How To Tackle Writer's Block

Found this quote in an interview with writer Frederick Manfred, in the book Finding The Words: Conversations with Writers Who Teach, by Nancy Bunge (Swallow Press, 1985):

"I rub my hands in glee whenever I hit a wall in my manuscript and I don't know where to go next. There's a damned good reason why: it's something I don't want to look at. If I can push through and get to that area, I'll find something not only about myself, but something that may be of real value to someone else. And inadvertently, everything you need, the theme, the plot, will jump right out at you as you go along." (pp. 68-69)

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Step right up!

For some reason, the mishmash of AOL Welcome Screen Headlines this morning struck me as a freak show in search of a circus tent. All that was missing, I thought as I read them, was a carnival barker.

Here are a few samples from today. Try reading these out loud... shouting them, if you can:

Daring Beauty Skis in Skimpy Bikini
Actress Flaunts Her Gorgeous Lips
Reality Star Shown Without Limb
Couples Tie Knot on Roller Coaster
Coach Loses Job Over Nude Pics
Disney Star Wasn't Always Hot
All Octopuses Found to Be Venomous

When I read these a little earlier, there was also one in the mix with my favorite AOL Welcome Screen Headline word --"racy"-- but alas and alack, that one has already been bumped.

Give it a day, though...

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Outta here...

I already cried once for Harry Kalas this spring.

Baseball is about rebirth. It's not ironic that its coming every year coincides with spring... that in the coldest days of February, when we've had just about all we can stand of winter and snow and ice and single digit temps, the days are also starting to get noticably longer at both ends.

For a baseball fan, four words usually melt most of the February chill, or at least make it tolerable:

PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT.

Every February, those four words mean as much to a baseball fan as the first robin. If the pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training, then spring is on its way. Winter no longer stands a chance.

Baseball is about rebirth and the return of spring every year, yes, but it's also about continuity, about a game that connects not just day to day or week to week, but season to season, decade to decade... a game that continues at its essential core in spite of Balco, insane salaries and even more insane ticket prices, and whatever other evils the dark lords of sports attempt to inflict on it.

Doubt it? Take an evening this spring and go to a Little League game.

Try as anyone might to profane it, baseball itself is, with little exception, the same game we played as Little Leaguers, and the same game our dads watched and played when they were kids, and that their dads watched, and so on all the way back.

You can't say that about many other sports. Jim Thorpe or Y.A. Tittle might not be able to hold their own against the Steel Curtain, but put Babe Ruth in the batters box against C.C. Sabathia, and it probably wouldn't be a mismatch.

I suspect that it's that timeless quality, and the feeling that this season's games --today's game-- is part of a bigger continuum that stretches further back than memory and will go on beyond all of our deaths, that makes baseball so deep to its fans.

To those of us who could never quite learn how to hit a curve ball, baseball was defined by our favorite teams' successes and failures. And for a long time fan of a team, players, managers and owners may come and go, but the continuity is what you hold onto. Anything that links you to the team's past defines you as a fan.

Part of a team's continuity is its broadcasters. Baseball broadcasters are the link between a fan and his team. On the radio, a broadcaster is a fan's eyes at the park. More than that, a good broadcaster is a person who respects the game, respects the team, respects the continuity and the tradition, and respects you as a listener.

For 38 years, Harry Kalas was the voice of the Phillies. His voice on the radio every spring was my "first robin." I may have been hearing "pitchers and catchers report" for weeks... may have been seeing the ever-lengthening days while I read spring training dispatches from Florida... but until I turned on the radio and heard Harry Kalas' voice calling that first spring training game every spring, there was still a little doubt.

Would the season go off?

Hearing Harry's voice every spring the last three decades was always a tremendous relief. The moment itself almost always sounded the same: one of his colleagues (lately, Scott Franzke on radio) would handle the pregame, the lineups in that first spring game, or maybe even the first couple innings, but eventually it'd come down to: "It's my pleasure to turn you over to the Hall of Fame voice of the Phillies, Harry Kalas."

And then a short pause, like it still might not happen...

... then...

..."Thanks, Scott! Good afternoon, everyone. Jimmy Rollins steps in and the first pitch is outside, ball one..."

