Eructations & Apologies

While perusing my blogroll this afternoon, I realized that until now I’d misspelled Dystel & Goderich as Dystel & Giderich.  My humblest apologies for this mistake.  Not to mention that I’m now on a first-name basis (and in a writer’s group) with someone who is represented by their company.  Embarrassing?  Yup.

I’d also like to take the opportunity to draw your attention to the newest addition in the roll — “Snapshots at St. Arbucks,” written by a very clever man with an endearing literary voice.  (It wasn’t just his recent comment on my “Rejected 2.0” post that convinced me I should add him to my list; really, I’ve read his work and I like it a lot.  And you should read it too, dammit.  Period.)

Speaking of which, I’d like to invite the opinions of fellow writers on the topic of rejection.  After receiving numerous rejections for a manuscript, there is always the compulsion (for me) to fret over “what is wrong with it” and seek to re-re-polish/edit/rewrite the hell out of it.  But lately I’ve found that I’m more likely to continue with current projects, ignoring the old, turning my back on those that are still floating out there aimlessly from agent to agent or publisher to publisher.  I’d like to know what approach other writers take to this process.  Do you dance the dance?, or do you simply shrug and say, “To hell with them — I know it’s good, I spent three years relearning how good it is.  I’m just going to keep on writing new stuff till I luck out.”  What I guess I’m asking is, Is it wrong to believe that you’ve done the best that you can if no one ever turns to you and says, “I’d like to publish you”?

I certainly don’t think so, but how about you?

 

Rejected! (part 2.0)

Well, it’s that time again folks! A few months after submitting my most recent project to Hotel St. George Press, I received a rejection letter via email. Here it is, in its perfect simplicity:

Dear Christopher,

Thank you for your submission, Sanatorium [my tentative title]. Unfortunately, we can’t
find a place for it at Hotel St. George Press at this time. We wish
you luck placing your work elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Alex Rose

Now that’s a proper rejection letter. Short, to the point, but with the slightest hint of possible non-form-letterness. Then again, the title of my book was, in fact, in all caps in the original email. Hmmmm. Ah, well. Still have one pending out there in the literary ether.

 

The Blue Nametag

So at long last I was invited to attend an event where I was fortunate enough to meet with published authors. It was inevitable, I suppose, but wholly unexpected at the same time. Unexpected also was the treatment an unpublished writer received when in the midst of a few award-winning/nominated authors. This is my story:

The Utah Humanities Council rang in their tenth year of Book Festivals on the last weekend of October. To celebrate, there was a reception on the Friday preceding. This literary soiree was held at the Salt Lake Main Branch Library — a stunning building with those glass-walled elevators that I would’ve loved to have ridden in as a kid. (Ignoring the fact that I was giddy while riding said elevators, even as a twenty-seven year old.) Guests included ambassadors from any bookstore within a fifty-mile radius, as well as notable authors who were to be featured the following day.

Among them, there was Sara Zarr, front-runner for the National Book Award; Terry Trueman, author of the award-winning Stuck In Neutral; Gordon Campbell, mentioned in a previous post for Missing Witness; and fellow King’s Englisher, Ann Cannon.

Sara Zarr, who is currently in NYC for the NBA awards ceremony, was the first author I met that night. A very approachable young woman, Sara is not at all what one might expect from a person whose debut

 

All Shall Be Well

It’s not often that the younger writer — and by this I mean the writer in his or her twenties — comes across a fantastic work of literary fiction written by someone of a similar age. (I’m excluding here the sort of sensationalist pulp that passes as literary these days, with regards to a young writer whose name I refuse to mention and whose books make me physically ill.) Enter Tod Wodicka, author of All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well. Young literary novelists rejoice, for here is our man!

Originally published the UK this year, the book will make its American debut in January of ’08; I can only surmise that the Brits got dibs because Wodicka, though originally born in New York, is an expatriate living in Berlin. He was only twenty-nine when his novel was published by Jonathan Cape, a division of Random House. (This means I’m only two years behind the man.) In the States, it’s being published under Pantheon, an American imprint under Knopf — also, of course, a division of Random House.

Burt Hecker, the main character of the piece, is 63, divorced, and dresses in medieval garb. He calls himself a “medieval reenactor.” Often he’ll refuse to interact with anything that wouldn’t have been present during medieval times — in the first chapter he politely refuses to drink coffee, calling it “OOP,” or “out of period.” The story begins with a pilgrimage from the States to Rhineland, Germany, in order to celebrate the 900th birthday of St Hildegard von Bingen. What the others in his company don’t realize is that Hecker has bought a one-way ticket. He admits that he has no idea why he did this, and seems whimsically aloof to the consequences.

I’ll leave the synopsis there. I suppose if your interest has been piqued, you’ll either track down another blurb through the links above, or just order the book and read it. The latter being, of course, the recommended approach.

