Word Weaves

I finished the rewrite on my first book, polished my query and groaned through another synopsis. I researched agents on Agentquery, Querytracker, SCBWI, and the Children’s Writers and Illustrators’ Market Guide. Then, I checked SFWA’s Editors and Preditors to ensure none of my chosen agents were on the Beware List.

Two weeks ago, I sent queries to fourteen agents. I had the first response within two hours. I took a deep breath and opened the email. My eyebrows sprung to my hairline. It wasn’t a rejection! The agent requested a partial. I stared at the computer in shock. I wasn’t ready for this. I had prepared for fourteen rejections. At best, I hoped for nice rejections.  

I pulled up the first few chapters of my book and with superhuman will power, I did not reread them before I pushed send. More deep breathing and some hyperventilating followed. Since that day, I’ve received three very nice rejections and another request for a partial. Even if my sample chapters don’t pass muster, I’m thrilled to have written a query that does. But I’m not sure when I’ll stop feeling like a spastic balloon, puffing up and deflating.

The discussion in the MG/YA class I’m taking turned this weekend to books that drag. Twilight was tossed back and forth between defenders and critics. I picked it up as one of those must read books for YA writers and barely made it through the first half of Book One.

As a prepublished author and a fairly new writer, I’ve tried to find reputable sources to learn from and I feel I’ve gathered sage advice – write what you know; write your book without outside interference; believe in your story. Then you find good critique partners and fine tune your manuscript until at last it’s deemed ready for the publishing world.

And there lies the problem. Because what you learn from the publishing world is: your book idea needs to make bored agents and editors spit out their morning coffee, it’s that dazzling.  Create a literary masterpiece if you must, but make it commercial. Which leaves you sputtering over the four volumes of fantasy that ruled seven years of your life and practically ruined your marriage and most of your friendships. Now agents inform you high fantasy is taboo.

What do you do? You write a good story. I’m in the middle of revamping my first book, AGAIN, still hoping it has merit. This rewrite is done with agents and editors  in mind. How will they see it? Is it fresh? Will they turn every page with eyes wide? Will they miss my characters when the last word is read? And guess what… it’s a much better book! So, my advice to new writers is this: write your story and consider it a work-in-progress until your book has a cover.

 I confess. I’m a baby boomer swayed by nostalgia. I associate writers with images of old typewriters even though I never used one. Like Florida author, Michael Gannon, I scribble my novels in notebooks. Interviewed recently in the St.Petersburg Times,  Gannon said about writing on paper: ”I can feel the words going from my mind to the page better. I can feel the rhythms of the words and the pacing of the sentences I can’t feel when tapping on keys.” I relate to that. Notebooks, like sketchbooks,  have been a part of my life since early childhood. They don’t need recharging and they don’t feed on batteries that become toxic waste.

This month at the SCBWI conference in Orlando, the buzz at the lunch table surrounded a Florida high school’s intent to replace textbooks with E-Readers.  Most middle-aged writers I know accept the inevitability of cyber publication and marketing with knuckle-biting resignation. I don’t own an electronic reader and shudder to think printed versions of books may become relics. Will there be a funeral to honor their passing? Will libraries become dusty museums with snoring docents at the door?

Garrison Keillor’s recent article in the New York Times mourns the end of a publishing era. He fears the market will be flooded with self-published electronic books, making it hard for readers to find the needles in the haystack … books by reputable authors. Many in the publishing industry dispute that, claiming readers will sift through the chaff. Editors and agents have every right to defend the electronic trend. They’re fighting to remain relevant.

This may seem like a new discussion but an introduction to Italo Calvino’s 1979 book, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, claims the book is ” its author’s triumphant response to the question of whether the art of fiction could survive the vast changes taking place in the communications technology of our world.”  Was Calvino seeing the end of print books forty years ago?

Did you hear that? Was it the sound of the last pages turning?