...or whatever the pitch was.

And that was all it took. With those simple words, with that benediction, spring was officially here. Maybe it was still snowy out, maybe it was freezing and still a month or more before the robins or buds or flowers appeared, but if Harry Kalas was back on the air calling that first spring training game for the Phillies, then the rest would surely follow.

And in spite of myself, it always made me cry. Tears of joy. Baseball is back. Spring can't be far behind.

For close to 35 years, that moment has always been the happiest moment of the spring for me.

So like I said: I already cried once this spring for Harry Kalas.

I wish I wasn't crying for him again today.

Rest in peace, Harry. And thank you.

"Evidence" (A poem)

Evidence of peoples' addictions
lies scattered roadside
--snow, slurry, gravel, dust and dirt covered
crushed and empty (as if THAT would fool us!)--
cigarette wrappers and butts
coffee cups
beer cans
skoal tins (or cardboard cans with plastic bottoms)
junk food wrappers and McDonald's cups...
(I even found a genre novel once!)
all tossed in the burm as if
wicked driver by wicked driver
the addicts of this land all screamed
"ENOUGH! OUT OF MY LIFE!"
rolled down the window
gave the shit a heave
then breathed in that fresh stream of air from the road
inhaled
exhaled
but didn't slow down
just kept driving
away
away
away...

(Max Harrick Shenk, April 6, 2009)

Note: this is blog post number 100 in this blog. As John Lennon said about the first time he baked a loaf of bread and it vanished in ten minutes: What, that's it? Don't I get a gold record or get knighted or something?

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Construct Your Own AOL Welcome Screen Headline

I love AOL Welcome Screen Headlines. Unfortunately, lately, what with schoolwork, I simply haven't been able to keep up on posting the occasional gem on this blog. In an attempt to remedy this, I present CONSTRUCT YOUR OWN AOL WELCOME SCREEN HEADLINE. Simply choose a word/phrase from each column and you'll ALWAYS be up-to-date on what's happening in the wild, wacky world of celebrityhood, fame and fortune.

If you have any suggestions for additions to the columns, let me know... but I think I've covered it all.

Scroll down...

CHOOSE	ONE	FROM	EACH	COLUMN!
Miley	In	Racy	Bikini	Pictures
Britney	Does	Saucy	Drunk	Binge
Jacko	Has	Sexy	Abuse	Video
Songbird	Is	Shocking	Wardrobe	Tale
Simon	Makes	Stunning	Diet	Trial
Elisabeth	Reveals	Risque	Reality	Show
Lindsay	Quits	Naughty	Sobriety	Secret
Jess	Starts	Legendary	Comeback	Clip
Celeb	Stops	Dramatic	Vacation	Lies
Supermodel	Shows	Tragic	Cheating	Memoir
Legend	Tells	Outrageous	Swimsuit	Rumors
Icon	Passes	Iconic	Beach	Gossip
Jen	Finds	Revealing	Club	...So we hear!
Angelina	Battles	Steamy	Online	Faux pas
Brad	Denies	Torrid	Emergency Room	malfunction
T.O.	Shares	Frigid	Nude	snafu
Lottery winner		Hot	Contract	embarrassment
Winehouse		Heartbreaking	Crack	download
General Patton		Scandalous		Spree
Chimp Victim		Scientifically valid

"That's either a gigantic box or a tiny, tiny team" department

Gotta love misplaced modifiers. Headline du jour, from Yahoo news:

Granny cashes in with card
Bernice Gallego auctions a rare
1869 card of the first pro baseball
team she found in an old box.

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AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week

On the one hand, this double-tiered headline from this morning kind of pissed me off:

Bush's Lighter Side

Remember Fun Moments?

I think it pisses me off because I'd rather remember Dick Cheney's "fun moments."

Like:

Hey, Dick, remember when you went hunting and shot that guy in the chest and HE apologized?? Wasn't that FUN? Or how about that time on the floor of the House when you told Pat Leahy to "go fuck himself"? THAT was fun. Or, hey, hey... what about the time on MEET THE PRESS when Tim Russert told you that the majority of the American people disapproved of the Iraq war, and you replied "So?" Wasn't THAT fun?