What appeals to me most about this novel is Wodicka’s execution. Though told primarily in first-person subjective, there are seamless interweaves of rumination that blend incomparably with the present-tense narrative. The effect is not unlike the daydreaming mind: One moment, Hecker will be sitting in a car, staring out the window, and the next he’ll be revisiting a road trip that he and his ex-family had taken years prior. But the stunning element is that the two, very separate, times overlap. Clothing, conversation, and setting all seem to intermingle. And yet never is there a moment that Wodicka’s style resembles the rambling (and often confusing or boring) feel of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Which is a great relief to me, since stream-of-consciousness has always left me feeling like more of a codebreaker than a real reader.

For further information, there are a few sites to visit. One is a great interview from the BBC, linked with Wodicka’s name above, but also here. Not to mention that there’s a collection of CDs on Amazon; the author wishes to point out the various musical influences on his book.

(I would never have built a link to Amazon, in all honesty, unless the tiny blurbs Wodicka offered for each of the albums weren’t supremely entertaining. Most of it is Hildegard’s own music — that’s right, she isn’t only a saint, but also a famous composer.)

All of that being said: READ THE BOOK.

 

Taking My Own Advice

In my recent post, “Impressive Small Presses,” I mentioned some publishers who had caught my eye (thanks to the tip-off from Poets & Writers, of course). Well, here I’ve been sitting on a complete manuscript for almost three months now without bothering to send it round. At first I blamed my procrastination on the move, the easiest of many cop-out options. After further thought I realized that I had no viable excuse at all. I have a wonderfully expensive printer — a wedding present from the in-laws — and had discovered two excellent independent presses. What was I waiting for?, a handout?, a sign from some celestial being? No — it was probably simple laziness that stood in my way. That, and a need to maintain financial stability for my home in “Animal Crossing,” by catching exotic fish, digging up valuable fossils, and selling them to a raccoon named Tom Nook. (For anyone who hasn’t played the real-time RPG on Nintendo’s Gamecube, I offer this warning: Stay away, unless you really feel the need to trade in real life for communing with anamorphic friends and long days of running their petty errands. It might not sound addictive, but it’s surprisingly life-consuming.)

That said, I promptly said goodbye to the fictional town of Norville — I would’ve called it “Northingtown” if they’d allowed for more letters in the name — and set to work in the real world. I developed my synopsis, formatted the sample chapters, and submitted. Hotel St. George Press only accepts manuscripts through snailmail, and I must say I felt more like a real writer at the sight of a fat manila envelope, the

 

The Miracle of Moving

The appeal of being a travel writer is not lost on me.  In truth I always thought of travelogue writers as fortunate in that they can get paid to combine their two favorite pastimes.  But following yet another move to yet another state — totaling now at four in a mere three and half years’ time — I think I’ve arrived at a much different conclusion.

It’s no secret that anyone can find themselves enlightened by a change of scenery.  Artists, on the other hand, are not only enlivened by all of the new sights and sounds of a new home, they are inspired.  Why this is such a surprise to me is astounding to say the least.  Having moved so frequently for so long, I suppose I’ve come to discard the sensations that afflict me each and every time my wife and I change towns, houses, or jobs.  (Which has been, until now, quite often; but as we’ve found the Mecca of All Bookstores at The King’s English, we don’t expect to be uprooting ourselves again any time soon.)

Only a month or so after finishing my last manuscript — whose process through the bowels of the publishing industry you will soon be party to — I already find myself roughing the edges of an unwritten novel in my mind.  It won’t be long now before I put my new workspace to use.  Having just watched the entire Sci-Fi Channel series “The Dresden Files,” I’m quite convinced that I’ll be breaking my old precedents and attempting a similar sort of serial.  After all, challenging myself to write the Beat/Magical Realism novel was possibly the best thing to have happened to my writing in years.  And even if I frustrate myself out of the idea, at the very least it’ll have been another odd journey.

Sometimes that’s all that matters.

 

Spuriosity

I’ve been hearing a lot about a man named David Lassman lately. He’s the most recent in a century-long line of disgruntled writers attempting to “expose” the decrepit state of the publishing industry. Apparently he submitted a number of synopses and queries for Jane Austen novels — not very cunningly disguised under false titles — to a series of publishing houses and agents. Lo and behold, he was rejected out of hand. And this was supposed to prove something.

My favorite writer-blogger, Victoria Strauss, once more says all that needs to be said about this popular borderline plagiarism. You should visit her post entitled “Whoops, They Did it Again” for more information on Lassman’s little experiment. Otherwise, continue reading my own post for a less ordered and more personal account.

I’ve thought of doing the same thing. Never did I expect that I’d have the balls to go through with it, of course. But it was always something I wondered about. I must say in my defense that I had no idea how often it’d been done before. In fact, according to a site called Hoaxipedia, it’s been happening for almost a century! Talk about unoriginal ideas….

