A Novel Idea

I’ve been immersed in researching two sub-cultures for my book.  One of these worlds is psychic mediumship.  The other is that of underground hip hop, specifically the Minnesota brand of b-boying and b-girling.  For most of the population here, it’s basically under the radar, almost invisible.  For those involved in it, both as members of tight-knit crews and of the wider community of hip hop/break dancers, it’s a way of life.

B-Girl Ti-en-T, B-Girl Sweety Pop, & "Popper" Amy Sackett

Practicing and perfecting moves is their reason to come together.  Celebrating mastery of the form at performances and in “battles,” when dancers compete as crews or one-to-one, is the primary reason to be.  Performances are jaw-dropping, gravity-defying, magical (as in, “How did she do that?”) at events like the annual B-Girl Be celebration of hip hop.

As Amy Sackett told her students one night when I was observing a lesson at the Zenon Dance Company, it’s a genre totally distinct from jazz or ballet or modern. “Sometimes it transcends human movement,” Amy said, as when a body moves in West Coast waving, looking as if it simply has no bones.

I put on a pair of brand new Puma Suedes yesterday, stopped at son Kai’s so that he could weave in extra-wide laces (b-boy/b-girl style), and took my place at the very back of a class of dancers, so that I could feel what my characters feel as they learn the moves.  My brain and my knees are such that I know I won’t be mimicking the Swedish grandmother who, reportedly, took up break dance only five years ago and is now doing head-spins.  I’d observed various classes for weeks, but putting together one combination after another on the dance floor was humbling and, I suspect, a source of humor for the others.

Nevertheless, I’ve moved beyond showing up in order to deconstruct a move or to determine if the words “fresh”  and “peace” are still part of the local lingo (and, yes, they are still in use).  I’m in love with the culture and philosophy of this underground phenomenon.  Forget bullets and bling.  Forget sexualized booty-dancing.

At a Poppin’ Battle at Central Mission in St. Paul two weeks ago, I witnessed amazing feats of physical prowess by freestyling b-girls and b-boys, facing off one-to-one with each other.  (And the operative word here is “with,’ not “against,” since the vibe is one of appreciation for what the other can do, the motive to respect but evolve the fundamental form into something uniquely and wondrously one’s own, and when that happens, for all to celebrate it.)  I intended to stay an hour and ended up staying all five until Sweety Pop — a b-girl with such presence I couldn’t help but think queen, as in Nefertiti or Cleopatra – and an experienced b-boy called Dizne, battled in the final round.

Finalist DeOnna Gray-Lige aka Sweety Pop

But here’s what else I watched:  dancers, after a turn in the freestyle circle, enveloped in hugs and love by their crews; the judges (accomplished veterans) joining the crowd during breaks to mentor and model moves; a heartwarming equality — dancers of every color and culture encouraging each other; bodies so attuned to the pulsing beat that they kept moving on the sidelines, in the foyer, to the beat of the spoken word of Truth Maze and Tou SaiK. Open-hearted, egalitarian, peace-loving… on and off the floor. Unadulterated delight on the face of a dancer like Ti-en-T.    The overall feeling?  Pure joy.

Crew Hug

On NPR’s website, there’s a video of babies matching movements to rhythms.It’s a report of scientists’ discovery — after they watched babies groove spontaneously, even to so-called “dry beats” — that the human tendency to move to a beat is innate. When babies do match moves to the beat, despite their primitive motor control,  they break into smiles.  As much as anything, underground hip hop dance is about such joy.  Y’all, please count me in.

Tunie's new rides

En route to finding the perfect agent, I’ve found that the majority of them now accept emailed queries, only.  A few tolerate snail mail as an alternative, and, one agency  – clearly an endangered species — demands a query exclusively by post.

The shift to email makes sense.  It requires no stationery or postage.  There’s no mail room support needed. And an agent (or the assistant) receiving 300 queries per month should be able to handle ten per day –even with a few sample pages — especially given the ridiculously sub-par submissions that take only moments to assess as unworthy.