I don't usually get too political here, but this last eight years has been a nightmare in so many ways. Nothing "fun" about the bunch that's leaving, sorry.

Except the fact that, in a little more than 28 hours as I write this, they'll be gone.

Good riddance.

AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week: Bonus holiday week headlines

Nothing screams WELCOME TO AOL quite like celebrity news, unless it's maybe news of a "shocking" medical condition THAT YOU MIGHT GET ("Why we should be worried").

Combine the two and you have this double whammy Thanksgiving week bonus headline tandem... both of which, incidentally, were alongside each other on the same AOL welcome screen page this morning.

All that's missing is the word "racy."

Worm Discovered In Woman's Brain
Doctors Went In for a Tumor to Find
Quite a Surprise: What It Looked Like

TV Star Contracts Flesh-Eating Bug
Bitten Filming, He's Struggling to Live

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AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week

A two-tiered beauty that was too good to pass up:

Woman Has Bizarre Brain Illness
What It Has to Do With Sean Connery

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"The forces that work against you..."

Whenever I crack open a book to a random page and read EXACTLY WHAT I NEED TO READ AT THE VERY MOMENT I'VE FOUND IT, I like to pass it on to my friends... just in case it's what THEY need to read, too.

I was weeding through boxes of books and belongings this morning, trying to pick out what I'm going to take to my next (temporary) stop and what I'm going to leave behind. As I sorted the books into piles of TAKE ALONG and LEAVE BEHIND, I found myself getting more and more frustrated... verklemt, as my ex- used to say... so mentally agitated and confused that I literally had to step away from the task at hand and go lie down.

Why did this upset me so much?

I took a mini-nap, tried to focus myself, then got up, made a cup of coffee (always a great idea for someone who feels mentally agitated and confused, haha, but I digress) and went back to my sorting. Near the top of the LEAVE BEHIND stack was a book by David Viscott called EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE.

"Simple truths for dealing with the unfinished business of your past," the subtitle read.

I opened the book, at random, to page 69; a section entitled "The Forces that Work Against You:"

WARNING SIGNS OF EMOTIONAL DANGER

Inherent in the natural healing process are certain safeguards that alert you to danger. There is a bad feeling that you get when you misstate the truth. It can be a subtle uneasiness, a disquieting sense that something isn't right. It can be a wave of anxiety or sadness. Be still and ask yourself what just disturbed you. Correct what you just said so it is truthful.

Another sign that you maybe in trouble is when you find yourself avoiding situations that are not especially dangerous. Ask yourself what feeling the situation brings to mind.

You may find yourself breaking into a sweat or developing signs of anxiety, shallow breathing, and rapid heart rate when a subject is mentioned or a certain person approaches you. Ask yourself how you have been hurt. You're probably afraid of losing control over your anger. When a sad memory returns, you are being reminded of some loss that is still being mourned.

Don't push it away. Identify and acknowledge the feeling. Put it into words by saying to yourself, "I really miss her, I wish I had tried harder, it was a shame to give up when I was so close," or some other comment that states both your feeling of sadness and accepts some responsibility for the painful memory.

Your discomfort is a message telling you that something is wrong. Assume that you probably know what it is.

Use your feelings of discomfort to guide you to be more honest.

Examine your heart. All your answers lie there.

Hmmmmmmm.... Your discomfort is a message telling you that something is wrong...

Assume that you probably know what it is.

O.K.... well... let's see...

I hate moving. I really haven't had a permanent home since I moved to Vermont, and it's getting a little tiring. However, tomorrow I need to move to temporary housing once again (I've been housesitting for a friend, but I need to move elsewhere for the next two months because my friend will be back home for the holidays). I hate packing up things; I hate sticking things in boxes and leaving them in a storage space (in this case, my friend's basement) until "someday" when I have a home and can bring them all together. I want to take along as many books and belongings as I can to this next temporary stop, but I know I need to travel light... but I also feel guilty about leaving the stuff BEHIND at my friend's. What if she gets pissed off that I've "left too much stuff" in her basement?

Also, the books represent, to me, unfulfilled and unrealized ideals and aspirations. Books I haven't read, things I haven't done. Regrets.

