The Author's Journey

October 25, 2007

I’m just about through dealing with the edits Kimberley has suggested. Most of them are easy to handle. It is tedious plowing through the manuscript page by page to change a “he” to a “the” or “peace” to “piece” –  I am amazed at how many of these changes there are – but they’re not challenging. I use a blue highlighter to line through each change as I make it. The rule is, no blue mark on the manuscript until you can actually see the change on the screen.

To my surprise, the deeper comments are easy to handle as well. Kimberley feels one of the minor characters is too one-dimensional, and I find ways to soften her harshness and create sympathy in spite of her flaws. A new reminiscence on the hero’s part, one or two lines of dialog… small changes can make a big difference!

The final scene, the one I have promised to rewrite “half a dozen times” if necessary, is a different story. There is only so much room within the bounds of believable dialog, and two different goals are competing for that space: the need to choreograph the characters’ changing emotions as they react to one another, and the need to explain what happened and why – to tie up the loose ends. I feel like I’m assembling some complicated piece of machinery. And of course, the longer I work on it, the harder it is to see it objectively and keep track of the effect of each sentence on the reader.

Eventually, I get something that satisfies me. I hope it will satisfy Kimberley. I’m running out of gas.

*   *   *

November 6, 2007

Kimberley e-mails me to say that the manuscript is in “great shape” and there are only one or two things she wants to go over. I remind her of our agreement, which she acknowledges. “Just a couple of minor things.” We arrange a meeting at her office.

It does not go well. While there are no longer red and blue tags on every other page, there are still plenty of them, and as we go through them, my heart sinks. These are not minor corrections; they’re major changes, actually more involved than the first round. After Kimberley and Phil are through explaining them, complete with ideas like, “Couldn’t you have someone hold her at gunpoint?” I tell them that from my perspective, the meeting has had the worst possible outcome I could imagine.

Kimberley can see that I’m upset, and as I’m standing at the door about to leave she asks me in her most conciliatory tone to “just think about them,” menaing the new proposed changes. I promise to do so, but that evening my despair gradually coalesces into a hot coal of anger, and I realize that I will not change another word. I’d rather die.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

September 24, 2007

The Buckeye Roadhouse is located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It has been around a long time – who would name a restaurant “The Buckeye” today? – but the menu has evolved under the influence of its sophisticated Martin County customers, the ex-hippies who grew up to become therapists and contractors. We are shown to a table upstairs. “It’s quieter,” Kimberley explains.

She is acting like a literary agent from central casting. “Should we get some water? Do you prefer sparkling or calm? You know, my husband and I just got back from Barcelona last week and we had this wonderful wine… and it just happens that they have it here! I think you’ll love it, Mike.” And so on.

I am tempted by a cheeseburger, a hold-over from the Buckeye’s earlier days, I imagine, but to compliment the wine I choose a Waldorf salad instead… and it is truly delicious. Kimberley is chatty, but never veers from business topics. Her assistant Phil says little.

When the plates have been cleared away and cappuccinos served, the manuscript comes out. We are going to go over it page by page. This takes about two hours.

Kimberley is one of those people who throws herself full force into everything she does, committed to get every detail right: the  computer equipment for her employees, the  wine for lunch with the new author, the punctuation in Fortuna.

Actually, she’s done a lot more than go over the punctuation. She has indeed caught at least a hundred little mistakes in the form of typos, missing quotation marks and the like, but she has also thought very carefully bout every aspect of the book. As we go over her mark-ups page by page, she emphasizes once again that these are “suggestions.” Maybe, but some are pretty forceful.

“You just can’t have him do that.”

“You’ve got to do something about her.”

There are lots of one word notes like “motivation?” or “How does he feel?” or simply, “Why?” The fact is, I’ve just gotten three or four thousand dollars worth of free editing. At the same time, I am a little nervous because, as I see it, this is a situation where she holds all the cards. She can, for all her protestations, decide not to represent me if I don’t do what she wants, and without an agent. I can’t sell the book. That’s for sure.