Apparently, there are a lot of these.  I recently ran across a tell-all blog post (2-16-10) by an agency intern — a self-described “unpaid toiler who licks stamps and reads slush” –  obviously up to here with writers who know nothing about publishing and want her to help them figure it out.  AS IF she owed them the favor of a reply.  The title of the post is: being-kind-is-*soooooo*-inefficient. Predictably, it elicited few LOLs in the comments column. Writers feel pretty vulnerable, as it is.  It’s hard to chuckle at the possibility that kindness has become passe.

Only a few years ago, every query garnered at least a token nod from an agent or editor, their response, implying :  You’re-not-invisible/your-query-has-been-considered/better-luck-next-time. This expression of regret might materialize as a form letter or on a printed post card.  Not as helpful as a scribbled comment or a personalized letter, I admit, but an efficient way to extend to the writer common courtesy, your not-so-random act of kindness.

Suddenly it’s become okay for agencies to assert:  DON’T NECESSARILY RESPOND, or WILL ONLY RESPOND TO THOSE THAT INTEREST US, or UNSOLICITED MAIL MAY NOT BE ANSWERED.  Did the first person who typed such a warning cringe before doing so?  And how about:  PUT “QUERY” IN THE SUBJECT LINE BUT BE ADVISED THAT SPAM MAY TAKE IT ANYWAY?  It’s like saying: Your hard work and high hopes may be dissed or dismissed without further notice.  It’s up to you to guess, after a month or more, if this is the case, or if your query has regrettably ended up in Spam Hell instead.  This new wrinkle in agent-to-writer responses (or lack thereof) gives new meaning to the word submission.

I’m hoping that the intern who defends the practice of refusing to respond to “oddball letters” or “your train-wreck of a manuscript,” does not represent the new normal.  Is an industry standard related to honoring emailed queries a possibility?  Can everyone find the time to copy-and-paste a pre-cooked email?  (Several responded to the intern’s post with just such a suggestion — a ready-made message with a short list of links that provide advice for the clueless on how to get up to speed.)

Prep a few additional messages related to submissions, ready to copy-and-paste.  With a tap of the send key, the agent lets the writer know that a query has, in fact, reached its intended audience and that a verdict is in. No time to craft full sentences?  No patience for dealing in euphemisms?  Consider the IM model, keeping the zingers short and sweet:

CBNC:  Close But No Cigar, communicating that no further exchanges are needed or welcome, but that the query/pages were mildly interesting.

NOTHNX:  to the point –  Just not interested… not even sure why.

HELLNO, on the other hand, says:  Forget the query and tend to your story before it spontaneously combusts.

Of course, if need be, the go-ahead to send the entire manuscript could employ IM lingo, too:  BIO, short for Bring It On!, no doubt prompting the writer’s own SLAP, OMG:  Sounds Like A Plan, Oh-My-God-I’m-beyond-excited!

Or, in the case of excitement that gets out of hand, OMG, IMPEEN-N-PNTZ: Oh-my-God, I’m peeing in my pants.

Each required response-time clocks in at mere seconds.  Writers stay informed.  Agents/editors get to stay perched up on their ginormous pedestals.  What’s not to like?  Think it over.  Pass it on…

I am great.  I am shit.  I am great.  I am shit.

This drums in virtually every writer’s head, says Betsy Lerner in The Forest for the Trees.  In a blog post, she admits:  “I’ve never known a writer to say, I’m at the top of my game, or I killed a new chapter this morning, or I’ve got my next five books outlined, or People seem to really love my writing. It’s so much darkness and even more scratching. It’s living inside your head, brutal and beautiful.”

Which is why I’m feeling sheepish about having listed, in my previous post, her translations of euphemisms used when agents and editors are in rejection mode.  As if you didn’t have enough brutal moments when your work (and, by association, you) seemed, well, not enough. Especially since a rejection may have less to do with the quality of the work and more with the quality of those doing the rejecting.  Here’s what Robert Olen Butler, in From Where You Dream, reminds writers… after they have visited their work as if someone else has written it, after they’ve done the best they possibly can with revising it, and once they’ve sent the work winging:

“If somebody rejects the story, with whatever criticism… you let it go.  What is the editorial reader’s frame of mind?  They have fifty things on their desk today and there are going to be fifty tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.  Do you think this puts them in a frame of mind where they are naked to each manuscript they open?  Where they put aside the worldview they’ve held all their lives and open up to a new voice, a new vision of the world.  Rarely.  That’s why a lot of bad stuff gets perpetuated, the bland stuff and the mediocre stuff.  It’s because often those screening readers – I’m talking about those first two people who see it – those readers, just by the very nature of what they do, are going to be if not consciously looking for, at least more open to, things familiar to them.  So all this works against the unique voice of the real artist.”