Hmmmmmm.

I shut Viscott's book, moved it to the TAKE ALONG pile, boxed up the LEAVE BEHIND books into four small boxes, took them down to the basement, and started in on the kitchenware.

Like I said: that passage helped me. Maybe it'll help you, too.

AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week

Bathroom explosion burns teen

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AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week

Just thought that this one had a nice ring to it:

Clooney's New Red Carpet Arm Candy

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Once again, WALDEN

Henry David Thoreau's Walden is one of those books that seems almost magical: every time I pick it up, I find something different in it... and, more than that, whenever I pick it up and open it to what seems like a randomly selected page, I always find exactly what I need at that particular moment.

Right now, I'm working through a string of days without a break: when Labor Day comes, I will have worked 24 straight days without a whole day off at either job. But then from September 2 through 8, I'll be off. Call it "earning my vacation."

I haven't had a great deal of spare time and energy lately, and unfortunately sometimes I don't use the time and energy I have in the best ways I could... which just makes me feel MORE tired and stressed and annoyed with myself.

This, plus an email from a friend in which she vented about her work ("i like to say [the economy] doesn't get to me but i see it has affected sales, my job is harder, more frustrating... on this beautiful day i just need/would love to tidy the house and be mindless but deadlines press in on me") got me running to Walden, so to speak, to find a pithy, appropos Thoreau quote. I was looking for his quote on how to make "making a living poetic," because if it is not poetic, then it is not a LIVING we make. Etc etc.

So I opened up my old Modern Library edition of Walden to the section "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," and this is the passage that jumped out at me:

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few items beautiful; but it is far more glorious to be able to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

Just what I needed to read, when I needed to read it. I also sent it to my friend.

So, from two of us, once again: thanks, Henry!

AOL Welcome Screen Headline of the Week

Starlet Reveals Desire to Be Naked

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Wonderful you

At the beginning of the summer, as I wrote in a previous blog entry, I really identified the song "Workin' On A Groovy Thing" with a woman I had my eye, heart and spirit set on. Now the summer is almost gone; I've gotten to know her better; and while I still sense the possibility of what I wrote about and felt three months ago, more than anything, Van Dyke Parks' lyrics to Brian Wilson's song "Wonderful" sum up the way I feel for Her-With-A-Capital-H.

Lots more I could write, but I'll let Van Dyke and Brian say it for me:

She belongs there left with her liberty
Never known as a non-believer
She laughs and stays in the one-one-one-wonderful

She knew how to gather the forest when
God reached softly and moved her body
One golden locket quite young
And loving her mother and father

Farther down the path was a mystery
Through the recess the chalk and numbers
A boy bumped into her one-one-one-wonderful

All fall down and lost in the mystery
Lost it all to a non-believer
And all that's left is a girl
Who's loved by her mother and father

She'll return in love with her liberty
Just away from the non-believer
She'll sigh and thank God for one-one-one- wonderful

("Wonderful" by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks; copyright 1966)

O.K.... maybe add in two more lyric snippets: the first, a question from another Wilson-Parks SMILE lyric-- "When is the wonderful me? Wonderful you?"-- and the second, an answer from an old Pretenders' song:

"Maybe tomorrow... Maybe someday..."

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Customer of the week

This afternoon at work, a woman with three kids came to the outdoor smoothie bar at the market and asked for two small smoothies, and a small lemonade with extra sugar, "for my youngest, who's visiting her father tonight."

Fixing leaks while still in port

I started writing the book that became YOU DON'T THINK SHE IS (the novel I'm submitting to agents) seven summers ago. It took so long to refine it and revise it because I really didn't know what I was doing as a writer. I learned from writing all of those pages, vignettes, stories, chapters, drafts... learned what worked and what didn't; learned what the story was; learned who the characters were.

Seven years is a long time, so of course, when I finally finished the 370-page NOVEL that I'd distilled from that stack of writing, I was psyched to get it out there. I researched agents, made a list of what looked like Good Matches, and told myself I'd get queries into 15 agents' hands by the end of June.