I offer her a deal: I will evaluate every comment seriously and do one revision. I do not want to get into an endless back-and-forth. That’s what I do with clients who pay me $125 per hour. I also tell her I will re-write the last chapter “a dozen times” if necessary until we both agree that it’s right. I don’t feel like I’m conceding anything because her suggestions, after all is said and done, are very smart.

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Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

September 24, 2007

Fog blows across the winding road as I climb the hill to Kimberley’s house, which is located in a town called Tiburon, once a sort of hippie enclave and now a bedroom community for wealthy individuals. I park at the top of the hill, then navigate the steps on the side of her home down to the separate structure that is the office of Reece-Halsey. There is a lovely terrace with a view of the bay, and off to the side, a large cottage with a heavy wooden door.

I knock, Kimberley opens the door and I step into a large, cozy room. There are several desks against the walls, each with a large computer monitor, and in the center a low table with two couches facing one another. Kimberley introduces one of her junior associates, an attractive blonde with the polished style it takes to rise in the corporate world: warm but professional, with no Valley Girl lilt in her voice.

The other associate, with whom I’ll also be working, is a somewhat scruffy guy named Phil Lang who is working on the project along with Kimberley. We sit down briefly and she produces the manuscript she has printed out, a ream of paper with probably two hundred little blue plastic tags sticking out of one side. My heart sinks. Kimberley had asked in her innocent way if I would be “open to a few suggestions,” and I had said yes. This looks like a massive edit.

She reads my expression. “This is your book and I respect that,” she says. “You can just take a look at our comments and see what you think.” Later on, she will tell me in passing that many agents demand edits and will only take your book on the contingency that you make the changes they want.

It occurs to me on the ride over to the restaurant that publishing has become part of what someone has called “the gig economy.” Essentially, publishers have outsourced the editing function – or much of it – to agents, who do it on spec. (The alternate, which I heard about at the San Francisco Writers’ conference, is the agent who “recommends” a copy editor prior to agreeing to represent an author.) This cuts publishers’ expenses, and the agents are willing to do it because the rewards of a big book can be huge… or because the writers aren’t the only ones in publishing who are basically in the game for love.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

April 4, 2007

 I have had a fling with Another Agent. This is how it happened. At the San Francisco Writers’ Conference there’s something called “speed dating.” For an additional fifty dollars, you get to have a series of 3-minute meetings with as many agents as you can do in an hour. The agents are located behind tables positioned against the walls of a relatively large ballroom. You know in advance who’s going to be there, and you have (presumably) taken notes about their areas of interest. So, when the doors of the ball room are opened, you follow the crowd of other writers into the room and line up at your first choice table. Then the bell rings. The first writer in line to meet the agent behind that table sits down and begins pitching. Three minutes later, the bell rings again, and the next person in line sits down.

After twelve minutes, it’s my turn. I sit down facing a woman with a wonderful, friendly smile, carelessly combed long hair and librarian glasses. She’s one of those women who can manage to look healthy and attractive, although overweight by any doctor’s standards. I am not nervous – I have pitched too many creative ideas in my life already to be nervous. And I have gotten my pitch to exactly the point where I want it: well-organized, clear and relevant, with just enough rough edges to avoid sounding formulaic.

“So, what’s your book about,” she says, almost giggling about the artificial nature of this situation, which we both silently acknowledge.

I talk for about a minute before she cuts me off.

“I want to see it,” she says. “Is it finished?”

“No. It’s going to take two or three months.”

“Boy, you sure know how to break a girl’s heart.”

I shrug, palms up and slightly extended, my non-verbal apology.

“Well, send my the first fifty pages anyway.”

“Would you like to see the first page right now?

“No, not now.”

We make small talk for about thirty seconds until the bell rings. I shake hands and stand up. I figure I can hit on three more agents before the hour is up.

The following Monday I put the manuscript – the first 50 pages, that is – in the mail. Then I wait. A few weeks later, I get a call. She wants to see the rest of it.

“As I told you, it’s not done.”

“It’s not done?”

“You told me to send it to you even though it wasn’t done.”

“I said that?” She laughs. “I could have said anything that day.”