He’s a believer in slow reading if one is to capture a work’s essence: “Speed-reading is one reason editors and, not incidentally, book reviewers can be so utterly wrongheaded about a particular work of art.”  Here’s agent Lerner (in a 2-14-10 post) asking (a tad guiltily, perhaps?):  “Do you skim when you read? And if so, when? When you’re bored, when the section doesn’t interest you, when you just want to know what happened? And for how long?  Just a few sentences, paragraphs, whole chapters? And do you ever get anxious that you missed the one important detail that will explain everything in the end? Do you skim fiction and not non-fiction, or the other way around? Does everyone do it but no one admits it?”

Dani Shapiro writes in the L.A. Times about how hard it is to make it as a writer.  But she concludes:  The writer who has experienced [the transformative power of writing] even for a moment becomes hooked on it and is willing to withstand the rest. Insecurity, rejection and disappointment are a price to pay, but those of us who have served our time in the frozen tundra will tell you that we’d do it all over again if we had to. And we do. Each time we sit down to create something, we are risking our whole selves. But when the result is the transformation of anger, disappointment, sorrow, self-pity, guilt, perverseness and wounded innocence into something deep and concrete and abiding — that is a personal and artistic triumph well worth the long and solitary trip.”

Hanging out at a practice session at Central Mission on Thursday (where the graffiti above adorns a wall)… a fabulous young b-girl told me that she’s had cancer and is just finishing treatment.  That she had a mastectomy.  That she was unable to do the thing she loves for six months.  That when she came back to break dance and to her crew, her body had forgotten all the moves.  But she is relearning them.  She is persevering.  And here’s the thing:  “It’s saved my life,” she said.

It’s the ego that sees lack, that makes us feel broken in the face of rejection.  But the soul is steadfast, moving us from the point of fear to a place of peace.  It calls me to my greater self, and you to yours.  Calls us to do what we love.

Write on.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said. Peter Drucker

Right about now, the hubster and eight of our friends are savoring a gourmet meal on the North Shore of Lake Superior as wild waves hit the rocks only yards from a cozy lamplit condo.  I’m thinking on and off about fennel and black pepper encrusted rockfish on a bed of polenta with truffle oil and a Madeira tomato shallot reduction, not to mention the dessert – apricot soufflé.

I’m home instead, dog-sitting our ancient pooch who has become something of a pooping-and-peeing-machine.  Wondering if I shouldn’t address the topic of dejection.  But, no, I’ll lift everybody’s spirits and focus on rejection instead — specifically, reading between the lines of an agent’s or editor’s message.

I’ve just come from Betsy Lerner’s blog.  Betsy acknowledges that ten years ago this month, she turned in her blue pencil (as an editor) and became a literary agent.  Her “blog, she notes,” hopes to continue in the spirit of [her] book,” The Forest for the Trees:  An Editor’s Advice to Writers.  Lerner lives up to the hype on the book jacket:  she’s “sharp, funny, psychologically astute, and deeply intuitive.”  (She’s also def hip; on her blog I found the link for www.rapgenius.com, translations of raps for the terminally clueless.)

On my favorite page of the book – 174 –she admits that editors and, I suspect, agents, deal with such a daunting number of submissions, that they “don’t have time to stop and smell the pages.”  She writes,  “We rely on a body of conventional and received wisdom about what sells and doesn’t sell (which is thankfully proven wrong from time to time) and develop a shorthand to evaluate projects.”  In copies of minutes from editorial meetings, “one sees the same phrases repeated over and over.”   She calls them “editorial rejection euphemisms.”  Depending on how recently somebody’s euphemism has arrived in your mail or email inbox, you may or may not wish to avert your eyes.  Here they are, decoded:

*not right for our list (get it out of here)

*pacing problems (boring)

*exhaustive (academic/boring)

*somewhat heavy-handed (preachy)

*not without charm (precious)

*nicely written but ultimately unsatisfying (plotless)

*underdeveloped characters (totally  stock)

*nice sense of place (is this about anything?)

