So I sent it along with a resume. Two weeks later I get a letter from her. The first sentence was “Ohmygod, I had no idea you co-created ALMOST PERFECT!” She went on to say it was her favorite show, the writing was brilliant, she wrote a letter to CBS complaining when they cancelled it, it was like we were in her bedroom, and she was often confused for our star, Nancy Travis. I thought – I am IN!

Next paragraph – pass. Okay. Whatever.

Ken's whole blog is fascinating, with lost scenes from CHEERS, writing advice, and descriptions of the life of a sitcom writer.

I'll close with Ken's words of wisdom to everyone hunting that elusive agent.

I know it’s discouraging when an agent doesn’t want you, but always remember, there are plenty of agents out there that YOU don’t want. If it takes more time to find a better match it’s worth it.

Hear that, Cynthia? You hold out for the best match you can find!

Be Fearless in What You Attempt

Most of the stories I post here come from writers in the arts world, who create fiction, memoir, and poetry. But today I have something from the world of commerce and IT: a commencement speech given by Tim O'Reilly, founder of the computer book publisher O'Reilly Media (thanks to Tina at Read Pen for the link):

We work in a profession that can be mysterious to the layman, with a private language that sets us apart like one of the secret societies depicted in The Da Vinci Code! I still remember my first exposure to the computer industry as a humanities graduate. I was an experienced writer, but knew nothing about technology. I'd agreed to help a friend of mine, a programmer, to land a contract job writing a manual. We interviewed two engineers about their project while I took increasingly desperate notes. It was as if they were speaking a foreign language! As we walked away, I turned to my friend and asked "Were they just pulling my leg?" It was hard to believe that this jargon-filled dialog was actually meaningful. It was an inauspicious start to my career.

There are three lessons that I took away from that moment. The first was to be fearless in what you attempt. The job I eventually mastered was an enormous stretch for me. The second lesson was that a difficulty is often an opportunity in disguise. I built my company by bridging the information gap that I first encountered that day. The third lesson was the importance of serendipity in your life choices. I never imagined that I'd build a career as a technical writer, publisher, and entrepreneur. My training was in Greek and Latin Classics! Agreeing to help out my friend proved to be a turning point in my life.

I had a similar experience when I started looking for my first job out of university. Ottawa has two major job markets: government and high tech. I wanted work related to writing and editing, and after fruitless salvos to the few book and magazine publishers in town, I started applying for technical writing jobs. A friend recommended me at his software company, and despite the fact that I had no technical experience except for my minor in Chemistry, I was hired as a junior writer.

Learning the ropes of writing technical documentation was a stretch, but I'm so glad I had the opportunity. Tech writing has provided the financial support for my fiction writing career--kind of like my wealthy patron. And now I find myself stretching again, into the world of branding, copywriting, and promotion. Since I started freelancing and have a better balance of time for fiction, I'm enjoying my commercial writing even more.

Buried at the bottom of O'Reilly's speech is this little nugget, which seems like it was custom-written for me today:

Don't be afraid to fail. There's a wonderful poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that talks about the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with an angel, being defeated, but coming away stronger from the fight. It ends with an exhortation that goes something like this: "What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things."

[Does anyone know this Rilke poem? I would love to find it.]

Sara Gran: The Saga of Coming Closer

New Orleans writer Sara Gran has done a great series of posts about her second book, Come Closer, which recently came out in paperback.

Things were not good. I was, again, broke and miserable. To top it off, I felt like I had let down all the good people who had worked so hard to try to help me. Book number one, hey, it was 9/11, it was a first novel, a first literary novel, these things happen. No such excuses now. My failure now seemed inexorable and permanent. I had, in my life, put all of my eggs into one basket, and dropped it. The eggs were broken. Now I was in my thirties, broke, and unfit for a better job because I had foolishly put everything I had into writing. I saw that I was going to have to start my life from scratch. I started a small business selling used & rare books online, which made me a hundred or so dollars a month, in addition to my day job. I looked into graduate schools for a few different things, because continuing my life like this was out of the question. I knew I would always write, that’s never been an issue. But as for trying to make a living at it—that had brought me nothing, really, but pain and humiliation. I was through.