Now there’s an awkward pause. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we just start over again. Send me a query letter, okay?”

I tell her I will, but I know in my heart that I won’t. I’ll wait until I show the manuscript to Kimberley. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll reconsider, but I think this woman is too flakey. She’s genuinely sweet and her agency is well-established, but I don’t want her representing me except in the worst case scenario.

I can already imagine what it would be like: “Oh, that check! You mean the one for fifteen thousand dollars? Maybe I forgot to put it into the system. But I know it’s here somewhere. I’ll get back to you.” Anyway, that’s my fantasy.

Will Kimberley love the book?

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

My agent.

There will be two opportunities to meet agents face to face at the conference, the Friday night cocktail party and the “speed dating” sessions on Sunday, where you get three minutes in front of an agent under less-than-ideal conditions. So here I am, at the cocktail party, Chardonnay in hand (a Marketing Moment* gaff, but I don’t care), gently pushing my way through the crowd in search of Kimberley Cameron, the one and only agent I’ve seen who I think I could stand to work with.

If nothing happens with her, I wonder what I’ll do. I will go through the speed dating session on Sunday – I’m committed – but in my heart of hearts I do not want to do business with any of these other women. They seem flighty, arbitrary, unstable and lacking in self-esteem. I have had clients like this. I don’t want an agent like this.

I spot Kimberley, who also has a glass of Chardonnay in hand. She is pretty, with dark, shoulder-length hair and sparkling eyes, and a she’s a little delicate, in the way some aristocratic women are portrayed in 19^th century novels. She is wearing a loose jacket over a prim silk blouse. Prim is the overall impression she conveys, in spite of bright red lipstick.

At the moment she’s unoccupied. I quickly close the gap between us and introduce myself. In the first thirty seconds or so of small talk, it emerges that she spends about a third of her time in Paris. Taking a small risk, I switch the conversation to French . We’re both fluent, or close to it, and after a few minutes, at least on a superficial level, we have a bond.

Back in English, she asks me if I’m working on a project.

“Yes. It’s a novel about online role-playing games.”

“I love that.”

“The game itself is set in Renaissance Florence.”

“I love that.”

She wants to see the book. I explain that it’s not finished, but that I will have it done in a couple of months. She asks me to e-mail her on Monday to remind her of our conversation.

And just like that, I have accomplished my objective. I have met an agent who’s willing to read my book.

* See Post No. 10

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

February 16, 2007, The San Francisco Writers’ Conference

My elevator story needs work.

For readers who are unfamiliar with the term, imagine you are the CEO of a small, Silicon Valley start-up company in 1997. You’re at a conference in Boston, it’s early evening and you’re headed down to the lobby where you will meet your chief engineer and marketing VP for some beers and a light dinner. You get into the elevator on, say, the sixteenth floor, and who should be in car but Tom Perkins, a venture capitalist who could write a check that would fund your entire company for a year. And he could do it tonight, on gut feel.

You’re still wearing your conference badge, and he notices it. “So,” he says, “What does you company do?” You have sixteen floors to explain why he should write that check. That explanation is your elevator story.

The term, which originated (to my knowledge, at least) in the high tech boom times of the ‘nineties has now become a common business term. And, as writers are constantly reminded, publishing is a business.

Ironically, I make my living in part by concocting elevator stories. There’s a formula for high tech start-ups that is foolproof, but it doesn’t apply very well to novels.

So, here I am along with about fifty other hopefuls in a slightly cramped room with a low ceiling. The two women who are presenting this seminar on creating elevator stories are talking about “Marketing Moments,” those golden opportunities when, for example, you walk into an elevator and find yourself next to the venture capitalist who hasn’t returned your calls for six months and who could fund your company with one check (or the publisher who could decide to buy your book on a whim). As a writer, I’m being taught, I need to aware of these moments when they arise or, better yet, turn every moment into a Marketing Moment. Well, every public moment.

The presenters are both somewhat attractive and perfectly groomed, one Asian, the other perhaps Irish, short, slim, with dark, blue eyes and fair skin. I reflect that either one would probably do well in real estate. I think, What am I doing here?