*not enough tension (mind-numbingly slow)

*feels familiar (yet another road-trip/coming-of-age/ugly-duckling/dysfunctional-family novel)

*entertaining (over-written)

*crowded marketplace (not another!)… and her personal favorite,

*too special (which of course means it won’t sell).

In one of my readers’ reports, there’s a suggestion related to the pacing of the first portion of my novel.  I thought it meant to cut-to-the-chase,  but now, thanks to this disclosure, I see I also need to make it more difficult for that same reader or the next one to skim the pages or to yawn over them.  In addition to focusing on getting the hip hop lingo and b-girl moves right and eliminating the extraneous, it’s got to be the least boring manuscript that comes across a desk all day.  I’m not dejected, at least, not about the need to ramp things up.  The apricot souffle is another story.

Here, as promised, are the top twenty writing rules, cited by SCBWI keynoter, Jane Yolen, author of 300 books in virtually every genre, and condensed by yours truly:

1. Eschew the exclamation point.  (Just think, it’s her #1 rule!!!!!!!)
2. Go easy on the adverbs.  (She noted that J.K. Rowling is admittedly, grandly, justifiably the exception.)
3. Don’t let characters float.  Anchor them with action, not endless talk.
4. Have fun writing.  (Me thinks this should be #1, at least some of the time.)
5. The three “magic spells” for success:  BIC (Butt-in-Chair); HOP (Heart-on-the Page); and P-not-F (Passion, not Fashion).
6. If you can’t bear to read something, don’t write it.
7. Happily-Ever-After need not be a given.  (Craft a meaningful ending, as in The Giver, even if readers must wrestle with it.)
8. “Fall through the words” into the story.  (Loving language,  let what  comes lead you there.)
9. Don’t simplify everything.
10. Invest time in finding the “right word.”  (She quoted Mark Twain: The difference between the perfect word and the almost-perfect one is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.)
11. Strive to craft your very own “Call me Ishmael.” (It’s in your DNA and you’ll know the best first line when you see it.)
12. Write at least one page a day, even on holidays.  The result: a 365-page novel or 300+ picture book drafts.  (Flabbiness in the writing muscle is simply unacceptable.)
13. Make/create time to write.  Do what you need to do; females, in particular, who find themselves doing most of the fetching & carrying in relationships, need to be nurtured and to nurture themselves.)
14. As for editing correspondence, make sure your editor understands these needs:  “I want truth, attention to detail, hard questions, AND a love letter every time.”
15. Revise. Repeatedly.  And love doing so as it’s a waste of time to resist this part of the process.  Words are our wayward children who call for tough love.
16. Watch the world.  Drink it in. Too many writers ignore the landscape  Notice details.  Develop the visual acuity that illustrators have in spades.
17. Read what you’ve written aloud.  Hear the words.
18. Writer’s block?  Stand up, eat chocolate, fix a cup of tea, write something else, but don’t read the novel that keeps you from returning to the page, refreshed.
19. Accept the fact that you won’t complete certain projects.  (Stash the duds in a file drawer in the rare case that much later one turns into something “new.”)
20. Think: amuse-bouche (literal translation:  mouth amuser) and, like those on TV’s Top Chef, strive to create, something intensely-flavored,  imaginative, and inspiring, the ideal to surprise and awaken the senses. (And now, writers, back to work…)

Room with a View: NYC 1/10

Decades ago, a funny woman named Lin Oliver came to Denver, where I was living at the time, and gave a group of us the skinny on a new writer’s organization she and a handful of other writers had just created in California.  Convinced there was a need for such a support group, she went on the road to promote and grow it.  Lin stood at the podium in New York City, last weekend, still funny — cracking jokes about her recent open heart surgery, in fact — and still at the helm of what has become SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators).  It’s the first national SCBWI conference I’ve attended in all those years.  What was I thinking?

The next time I go, I’ll be sure to register as soon as the info comes in the mail, as space fills quickly for the pre-conference day, spent with editors and art directors who respond to one’s work.  The following two days are a blur of talking heads, and the non-writer or non-illustrator has a right to question the value of plunking down a chunk of change  to simply witness one presenter after another nattering on.

