Having spent a mere two months at the age of 27 I find a gray hair proudly defying its beard-bound brethren by sitting at a skewed angle. Somehow this little harbinger of mutinous follicles has persisted beyond my knowledge. Rather apathetic about this discovery — for my quarter-life crisis hit belatedly at the age of 26 — I pluck the little devil from my chin and set about searching for somewhere to put it. After all, it’s my first. For wont of a baggy or maybe a microscope slide (the first time that old chemistry set from my tenth birthday would’ve come in handy), I finally decide to pin it to the fridge behind a magnet. Inventory: old receipts; coupons for takeout joints that will never be used; a Christmas card photo from a friend and her new husband; gray hair. It seems to make an amount of sense.
It’s a good thing I didn’t tell myself that I’d have a book published before my first gray hair. As a matter of fact, I never did set a deadline; why bother? To say that I could “quit at any time” would be as pointless as Mark Twain attempting to quit smoking for the 101st time. It’s as much an addiction as it is a sickness, though it’s comparatively healthier than some, admittedly.
I have yet to wallpaper my study with rejection letters, though I have saved every email response — thirteen in total since joining Gmail less than two years ago. Beforehand, I collected quite a few on my MSN account as well. As for the lucky 13 currently dwelling in my inbox, each one begins as a variation on the tune, “Dear Author, Thank you for your recent submission…,” rendering further reading unnecessary.
I only recently had the rare privilege of actually speaking to an agent. I had been working on a project spanning nearly every genre imaginable — the denouement was originally envisioned to be in graphic novel form, though the body was chiefly literary, as is most of my work. He expressed excitement when I laid out the framework for the novel, asking immediately for the first 30 pages. I have had requests before, but never once in person. And lo! did the writer rejoice. For about two weeks. For even though the agent had in his possession the first segment of the novel, all of which was literary prose, he’d clearly misunderstood everything that we’d discussed. He referred me to a publishing house that reputedly accepted unsolicited material, giving me the web address for Drawn & Quarterly. As could be inferred just from the title of the press alone, it is exclusively a graphic novel publisher. I have yet to contact the agent again; have they given me any reason to?
Often I’d love to submit a synopsis of not just my “latest,” but the entire cache. Sure, I’ve written roughly a dozen books in the past four years, but I have no illusions; I am fully aware that only a fraction of this dozen are “publishable.” By my estimation (with help from my extremely objective wife) there are at least four complete manuscripts ready and waiting, with another to join them shortly. How entertaining it would be to submit a query reading, “Dear Agent, I’ve got four novels, none of which are even remotely the same — I could just send them all over to you…there’s bound to be something you’d like.”
Until then, my books are waiting patiently. Maybe I can manage to get something published before my second gray hair? Then again, maybe I’ll be entirely white. That being the case, I’ll look a bit more scholarly on my jacket photo; that might not be a bad thing after all.