They put on a rather clever skit about Do’s and Dont’s at the upcoming cocktail party, a Marketing Moment if there ever was one, and then offer some guidance on how to build an elevator story. Essentially, you begin with the words, “My novel, Blank,” followed by a verb or verb phrase such as “uncovers,” “breaks through,” or “paints a heart-warming picture of” etc., followed by the general subject of your novel. So you get something like, “My novel, Peyton Place, strips away the sanctimonious facade of a small New England town to reveal…” and so on.

I wonder how many of the agents and editors at the party tonight, in response to their polite (yet genuine) question, “What’s your book about?” will receive this canned answer.

It just doesn’t work for me. I’ve been helping companies sell stuff with words for years, and I know that no combination of adjectives, short sentences and “punchy” closes can make something more interesting than it really is. But I also know that my elevator story needs work.

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

November 3, 2006

I have been putting this moment off for a couple of months, but  the time has come for me to go online and test what I’ve narrated against what the online reality is like. I type www.secondlife.com into my browser window and start the process. You can join for free, but for a few dollars a month you can make yourself eligible for land ownership. I click the ownership option and provide my credit card information. That’s it.

Except it doesn’t work. I can’t get past the gorgeous vista presented on the home page (with graphics highly reminiscent of the hugely successful computer game from a few years back, Myst). I realize this could turn into a mini-nightmare, involving the purchase of a new graphics card, crashes, loss of data, a $250 dollar house call from a PC technician…. None of this is likely, I know, but I’m slightly nervous.

I think the problem may be in my firewall settings, and I read through the dense and confusing directions about how to change them. The Czechoslovakian computer geniuses who have provided these directions have the best security software in the world (AVG) but they don’t write too well.

Changing the firewall settings doesn’t work.

Finally, I call up Linden Labs tech support. I start to explain the problem but before I get very far the technician stops me.

“Have you installed the program?” he asks.

And there it is.

I had assumed that you log on to Second Life the way you log on to any other site. In fact, you have to download and install a player, or “client,” to use the technical software term, before you can actually participate. I make the tech stay on the phone while I go through the installation.

I choose “Boy Next Door” as the base for my avatar, and spend perhaps half an hour editing my eyes, nose, mouth, arms, chest and so on. I end up looking vaguely Asian, not my intent, but it’s the best I can do. And then, suddenly, there I am, in the New Citizens’ Plaza of Second Life.

Almost immediately, I realize that Fortuna is okay. There are details in SL that differ from the book. You “walk” using the arrow keys, rather than pointing and clicking. (The point-and-click technique was used in earlier games like the aforementioned Myst.) You communicate by typing, not via voice synthesis. But these are minor details.

I cross the plaza, attracted by signs offering free clothes to replace the jeans, white T-shirt and sneakers I’m  wearing,  which brand me as a newbie. A young woman is standing beside me, and we strike up a conversation. I tell her I’m writing a book.

“No way!” she types. “So am I.”

To be continued…

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May 1, 2006

My birthday is only a few days off and today, I luck out with a present I could hardly imagine. Business Week has a cover story – a cover story! – about Second Life, an online role playing game or MMORPGs that consists entirely of user-created content. 

When I initially showed the first page of Fortuna to friends, they all loved it, but several voiced the same concern: People won’t know what an avatar is. I would argue that readers could get the meaning from context, that the use of the word was part of the book’s exoticism… but in fact, I have been concerned about this.

Part of my mission, after all, is to sell the book. And the last thing I want to do is create a stumbling block for the acquisition editors. I  learned long ago that when you’re pitching a creative concept, every detail has to be perfect. In business meetings, there are always a couple of people who will focus on any possible negative, however trivial. Maybe the word “avatar” needs an asterisk. Maybe I need a little paragraph prior to the opening scene where I explain the phenomenon of MMORPGs.

I do not want to re-write the first sentence. I’m in love with it.

And now, I’m convinced I won’t have to. It’s all there – in Business Week! How non-obscure can you get?