The way Gran flirts with labelling herself a failure reminded me of a quotation from Neil Fiore's book The Now Habit:

People who consider themselves failures have failed once and stay there. A "failure" wants a guarantee before starting a project that everything will go perfectly, without any problems. A successful person is willing to take reasonable risks, knowing that there are no guarantees except Murphy's Law that "if something can go wrong, it will." Successful people fail many times and bounce back, refusing to let any one failure define their worth.

My takeaway from Gran's story: don't give up. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Someday you may be looking back on a crazy lucky story like the saga of Come Closer.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 3.5
Part 4
Part 5

Defining Success

I've been posting lately about persistence in getting published, and Nienke aptly commented:

I think, for the most part, writers write simply because they must. One blogger (unfortunately I can't remember who) recently asked people if they'd still write even if they never had the chance of publishing. I think every commenter said yes.
Yet, I think we all play the fantasy of becoming rich and famous in our heads every once in a while. For example, I love reading "The Call" stories and reading about how writers made it. I'll keep writing even if I never have those stories to tell of my own.

And she's quite right -- publishing or making it big is not necessarily a requirement of success for every writer.

In her series of posts at Charis Connection, Jane Kirkpatrick explores what success means for her writing life:

Success to me is plunging headlong into a pool of intensity, emerging energized and wiser on the other side, seeking applause for my achievement and for being unique. Success is connecting with others in relationships that are intimate and disclosing, engaging and vibrant, growing and changing, tender and supportive. It is embracing without reservation my spiritual beliefs and living congruently with them. Success is also being inspired and challenged by the world around me to use my writing, speaker, humor, caring and leadership abilities to creatively touch the lives of others.

What is Success?

What is Success? Part 2

What is Success? Part 3

I've been thinking about defining writing success for myself, the way Kirkpatrick has done. I wonder what the key element is for me.

I am on vacation this week but I'm going to try to keep up my posting from Dade City, Florida.

Keeping At It

Today, literary agent Jennifer Jackson cited two posts by clients that demonstrate the value and necessity of persistence. Jay Lake describes the span of twenty years between writing his first story and his first sale:

Just shy the 20th anniversary of my first short story, and dozens upon dozens upon dozens of short stories and three novels into my efforts to become a writer, I move to Oregon, attend my first OryCon, where I first meet mme_publisher and join the Wordos. Start writing again for serious. April, 2001 I sold my first short story, "The Courtesy of Guests", to Bones of the World.

And Elizabeth Bear details the extensive rewriting for her latest novel:

Blood and Iron, for the record, is my most-rewritten book. The original concept dates from the eighties; the first draft of portions from oh, 1990 or so, the first complete draft from winter 2002. That first complete draft was irretrievably broken. I rewrote it extensively twice (including unpersoning characters and major plot changes) and gave it a pretty thorough line-edit twice before [Jackson] saw it. Segue to 2003, when she told me it was still broken. At which point I took it apart, restructured it heavily, cut 40,000 words or so, added 60,000 words or so and two POV characters (and removed one), and rewrote it again, followed by another clean-up pass. At which point we agreed that maybe it wasn't broken any more.

It's tough to take such a long view on a piece of work, or on one's writing career. I want things to take off now. Yesterday. Okay, maybe five years, but twenty?! Can I start counting from when I wrote my first short story in grade school? Or do I have to write a hundred?

"Persistence is probably the single most common quality of high achievers. They simply refuse to give up. The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favour. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist the more likely your success." --Jack Canfield

Give it Five Years

From Jack Canfield's book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, on the principle of "Practicing Persistence":

When Debbie Macomber decided to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, she rented a typewriter, put it on the kitchen table, and began typing each morning after the kids went off to school. When the kids came home, she moved the typewriter and made them dinner. When they went to bed, she moved it back and typed some more. For 2 1/2 years, Debbie followed this routine. Supermom had become a struggling writer, and she was loving every minute of it.