Then... I found out I had to move. Somehow, the threat of a pending move threw off all my equilibrium, and, in spite of my efforts, I simply couldn't get any of my work out there. The one time I tried submitting the book recently, I couldn't. The online submission wizard at the agent's website came back with a message: FAILURE.

Nice.

Now it's August, and even though I'm a month past my self-imposed deadline, I'm happy, in a way, that I didn't start submitting before the move. Those 5-6 weeks that I was totally preoccupied-schizzed about moving FORCED me to set the book aside and not look at it...

...and, now that I've picked it back up and looked at it, I realize that, before I submit it, there's one last step I need to take. It's the same thing I did before I submitted my final product in the MFA program at Goddard: go through the manuscript with a finetooth comb as a COPY EDITOR and PROOFREADER. Clean up awkward sentences and clunky clanky passages... scan for typos and (unintentional) misspellings... remove repetitive words and phrases... eliminate cliches... fix punctuation.

Clean it up.

As I stated in a previous post on this blog, I'm all for the Jimmy Buffett school of novel writing. But best to fix small leaks while still in port. I feel good about doing this because I'm finally happy with the book as a NOVEL and a STORY. To use a metaphor, the barber's done with the haircut... he's just brushing around and dusting on the talc and splashing on the tonic before he snaps the bib off and lets you out of the chair.

Anyway... yesterday I did the first 19 pages and wrote down 10 pages of changes. Most of them minor; a couple of them sentence or paragraph rewrites. Lots of places where punctuation (or font: italics) could be tweaked to make the meaning more clear... lots of misplaced modifiers (that's the problem with trying to write in a voice that approximates SPOKEN word)... a few places where I used a key word twice within a couple sentences of each other, and thought it best to eliminate the multiples. Lots of changing passive voice to active voice.

It's an arduous, time-consuming task... the writing equivalent of what Julia Child was talking about when she said "Every job has its share of slicing onions." But now that the important stuff is done (story, structure, character, subplot), cleaning up the technical glitches is a piece of cake. Even if it DOES make my eyes water occasionally.

Better watery eyes than a leaky boat.

AOL Welcome Screen Headline Of The Week

Just like the wording of this one:

Ailing Songbird Caught With Liquor



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"When I saw you, I knew that I was gonna love you..."

Can love songs serve as prayers? I've noticed lately that certain songs and their lyrics not only resonate with me, but, in hindsight, seem almost prescient. It's almost as if they were waiting for me to sing them as hymns so that God could answer them for me.

To wit:

A couple winters ago, while I was working on a rough draft of my novel, I found the old Fifth Dimension record "Workin' On A Groovy Thing." The song and the lyrics (written, I later learned, by Neil Sedaka) seemed tailor-made for a section of the book that I was working on, so I incorporated them into a chapter, with the song playing on the radio as kind of a Greek chorus while the action took place. It seemed like that was "the reason" I'd found this song.

But somehow, the song stuck in my mind and resonated in my heart and my spirit... and I didn't really think about why, until recently, when I met up again with a woman I liked. I met her a while ago, and at that time, found out that she was attached... and then she moved away... so I thought "O.K., boyfriend... moved away... well, that's that!"

Still, I felt drawn to her in my spirit, and I not only held out hope that someday I'd see her again, but I prayed to God that our paths would cross and we'd get to know each other better, and if it was right...

And now, amazingly, miraculously, she's back. By all indications, she's no less attached than she was before, but this time, I've gotten to know her better, and I've found that the deep feelings I felt for her weren't misplaced... she's an amazing, one-of-a-kind person, and I feel the same way I did when I first met her. Just a deep, deep connection and, as an article I read about "love at first sight" said, "an awareness surrounding me." But, more than that, an almost inexplicable feeling that she's my heart's and my soul's future. Like we're both where we are right now, but that there's a direction I need to go in my life, and if I follow that path, somehow, she's going to be there.

As I wrote to a friend...

....there's all that deep stuff I feel that I don't understand, which must make you think I walk in awe or hold her on some pedestal or something... but when I'm around her, I don't notice all of that. I kind of feel it in the background, but mainly what I notice is that I just LIKE BEING AROUND HER. She's one of those people who makes you feel better because she's down- to- earth, funny, happy, unflappable. She sees the humor in things without being mean or cynical. She laughs at herself without cutting herself down, and can make you laugh at yourself without feeling like you're being insulted. She's not a doormat, but she doesn't disrespect people... and more than that she doesn't IMPOSE on people around her...