There were two Jumbotron-type screens so that one could count the nose hairs or the odd mole on a presenter’s face instead of staring exclusively at him or her on the stage.  With the exception of the great Peter Sis (“Making Sense of Life Through Books”) who dazzled us with samples of his work displayed on the screens as he related his life story, and Jim Benton who kept everyone laughing at the cartoons and illustrations that have made him famous, there was little use of technology or media, though a couple of presenters based their talks on both.  No, the speakers merely spoke.

And, with rapt attention, the rest of us listened because everybody who was there has this thing for language.  They love words – crafting them, coupling them with perfect images, reading them, and hearing them, in matchless combinations.  Turns out, each speaker  obviously has a thing for words, too.  The presentations were rich in wisdom and the presenters, evoking much laughter, were engaging and witty.

Libba Bray, winner of this year’s Printz award for Going Bovine, spoke on “Writing as an Extreme Sport” – pointing out that in few professions are people who are so disposed to want to hide, ultimately so exposed to public scrutiny via their work.  Relating her surprise after her preschooler, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, responded,  “A giraffe,” she urged us to “be the giraffe”  — avoiding the predictable in our writing and opening “a whole new conversation with the world.”  “However, Ms. Bray insisted, just say ‘no’ to incorporating “the hot pterodactyl boyfriend” even if it is the next big trend… and always find the crack that lets the light in, knowing that it’s the flaw in a character that allows for transformation.  She encouraged everyone in the room to do what she recently did, risking “career suicide” by putting down exactly “what the book is whispering” [one must write] — even if it seems like madness!  She quoted Ray Bradbury:  First you jump off the cliff; then you build the wings.”

Jacqueline Woodson (After Tupac & D Foster, which I adore; Locomotion; Show Way; Feathers; etc.) read moving excerpts from her award-winning books, confessed that she hates “killing off people” (one character, in particular, whose death upset her friends, too: “Why you have to kill the brother?), and, in the face of current notions about branding, made a case for writing across genres.

Jim Benton, (whose It’s Happy Bunny books and products alone have generated over a half-billion dollars in retail), endeared himself to everybody on the topic of “The Compulsive Creator,” reminding the assembled creators not to be paralyzed by “stupid ideas,” even suggesting that instead we make sure to generate new ones every day — putting the stuff out in view to see if it has its day. (Those “in the know” dismissed his Happy Bunny ideas as unmarketable for years).

Jane Yolen, looking back at age 70 on a prolific career, fired off twenty writing rules to live and to write by (next post)… and asked all to honor the three essential stages of the process – “uncovery” (responding to the “itch of an idea, unadorned” and around us, playing with it, getting something down); discovery (doing the hard work of learning about our characters, researching setting, finding the story); and recovery (putting it all together, sensing its wholeness, getting it out there).

I haven’t touched on the insights provided at the breakout sessions by editors or the panel discussions by literary agents, including Susan Raab’s assessment of “What’s Selling, What’s Not.”  But if you’re into this and want more details, not to worry.  Not only is the generous spirit of those who present at the conference evident in editors’ and agents’ custom of accepting, for specified periods of time, queries from participants who attended (even houses that typically don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts), but SCBWI itself makes it possible for any and all to vicariously experience highlights of each conference.  Savor a wealth of information without leaving home as the SCBWI bloggers recount what went on at http://scbwiconference.blogspot.com/.  I’m about to sample the essence of sessions I missed myself!  See you there!

Postscript:  Author/illustrator Ashley Wolff, whose work I’ve admired for years, and I somehow became Facebook friends, despite the fact we’ve never met;  it was such a joy to connect, at last, in person at the conference, thanks to our shared delight in each other’s FB postings.

Just spent the last few days at the conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators with well over a thousand other participants from 25 countries and 45 states.  A few days before departure for New York, a good friend, who is a businesswoman and extrovert, suggested I attend as Someone Else.

She believes in my novel.  She wants the world to love it, too.  And told me rather bluntly that others will never even know it exists if I don’t put myself out there.  In other words, I, as Ms. Else, needed to head for the Big Apple with a certain amount of swagger and the dogged determination to dazzle agents and editors with breaking news of the work-in-progress.