In the second paragraph, I read, “Anshe Chung [the woman on the cover] is an avatar, or onscreeen graphic character. (My italics.) The third paragraph explains, “Second Life participants pay ‘Linden dollars,’ the game’s currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads…. But players can convert that play money into U.S. dollars… using their credit card at online currency exchanges.” And further on, “Chung’s firm now has virtual land and currency holdings worth about $250,000 in real U.S. greenbacks.”

The real gold is in the sixth paragraph. “All told, at least 10 million people pay $15 and up a month to play these games, and maybe 20 million more log in once in a while.” That’s – count ‘em – 30 million potential readers!

Take that, ye acquisitions editors of little faith. I immediately send the online link to Kimberley, even though she hasn’t seen the book yet. Call it pre-selling.

To be continued…

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February 10, 2006

An e-mail from Marcia, a friend, art director, and business partner on countless advertising projects. “When am I going to get some more Fortuna?” she asks.

To push myself, I have started sending a serialized version of Fortuna to six friends, my Readers’ Panel, and Marcia is among them. The panel forces me to come through with new chapters on a pretty regular basis. If I don’t, I’ll lose them. My goal is to never send fewer than 5,000 words, and never keep them waiting for more than two weeks between installments. That’s a little over 400 words per day, with one day a week off to rest. A stretch, but doable. Each installment begins with the words, Previously in Fortuna…

The members:

Fred is my age and a long-time friend who runs a small company in Oregon. A history major, he actually takes notes as he reads and often sends me several paragraphs of comments. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jason is 19, a student at Oregon State, and Fred’s son, a sort of boy genius.

Beth is an insurance executive, also in her mid-forties, who sees business for what it is and brings tremendous humanity to her job. Her favorite choices for pleasure reading are historical novels and thrillers. Beth is gay, but doesn’t make a big deal of it.

Elke, a bit younger than Beth, is a part-time language instructor and the mother of two teenage boys. She was born in Germany and moved to the U.S. when she was in her early ‘twenties.

Don is a fellow writer who, like me who works on high-profile PR projects for very large high tech companies.

Marcia, the art director I’ve worked with for years, is in her mid-forties. She loves science fiction, gadgets, and techno. She is the one who will ask me specific questions about the technology in Fortuna.

To be continued…

February 2, 2006

Before you get published, you have to write the book. The whole book. At least, if it’s a novel you do. This wasn’t always true. You used to be able to get away with a “treatment” – three chapters and an outline – but those days are long gone.

Today, if you want to sell a book you need an agent, and agents want to see that book.

I’m not worried about finding an agent yet. I’m worried that my idea, when fleshed out with words, won’t be long enough. If you ask literary agents or acquisition editors how long a novel should be, they will, to a person, answer with the same joke: “The length of a novel is like the length of a skirt. It should be long enough to cover everything, but short enough to be interesting.” Hahaha. I go to a book store and start estimating the number of words in best-selling novels. I started with Dan Brown’s The da Vince Code. Why aim low? My estimate, based on counting the number of words in a line, lines on a page, etc. comes out to over 120,000 words.

I freak out.

I go through the same process with three other thrillers, and come to the conclusion that, worst case, if I end up with 75,000 words I’ll be okay.  Anything less won’t have the heft of a real book – which means I have 50,882 words to go.

*  *  *

February 4, 2006

Saturday morning. I am sitting in the Berkeley Espresso Café, drinking a double cappuccino while writing down a list of every scene in the book that I can think of. I use two pens: blue for the ones I have already written, red for the ones I anticipate: the scene where Jason becomes convinced that his best friend Marco is also playing Fortuna. The scene where his girlfriend Paola talks about her uncle, setting up credibility for future events. The last scene in the book…. Then I do the math. If each scene is 500 words long, then I need 150 scenes. But, between many of the scenes there’s going to be an intercut – snippets from the fictional “developer’s guide” to Fortuna, newspaper articles, even an excerpt from a term paper. So I don’t really need 150 scenes. And some of the scenes, perhaps most of them, will be longer than 500 words.

I have outlined 78 scenes. I think I am in the ballpark. Kind of.

To be continued…