Recently my agent carted a few of my books on a shopping spree. The idea was simple: cart them off to Book Expo and let editors and publishers have a look-see.
I like the idea. But my cart is getting full. I feel like I've finished pushing buttons online and now it's time to "check-out". Trouble is, no one's punching the "purchase" button.
There is a radical shift happening in publishing these days. It's been taking place for some time, but the distances between digital publishing and traditional are growing at a breakneck pace. And authors are bearing an increasing weight when it comes to producing the material that publishers are using for marketing and advertising, too.
My cart is loaded. I've got books stuffed into the basket, but also underneath the cart (next to the wheels) and there are children riding in the front seat with their legs dangling over the edge. These kids are wailing, and they are constantly reaching for candy bars at the check-out aisle.
Someday (soon and very soon) I hope to receive a good word. I don't want to be driving a cart with a squeaky or loose wheel. I want a straight-roller.
And it would be nice if, in the future, I could actually begin rolling downhill instead of pushing the weight to the top. I feel like Sisyphus and his boulder.
I don't want to be crushed by my own cart.
The past week has offered me a wealth of interesting writing developments. Among them:
The Good
A couple of editors accepted my material and gave me some affirming words on a nice blend of genres, including a personal essay on death, a humor piece about the Greek debt, and a satirical poem. I enjoyed showing off a range of work--some of it warped and weird, and the rest drop-dead serious.
The Bad
A lot of rejections in the past five days. I stopped counting at a dozen. But then, I never keep track of rejections . . . you can ask my wife. I just keep moving and try to look acceptable in blue jeans. Sometimes I leave a suggestive note at the dinner table.
And . . . The Ugly
It is always frustrating to receive a lengthy hand-written rejection from an editor saying, "This one came close! Always love reading your work and I always welcome other submissions from you. Keep sending my way."
Well, that's nice . . . but I'd prefer the editor accept my best work when I send it. I'm not so talented that I can write stellar material every night. Sometimes an editor has to jump.
All that ripe material, after all, doesn't grow on trees.
I have discovered that many editors work on National Holidays. Surprisingly, I had two pieces accepted for publication on Monday, one of them a reprint. (It's always a double blessing when I can sell a piece of writing twice!)
But I didn't have much time to bask in the okie-dokie, as I was relegated to clean up after my son's graduation open house on Sunday. I even cleaned up the muffler that parted ways with my son's pickup truck--a near 6-foot length of tail pipe that I discovered in the driveway.
Somewhere in all of this mix of open houses, photo ops, and pre-wedding plans, I have a quiver full of essays and stories waiting to be written. All I need is the time and attention necessary to complete them.
But right now, I'm high on sugar. I can't wait for my life to get back to an even-keel so I can find my old boring pace again.
All I can seem to manage right now is picking up the pieces of the leftovers.
I may have officially entered the hallowed halls of Geekdom yesterday when a satirical magazine agreed to publish an essay I wrote about the Greek debt. It was a piece I had worked on diligently, and includes a copious number of references to Greek classical literature, mythology, and the pantheon of gods and goddesses.
In short, it's a classic essay and I am glad someone, at last, recognized the moribund and bawdy humor in it.
This Greek piece, along with several poems of classical Greek reference and another humorous essay I wrote on Latin cognates, would seem to make me an official Geek. I expect to receive my decoder ring and club membership in a plain brown wrapper any day now.
Naturally, I will have to tell me wife about my Geek fortunes next time I see her. She is always perturbed by my writing choices (as they produce no money) and she continues to request that I sell one of my novels for a tidy sum. She doesn't understand why I would waste my time writing about Zeus, or Heracles, or Hades (god of the underworld, in case you didn't know). She thinks I should focus on writing mysteries or thrillers (of which I have many) and most recently she has insisted I write romantic novels of the type and variety that women purchase by the truckloads. So, I thought I'd try my hand at it . . . a romance novel with paragraphs like:
She undressed him with her eyes but then realized this was the way most men his age looked while they were taking a shower. He was hideous and she walked away in disgust. She didn't realize a man could have udders and she felt, suddenly, hungry for a Dairy Queen Blizzard with Reeces Pieces. She removed five dollars from his wallet and sped away in a cloud of purple exhaust fumes, wondering why she had married him twenty-eight years before and how her life would have been different had she married Stew, who was now a sales manager for H.H. Gregg and could get her a sweet deal on a plasma television. But she knew she would never leave him; he had hooked her big time years ago when he washed her chassis for free and then wrote heartfelt notes to her mother, asking for her hand and her heart. She would love him forever, into the twilight of their years when, at last in retirement, they would study the works of Aristotle in the original Greek and would, some day, make out in the back of the pickup on an old mattress they had once purchased for their son from Goodwill. Theirs was a classic love story for the ages, and they were still writing it in large 14-point Times New Roman font.