I'm really really really really putting this over to God. I do not want to fuck this up. If it's right, I want it to BE right, and if it's not, I want to find whatever IS.

I get all caught up in that when I'm not around her, but then when I see her, it feels effortless. I feel what I feel in my spirit, which makes me feel like something big is in the air, and yet the biggest thing of all to me is that when I'm around her, I couldn't feel more relaxed. She couldn't be a more laid-back, fun, sweet person. SHe makes me laugh and I make her laugh.

I am in serious like here.

To which my friend responded, and I quote:

You are in sooooo deep. And I wouldn't call it serious like.(!) Save these emails.....if anything happens with her, she'd love to see how beautiful you write about her.

Funny: I got this email just a few minutes after I printed out what I'd written, thinking "Maybe someday I'll give this to her."

I've never really felt like this before, and it's a little scary, especially given current circumstances and all the reasons why not (her having a boyfriend chief among them).

I find myself feeling like that old song from the Cinderella musical, "Ten Minutes Ago" --"I wanted to ring out the bells and fling out my arms and to sing out the news! I have found her! She's an angel!"-- but at the same time, there's a part of me that knows that the best thing to do at the moment is play my cards close to the vest and protect this feeling.

So what does all of this have to do with "Workin' On A Groovy Thing"? Just that now, finally, the words of that old hippie pop song not only seem to make sense, but they resonate like they never did before, because it's exactly what I feel for this person. The words are where my heart and spirit are right now.

I don't even mind the word "groovy."

When I saw you I knew that I was gonna love you
And every day I thought of how much I'd love you
Now you're here next to me
And ecstasy is a reality
I feel good when you are near
I'm alive 'cause you are here
Workin' on a groovy thing, baby
Workin' on a groovy thing
Workin' on a groovy thing, baby
Let's not rush it
We'll take it slow...

At the moment, I don't feel like there's a lot I can do in this situation except be a good friend and keep asking God for the answer. I know what I feel, but I also know that current circumstances are what they are, and, as the I CHING might counsel, "movement in any direction would not be advisable."

Still, like I said, I know what I feel. So we'll see.

In the meantime, I wonder if there are any songs she's heard that, for reasons she can't explain, she keeps coming back to. Maybe, like my friend said, someday we'll find out.

For now, though, I'll keep singing those hippie hymns, and a few others, and see where they take me.

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Dear Writer...

I've started submitting the revised draft of my novel You Don't Think She Is. Last year around this time, when I was still living in suburban Philly, a few months after I graduated from Goddard, I submitted the first draft of the novel. Ten submissions; ten rejections. You'd think that'd be a disheartening and discouraging experience, but really, it wasn't. After carrying the book around, in various stages of completion and then in various incarnations, since 2001, it felt good to finally put the work OUT THERE and get feedback on it, even if the feedback was just ten "Sorry, not for us"s.

That first round of submissions was also a learning experience, in so many ways. It spurred me to really look at the book and see what its strengths and weaknesses were, and to focus myself on further revisions so I could submit a stronger version of the book the second time around. But it also taught me a lot about the submission process itself.

I found that the most discouraging and frustrating rejection letters I received were not those that I had to wait the longest for; they were the ones that came almost immediately. These were responses from agents to whom I'd submitted no sample chapters or excerpt; just the prescribed one-page letter with my curriculum vitae, my publications and prizes, the "elevator pitch" ("Pretendyou'reinanelevator andthedooropens andanagentstepsin andyou'vegot30seconds beforehegets out sopitchyourbook whatdoyousaywhat'stheplot what'sthestory andnowthedoor's opening TOO LATE! BZZZZZZ! HE'S GONE FOREVER!!!"), and the marketing/positioning statement (where I see the book fitting in the racks at the stores. To which the only reasonable answer is, "Right at the front, on the BESTSELLERS table." But I digress).