In retrospect, I see that I raised the bar too high when I decided to let Eloise (of classic picture book fame) serve as my alter ego.  I used the escalators only to search for the women’s bathrooms with the shortest lines; I knew Eloise would ride them in search of the hiding places where the keynote speakers and panelists were sequestered.  It turned out to be much harder than I’d anticipated to channel the chutzpah of a kid who is never afraid to cause a ruckus or, for that matter, to worry for a second that her underpants are showing.

How hard could it be, I mused in the last post, to strike up a conversation with an editor who asked to see an earlier manuscript of mine?  If I’d fully adopted Eloise’s persona, I would not only have arrived early for this editor’s breakout session (which I did), found a chair at the very front (which I did), greeted this editor (which I did), but, also — when she returned my hello and quickly expressed the need to escape to the bathroom — shadowed her (yours truly chattering through the crack next to the stall door about my novel and the agent who wants to see a revision and my hope that she, too, will demand to see it when it’s done).  Instead, I sensed that she needed privacy, an opportunity to prep for speaking to 300 people, so I didn’t intrude on her space.  And at session’s close, when fifteen people swarmed around her with comments and requests — despite her reminder that another 300 were due any minute for her next presentation — I moved on.  I didn’t see her the rest of the weekend.

By Sunday afternoon, here’s what I’d discovered:  I am not Someone Else.   And, while I’ve paid homage to the incorrigible Eloise by genuflecting before her portrait in the real Plaza more than once, I confess that I’ve never– as a child or as an adult — thought we were cut from the same cloth.  I’m an HSP and, it turns out, so are the majority of writers and artists.  The Grand Hyatt was positively crawling with them.  I’ve only recently read The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D., published in ’96, but, at least three writers I met at the conference admitted to acknowledging their HSP essence years ago.  (A self-test is available at the website  if you are curious about the profile.)  We HSPs comprise 15 to 20 percent of the population so our ways can seem counterproductive or downright quirky to the majority.

Here’s what Dr. Aron has to say about us attempting what the other 80 percent do, almost without thinking:  “First, throw out the image of everyone getting their work done through networking, knowing the right people, and the like.”   (Even the co-founder of SCBWI, clearly an HSP, marvelled at the beginning of the mega-event that he was actually present for it.)  It’s not that we shouldn’t try (and Lord know, this blog, my Facebook participation, years of both presenting and attending workshops, etc. are indications that I’ve done so).  It’s just that the HSP’s tendencies to be a “worry-prone perfectionist,” to play with a million ideas at once, leading to “a certain lack of focus,” and, to become — very easily — overstimulated, tend to stack the deck against excelling at face-to-face self-promotion.

Aron explains that normally, writers and artists “work alone, refining our craft and our subtle creative vision.  But withdrawal of any kind increases sensitivity — that is part of why one withdraws.  So we are extrasensitive when the time comes to show our work, perform it, explain it, sell it, read reviews of it, and accept rejection or acclaim.  Then there’s the sense of loss and confusion when a major work is done or a performance is over…”  (Lest you think that being an HSP is a fate worse than death, rest assured that the book provides a fresh, positive perspective and celebrates why HSPs are so needed in this world.)

It became increasingly clear that I was not going to be having any conversations with the powers that be. I made my peace with the fact and savored all the good that came from being present, anyway, (which I’ll relate in the next post).    In the uncanny way the Universe has of sending just the right sentiment when I need it most, the perfect message was waiting when I arrived back home:

Have you noticed, Tunie, that all great accomplishments require 4 things:  A dream, action, patience, and a whole bunch of miracles?  The miracles part is on me.  1, 2, 3, Me -
    The Universe

I’m definitely into the action/revision. I can do patience.  And author Elaine Aron reports that when it comes to voices, visions, and miracles, HSPs are on familiar ground.  I’m glad to be back in this room of my own.  Onward and upward!

Woke up this morning and wondered why I’m still planning to fly to New York City on Friday.  The original plan was to bring sample pages of the novel to the annual conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).  By the time I broke it to the hubster that I was registering for the event, instead of accompanying him to California where he’s doing a Keynote/Etc., the Friday roster of one-to-ones with editors, who respond to individual writer’s sample pages, was full.