You see what I mean? No wonder my wife wants me to write romance. I could make a million.
Yesterday I bumped up against a deadline for a literary magazine that will soon be publishing some of my erudite humor. I say "bumped" because I waited until the last minute to submit my responses to the editor's mandatory list of pre-publication questions. Included in the list were several legal questions such as:
Do you swear that this material is yours and is not plagiarized or lifted in whole or in part from some other work?
and
Do you own the legal rights to this work?
Well . . . these are easy. I've never plagiarized a sentence in my life. Why would I? If I can't submit my own work, what's the point?
But the questions that gave me pause were these:
In 45 words or less tell us about yourself and why our readers would find you interesting?
and
How are you currently feeling about life?
I'm not joking . . . these were the questions. And I love them. These editors know how to rap. But I was having problems getting my thoughts in order. I wanted to be cute and funny and insightful all at the same time. So, here's what I submitted.
In response:
The readers need to meet my wife. They would be impressed. Impressed that a guy like me chose so well and, in doing so, has earned the right to be admired and respected. Anyone reading this piece will also suspect that I am a highly-educated fellow of some classical learning who has by now forgotten most of what he learned, including the notion that he could once read Latin. Readers will also note that I am high on life, but have very good relationships with legions of funeral directors. I can be reached through my blog, should anyone desire to correspond with me, but I am frequently out of the office, as I am attempting to transition my children out of the house.
There are fallow times for every writer: periods when the writing, though written, lacks something. That's when looking back can help one look ahead.
Here's a poem I unearthed from my 2012 poetic journal, a piece I wrote back on February 23. Reading it now, I can see that it's not too bad. The day must have been cloudy and my experience was best summarized as melancholy, I suppose.
Nevetheless, here it is.
The Cloudy Day
What to make of gray
And the lack of desire
That a gray day brings
Is most illuminating
In its plainness.
And what one might
Learn to appreciate
In overcast skies
Is nothing if
Nothing is paradise.
Even the birds
Become landlubbers
On a day overcast
With lack of blue
When the sun won't last
And the shadows do.
I received word this week that another one of my books is "going out of print". This is always a sad announcement, when the volume of sales (or lack thereof) preclude that the book pass beyond the bounds of the press and enter that great remaindered category in the sky.
As a writer who now has most of his books in the out of print category, it's difficult to feel affirmed. It's another form of rejection. And writers like me are continually looking for other ways to feel warm . . . that's why we buy heating pads and use lots of Tabasco sauce.
Going out of print also makes a guy like me cling to the love. I write my wife daily poems in the hope that she might read them and become aroused to the point where she will sign a waver granting me the exclusive rights to her retirement funds. I dream that she will throw off pheromone signals indicating that she is willing to finish the landscaping project on the west side of the house. I am also more bold to express how I feel, often through tears, and I often cry when I mention how much it would mean to me if she could Simonize the car and fix the muffler.
Going out of print has this affect on me. I live in an emotional stranglehold, my nerves raw and close to the edge. Sometimes I eat buckets of ice cream and call it dinner. My children ask for $10 and I give them a $100 bill . . . just to gain their acceptance in exchange for five minutes, if only they will sit and willingly listen to my problems. These in-home counseling sessions usually end abruptly, however, and with laughter. My own children can't accept that I'm this messed up. They post our conversations on Facebook and include photographs of me when I was twenty-seven years old and badly in need of a shave.
Believe me, if there are folks out there who dream of writing a book, it's not all peaches and cream. Sometimes it's just yogurt, and badly spoiled. Sometimes it's just cutting the cheese and looking sideways at the cat when someone asks, "What smells?"
But I've been out of print many times before and I'll get through this one, too. All it will take is a lot of poems and a gallon of chocolate chip ice cream.
Or . . . if my wife totally loses her bearings and kisses me tonight . . . all will be well.