One night, however, her husband, Wayne, sat her down and said, "Honey, I'm sorry, but you're not bringing in any income. We can't do this anymore. We can't survive on just what I make."

That night, her heart broken and her mind too busy to let her sleep, she stared at the ceiling in their darkened bedroom. Debbie knew--with all the responsibilities of keeping up a house and taking four kids to sports, church, and scouts--that working 40 hours a week would leave her no time to write.

Sensing her despair, her husband woke up and asked, "What's wrong?"

"I really think I could've made it as a writer. I really do."

Wayne was silent for a long time, then sat up, turned on the light, and said, "All right, honey, go for it."

So Debbie returned to her dream and her typewriter on the kitchen table, pounding out page after page for another 2 1/2 years. Her family went without vacations, pinched pennies, and wore hand-me-downs.

But the sacrifice and the persistence finally paid off. After 5 years of struggling, Debbie sold her first book. Then another. And another. Until finally, today, Debbie has published more than 100 books, many of which have become New York Times best-sellers and 3 of which have sold for movies. Over 60 million copies of her books are in print, and she has millions of loyal fans.

And Wayne? All that sacrifice in support of his wife paid off handsomely. He got to retire at age 50 and now spends his time building an airplane in the basement of their 7,000-square-foot mansion.

Debbie's kids got a gift far more important than a few summer camps. As adults, they realize what Debbie gave them was far more important--permission to pursue their own dreams.

Today, Debbie still has dreams she wants to fulfill--a television series based on her books, an Emmy Award, a number-one New York Times best seller.

To accomplish them, she has a routine: She gets up every morning at 4:30, reads her Bible, and writes in her journal. By 6:00, she's swimming laps in the pool. And by 7:30, she's in her office answering mail. She writes between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm, producing three new books a year with discipline and perseverance.

What could you accomplish if you were to follow your heart, practice this much daily discipline, and never give up?

Which way did you react to this story?

Resentment: I wish I had someone to support me for five years while I wrote full time. If the book industry were different, I'd be a best-seller too.

Skepticism: Only a few lucky people make it big like that. If persistence can get you to a best-selling book, why isn't everybody on the New York Times list?

Hope: Hey, if she can go from being a beginning author to a best-seller, I can too!

Resentment, I think we can agree, is counter-productive to achieving these kinds of goals. Sulking about outside circumstances saps the energy we might otherwise put into changing the things we can control, like reducing our expenses so we can work less, or ferreting out a better market for our material.

What does skepticism get me? It protects me from paying the price to reach goals like this, making me content with the status quo because I've convinced myself it's not possible to achieve more. Skepticism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy (if I don't think I'll become a best-seller, I probably won't try to, in which case I'll be right).

So today I'm going to cast my vote with hope.

Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow

Four months ago, I quit my well-paying job at a software company so that I could freelance part-time and have more time for writing. Marsha Sinetar's book Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow was a significant factor in helping me make that decision.

I knew that editing technical manuals was not my "right livelihood". I enjoyed the work at times, but it was not meaningful to me in the way that my fiction writing is. However, I had bought in to the idea that writing would always be a sideline, while I spent the bulk of my working life making as much money as I could. Maybe when I had saved enough, or could support myself with fiction writing, then I could quit my day job.

I started to question that assumption when I came across Sinetar's book. She writes:

Most of us think about our jobs or our careers as a means to fulfill responsibilities to families and creditors, to gain more material comforts, and to achieve status and recognition. But we pay a high price for this kind of thinking. A large percentage of America's working population do not enjoy the work they do! This is a profoundly tragic statistic considering that work consumes so much of our lives. In a few brief decades, our working life adds up to be life itself.

Such a nose-to-the-grindstone attitude is not even a good formula for success. When you study people who are successful, as I have over the years, it is abundantly clear that their achievements are directly related to the enjoyment they derive from their work. They enjoy it in large part because they are good at it.

Quitting wasn't easy. I needed four months to make the decision and give my notice. And so far, the money has been a bit slow in following. But unless I take this risk and make the investment now, I'll never have the time and energy to create a writing career.