Not to worry. The longtime editor of a friend is one of the scheduled speakers.  A couple of years ago when we saw each other at a party, she asked to have a look at my earlier manuscript, but I’d recently set my sights on first securing an agent, then decided to write a second book before submitting anything to anybody.  So I never sent it to her.

I’m an HSP (see the coming post); therefore, I’ve  acknowledged that there’s no guarantee we’ll connect.  But, really, how difficult could it be to let her know that I have a story she might like to see?

Once again, however, I find myself disinclined to be handing pages off to anyone.  There’s an intense amount of cutting and pasting going on in these parts, and I’m not even into the third chapter  of a major rehaul of the first 75 pages… a revision which is sure to affect what’s to be done with the remainder of the book.  I was still stewing about the altered circumstances as I checked my inbox, minutes ago,  and discovered that the Universe had sent me a message. As is often the case, its advice is absolutely right on:

Tunie, the trick is learning to maintain an unwavering focus upon your desired end result, your completed dream, the “finish line,” without insisting upon, or even contemplating, its means of attainment, no matter how logical, obvious, or tempting it may seem.

Tallyho,
    The Universe

Well… of course!

I’ve taken to copying some of these messages so that I can access them when my hopes or my energy is flagging.  Mike Dooley, the author of the book Infinite Possibilities, is the mastermind behind these personalized and inspirational notes.  I think they are a godsend, especially for writers, artists, anyone who works in relative isolation much of the time.  I also helped a teen sign up on Friday as she has admitted to needing more self-confidence and is excited about support arriving out of nowhere (or, out of everywhere, as the case may be!).

This support can be yours, too, free of charge, at www.tut.com.  Answer a couple of questions about your heart’s desire, sign up for/click on “Notes from the Universe,” and the emailed encouragement will begin to arrive. Like me,  you may find that it’s a daily source of delight to have nothing less than the Universe at your back.

Write what you think you can’t. M.T. Anderson

Today, I am diving deep into a revision of the first 75 pages because a wonderful and well-known agent at a New York agency gave my manuscript a look.  I’m feeling really lucky, despite my awareness that children’s publishing can be a “bunny-eat-bunny-world.”   Here’s why:

1. The agent sent an apology for not having read my whole manuscript in the allotted time for getting exclusive dibs.  A number of her existing clients’ latest manuscripts came in before the end of the year; rightly so, she honored the prior commitment by reading those works before mine.
2. She indicated that my ms. was on the top of the pile of queries and hoped I’d still be okay with her reading it.  Okay?  (I waited over a year for a different agent, who asked for an exclusive look at a previous manuscript I sent, to respond to or return it;  despite my inquiries, he never answered, and, for all I know, never read it.)
3. She freed me to send out other queries, acknowledging that she’d used up the requested time.  An honorable impulse,  for sure.
4. Not many days later, she emailed to say that she’d read my novel — in retrospect, wishing she’d had a pencil and paper handy for responses as she couldn’t recall specifics, but felt the work would benefit from revision.  End of story?  To my surprise, no.  She announced her intention to have her assistant read it next.
5. A week ago, in her email, she attached not one, but two reader reports, one from her assistant, the other from the agency intern.  The pages were chock-full of suggestions for improvement, the biggest issue relating to the pace of the first 75 pages.  In fact, before the plot thickens and the pace of my novel quickens,one of the readers abandoned ship at page 75.  The other, however, expressed delight that she had read on.  She compared it to a few classics and wrote that if I successfully improve the first portion and attend to all the suggestions, specific and general, she thinks it will sell.  Let me repeat:  she thinks it will sell.
6. The literary agent encouraged me to send out other queries.  And/but/however, if I do revise, I’m invited to send the revision her way.

Yes, I know what this means, or more to the point, what it doesn’t mean.  It’s not a commitment.  My own post (December 1, 2009), about Kerry Madden’s dispiriting experience following a year spent revising her novel for an agent, makes me wary about assuming anything.  Nonetheless, at this point in the process, the door is still open, and I have the amazing gift of lots of suggestions for creating a better book.

I don’t know the identity of the child in the picture below (though our knees are remarkably similar), but, unaccountably and uncharacteristically, as I dive into the revision, I’m feeling what she’s feeling.  Amazed and happy that I can do this thing.