I think that the book I wanted to erroneously submit was Mann’s The Magic Mountain. And as Ms. Strauss calmly points out in her blog, there’s no possible way that a modern publisher would ever consider printing a book like that. Modern literature is eons apart from the ornate prose of this particular Nobel Prize winner. Receiving rejection letters for the first chapter of Mann’s work, these days, would be like trying to pass off Stephen King’s work to a household of Edwardian aristocrats. It’s inconceivable.

What irritates me most about these scams is this: A frustrated writer who’s received nothing but rejection letters decides that he’s going to single-handedly reveal to the world just how unfair the publishing industry is. First off, that’s a hell of a lot of hubris. Secondly, if you’ve got the time to cook up a bunch of alternate titles for Dickens’ novels, let alone conjure a seemingly “modern” synopsis for a classic, then shouldn’t you have enough time to work on something of your own? And let’s disregard for the moment that even the most seasoned reader might neglect to recognize the opening paragraph of David Copperfield or East of Eden (though maybe not now that it’s been re-released with an Oprah stamp on it).

My point is, what does this stunt prove? In my mind: Nothing.

And yes, I admitted that I once succumbed to the temptation. But I think that the only way such a prank might work is if you chose a modern template — like a Grisham novel, for example. Even then, what person with any self-worth would rather attempt a dupe than spend the same amount of time writing something of their own?

Let’s face it. We reserve the right to write — they publish what they want. It’s all just a matter of waiting till they see something they like. For some of us, that wait can be maddening. And for others…well…

We’re just waiting.

 

Magical Beatism Part 2

Well, it’s finished. Yet another novel to add to the stack. How odd it was, too, that the same manuscript I abandoned nearly eight months ago should take flight anew; odder still is that it took only one additional month for the story to finish telling itself! The project has already passed through the hands of my dependable editor, my wife, and apart from the usual grammatical/word-choice imperfections, she’s assured me that it’s my best to date. If she didn’t pride herself on objectivity (and believe me, she pulls no punches) I would be tempted to say she’s being overly optimistic. Fortunately, I don’t have the luxury of being told “it’s amazing” every time I finish a piece.

Most importantly, however, is what I learned in the process of writing this particular story.

 

Magical Beatism

In my last post, I proclaimed that I’d finished a new novel. One would then think — or at least I would, based on previous experience — that I would have ample time to devote to keeping a steady blog. Unfortunately this is not the case. Fortunately, however, the case is that I’ve been writing.

After finishing my last manuscript and leaving it to cool, I then turned back to a project that was abandoned several months ago. I was writing during a time when life became incorrigibly hectic — my old laptop went on the fritz, my wife and I moved from North Boulder to South, and so on. It seemed only natural that the characters, the story, and everything that I’d loved so much about the project suddenly dwindled into the recesses of my mind, never to be recovered. Or perhaps not….

The initial idea was this: What are some of the literary sub-genres that I’ve never particularly cared to read? The first two answers were simple. Magical Realism and the Beat-era literature. But was there a way to take two such incompatible approaches to story-telling…at the same time? Maybe it was foolish of me to think of the two as extremely incompatible in the first place. After all, Kerouac and the lot of them wrote material very similar to modern magical realism, though without (for lack of a better word) enchanting story lines…or even engaging ones at that. (My opinion, of course.)

Long story short — I’m at least three-quarters into the novel already and I believe that I’ve sewn everything together. True, only the finished product will tell me if I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish. But, hell. It’s not very often that I give myself a ridiculous challenge to spur my imagination, and then suddenly find that I’m enjoying myself! So, I might as well stick with it. In the meantime, you will understand if my blog languishes for a while.

 

WIP it Good

My most recent Work In Progress — or WIP, as my most influential professor was keen on saying — has finally come to close. The story finished itself this afternoon at approximately 1:34 PM, Mountain Time. It stands at a tentative 70, 000 words, because who knows what might be shaved off after editing.

I’m currently celebrating with an ice-cold beer on this abominably hot Boulder evening. What could be better? (Except maybe a publisher awaiting a phone call….)

The project is, as of yet, untitled, but I’ve learned to count on my wife for that small detail more often than not. Contrary to previous works, I’ve decided to market this particular project as “Young Adult Fiction,” owing to its rather Wellsian attributes (if I may be so bold), not to mention its marked absence of any “adult” material that might be deemed unsuitable for a younger audience. This is, as I’ve said, a departure from my usual, but it’s no less exciting to think that I might have broken my mold just a bit.

There are several projects already awaiting my attention, as I very rarely have only one thing on my plate at a time. It just happens that some stories come like an open tap, and others tend to trickle until the plumbing is fixed.

Thus it’s with a mixture of sadness and relief that I bid my last WIP goodbye for the time being, just till it’s properly aged. Until then my feelers are extended farther than usual and my receptors are set on ready.

In the meantime, check out this link to another of my favorite sites, Shelfari.