How, I wondered as I wrote and sent these letters, can someone possibly judge my BOOK on the strength of a letter which contains none of the elements (voice, plot, subplot, story, dialogue, narration) that make the book what it is?

Those few rejections made me realize that, during round two, I wanted to submit only to agents who accepted excerpts or sample chapters. I didn't want my work to be judged or rejected on my strengths or weaknesses as a letter writer; I wanted it to be judged and accepted on its strengths as FICTION.

A few weeks ago, I got the idea to write my query letter in one of my characters' voices. Voice, after all, is such a huge element of this work. The narrative voice of Brian, of course, holds the book together, but woven into the work are the voices of his best friend Margo and his soon-to-be-girlfriend Christy, in both dialogue and in epistolary interludes.

Why not have Margo write the letter for me?

Dear Agent,

Well, it may seem weird, having a character in a book write the query letter for a writer (if he can write a book, why can't he write a letter?) but that's what I'm doing, so weird or not, here goes.

My name is Margo LeDoux, and I'm one of the characters in Max Harrick Shenk's novel You Don't Think She Is...

It felt like it solved the problem. Somehow, first of all, writing the letter in Margo's voice gave me a detachment that I'd lacked when I tried querying the first time. As I wrote in a previous post on this blog, part of my revision process was that I found it difficult to state concisely what the book was about, what the story was, what happened. Strangely enough, though, when I sat down and typed it out in Margo's voice, the single 'graph, 20-second-stuck-in- the-elevator-with- the-agent plot summary came right off my fingertips:

...So what's the book about? It's about me, and about my best friend Brian (he's the narrator) growing up... and this neighborhood girl, Christy Kelly, who has a crush on Brian and who hates me because I like him... but she figures out by eighth grade that if she wants to be with him, she has to get through me... and the rest of the story is what happens when she finally figures that out.

Simple. That's the story. Why didn't it come out in MY voice in those OTHER letters?

More than this, though, I felt like I'd communicated one of the book's biggest strengths: THE VOICES OF THE CHARACTERS (Margo's voice in particular) and their sense of humor.

Finally, remembering all of those boilerplate form rejection letters I'd gotten last spring, I addressed the letter to "Dear Agent," with a P.S. from Margo:

Forgive the impertinence of the salutation, but I've seen some of the rejection letters that Max has gotten. If you agents can send him form rejection letters that start out "Dear Writer," then HE can send YOU form submission letters that read "Dear Agent." Just trying to be fair.

I felt a little hesitant about this approach-- it wasn't "by the book"-- but something about it felt right. It felt like it reflected the spirit and character of the work more truly than the boring step-by-step template queries that WRITER'S MARKET and so many other writer's books and workshops prescribe. It reflected my strengths as a writer, my sense of humor, my story, my characters' voices, all of it.

If an agent didn't like the letter, then that agent probably wasn't a good match for my work... but they would DEFINITELY get a feel for my book from reading the letter.

Still, before I started querying, I sent a rough draft of the letter to a Goddard friend of mine, who responded that it was "brilliant" and that I should use it.

So earlier this week, I started round two of submissions. I went into the online WRITER'S MARKET agent listings and did a focused search (agents who worked with new writers and who represented mainstream novels and YA --young adult-- titles), and, armed with a list of eight agencies, started sending. I sent the letter and a sample chapter (chapter one: thirty pages) to one agency, and (grudgingly) sent a letter only to a second. I did NOT use the "Dear Agent" approach in either letter; I feared that it was somehow too over-the-top. Instead, I addressed the letters personally to the agents in question.

Two days after sending out the first submission email (the one that was a letter only), I received my first reply:

Dear Writer,

Thank you for your query. Unfortunately, your project is not right for this agency at this time.

Best of luck to you as you seek representation.

Warmest regards...

"Warmest regards." Indeed. How warm that form letter was.

If submitting a work, like every other part of writing, is a learning process, then I learned two things from this opening round of two submissions. One, that I need to try to submit only to agents who are going to actually READ MY WORK regardless of the letter... and two, if I am going to send a letter only, use the version where "Margo" addresses the letter "Dear Agent."

Just trying to be fair.

To read chapter one of You Don't Think She Is, click here.

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