Last week, two different friends urged me to stay true to myself in the process of pleasing the pros.  Will do.  One of them encouraged me to get in touch with the 13-year-old I once was, so this A.M., right out of dreams and bed, I wrote the letter she might have written to me (had she/I believed I’d ever live so long!).  And I’ve already begun the slash-and-burn.  I’ll cut and revise as much as possible before I attend the SCBWI conference in New York on the 29^th, but I know this will take weeks, months.  After all, I’ll be heeding M.T. Anderson’s advice — writing the book I think I can’t.  Not willing, but welcoming the book I know can be.

Life is nothing more than a guided dream. Jorge Luis Borges

I hadn’t intended to post a second part of  “Out of the Blue,” but how could I not, when an installment of Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, arrived via email this morning, reminding me of the significance of this day in Isabel Allende’s life?  Talk about wholeheartedly trusting in much more than what the logical, no-nonsense left brain can deliver!

Yes, of course there comes a time when she and every other writer must revise, and revise again, and our analytical left brain does its thing, serving admirably (though, if we’re lucky during this stage, it performs in two-part harmony with our right).  I confess that the immersion in 10-12 hours of writing, when she creates in a kind of trance, is a daily ritual I find daunting.  I’ve only had this experience periodically, and typically that dream-like state comes near the end of a project.  But on New Year’s Eve, I scribbled an intention to carve out daily sacred time for this kind of writing and I’m feeling sheepish about moving into the second week of the year without having managed it more than once or twice.

I wouldn’t put it past Source/Spirit to have provided this cosmic nudge.  I mean, inspired by her stellar example, I certainly can manage to welcome magic and messages for at least three or four hours, each day.  Allende is a writer who goes to the Source, trusts in the Spirit behind and beneath all things.  Here’s the Almanac entry for January 8, 2010 about another take on dreamstorming:

Today, writer Isabel Allende…  is starting a new book, just as she has been doing every single January 8th for the past 29 years.  On January 8, 1981, when Chilean-born Allende was living in Venezuela and working as a school administrator and freelance journalist, she got a phone call that her beloved grandfather, at 99 years old, was dying.  She started writing him a letter, and that letter turned into her very first novel, The House of the Spirits.  She said, “It was such a lucky book from the very beginning, that I kept that lucky date to start.”

Today is a sacred day for her, and she treats it in a ceremonial, ritualistic way.  She gets up early this morning and goes alone to her office, where she lights candles “for the spirits and the muses.”  She surrounds herself with fresh flowers and incense, and she meditates.

She sits down at the computer, turns it on, and begins to write.  She says: “I try to write the first sentence in a state of trance, as if somebody else was writing it through me.  That first sentence usually determines the whole book.  It’s a door that opens into an unknown territory that I have to explore with my characters.  And slowly as I write, the story seems to unfold itself, in spite of me.”

She said, “When I start I am in a total limbo. I don’t have any idea where the story is going or what is going to happen or why I am writing it.”  She doesn’t use an outline, and she doesn’t talk to anybody about what she’s writing.  She doesn’t look back at what she’s written until she’s completed a whole first draft — which she then prints out, reads for the first time, and goes about the task of revising, where she really focuses on heightening and perfecting tension in the story and the tone and rhythm of the language.

She said that she takes notes all the time and carries a notebook in her purse so that she can jot down interesting things she sees or hears.  She clips articles out of newspapers, and when people tell her a story, she writes down that story.  And then, when she is in the beginning stages of working on a book, she looks through all these things that she’s collected and finds inspiration in them.

She writes in a room alone for 10 or 12 hours a day, usually Monday through Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.  During this time, she says, “I don’t talk to anybody; I don’t answer the telephone.  I’m just a medium or an instrument of something that is happening beyond me.”

She’s the author of nearly 20 books published since 1982, among them Paula (1995), Daughter of Fortune (1999), Portrait in Sepia (2000), and the recent memoir The Sum of Our Days (2008).  Her work has been translated into 30 languages, and her books have sold more than 51 million copies.  She continues to write fiction in Spanish though she’s lived in the United States for decades.  Margaret Sayers Peden has done the English translations of several of Isabel Allende’s books.