A Novel Idea

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning. Meister Eckhart

Headwaters of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca (Omushkos) in Minnesota

I tucked my laptop into the trunk of the car just before four generations of family and I headed north to rustic cabins near the source of the Mississippi River.  I was ambivalent about bringing along anything electronic.  When I couldn’t honor a friend’s request for a GPS of the headwaters, due to the lack of a signal on my iPhone, I felt this perverse pleasure in there still being a few places on the planet where one is unreachable.

Days later, a message did reach me, however, in a sitting room furnished with old wicker and new WiFi, at the state park’s lodge.  It came from an agent – well, actually, the person I’d already begun to think of as my agent.  A few weeks earlier, his assistant had responded quickly to my query.  She’d asked for a “full,” told me she and the agent both wanted to read my tween novel, and the sooner the better, so could I email it right away, please?

I’d done my research on this guy and we were definitely simpatico, kindred spirits regarding literary preferences, philosophy related to life and children’s literature, you name it.   The man even has a sweet tooth – welcome news for a woman known as the Dessert Queen.  I made up my mind to send him my infamous Rocky Road Fudge Bars as soon as we officially connected.

I hang out with a lot of folks who believe in the power of intention — the sense that thoughts are things, that they create our reality; hence, these thoughts better be positive ones, and, ideally, be simply expressed in the present tense.  Visualize the ideal relationship as if it already exists, and it’s more likely to manifest, the thinking goes.  In short, your basic head trip.

So by the time his email shows up in the middle of Almost Nowhere, we are, imaginatively speaking, BFFs.  He’s selling my breakout tween novel at auction, then taking a look at my middle grade novel, asserting that it has that Beverly Cleary je ne sais quoi from start to finish.  He knows just how I should revise it to make it more compelling for an editor… and as soon as I do so, he reps it, too.  Then turns his attention to other manuscripts in my files.  My agent’s all over my sequel to the tween novel as well, supporting me and my creations.  I stop in to see him every time I visit my friend Gayle in the same city.  He chills on my deck when he’s here.  Yeah, we’re tight.  A match made in heaven and all that.

Which is why, when he gives me the old heave-ho via email, it is such a shock, despite his kind words (“you’re very talented;” “your manuscript is a cut above most of the work that we see;” yada yada).    One moment — in my mind, at least — we re talking books and laughing and ingesting sugary substances, and the next, our mutually rewarding, literary partnership is kaput.

To my credit, I do not stay in my head.  I check in with my heart, which telegraphs back:  Very, very sad, that’s what you are feeling; deeply disappointed.  For God’s sake, shed a tear, if you need to. The random morbid thought flits through my mind, like possibly celebrating the tenth anniversary of my blog about this journey to publication, or having actual readers one day say what this agent wrote:  “…just didn’t completely connect with it.”

As luck would have it, five minutes ago our mail carrier delivered a box with another “full” in it – this one from the vice president and uber-agent of a different well-known agency.  She writes… “…although I still like the story, I’m not ‘in love’ enough with it – and I wish I could put my finger on why that is, but I’m having difficulty doing that.”  She’s the one who requested a revision.  No suggestions here and now from either about what might be improved, what needs fixing.  Just their joint, close-but-no-cigar.

This manuscript is about the paranormal being a normal aspect of reality, a concept that makes it a harder sell.  And so far I have made a mere smattering of forays into Agentland.  That’s what I tell myself so that I don’t call it quits and get a job selling Spanx at Bloomingdale’s or Von Maur.   Somebody else reading this — who has survived twenty, forty, seventy or more rejections — is surely telling himself or herself that hosting a pity party at this point is unwarranted.  The veteran probably agrees with Paul Coelho (who wrote in The Sahir):  I don’t regret the painful times;  I bare my scars as if they were medals.

I may feel alone in the face of two particularly disappointing rejections, but I’m not, really.  For most writers, these rejections and these blues come with the territory.  Occupational hazard, if you will.  But it’s still a good life.  Nothing to do, but give thanks for the opportunity to live it.  Then to begin.  Again.

The journey begins here...

Cafe near Itasca State Park in Park Rapids, Minnesota

This entry was posted on July 28, 2010 at 11:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.