The Author's Journey

September 4, 2009

The final proof of the cover arrived in my inbox this morning. Or, I think it’s the final. Any hidden agendas about the color, the finish (glossy vs. matt), the type or anything else would have appeared by now.

I am very pleased. The art director fixed the type, which was my main concern. He added a new wrinkle – some art directors just can’t stop fiddling – but it made things a little better, and definitely not worse. If I still had an ad agency I would hire this guy in a minute.

Getting the cover almost seemed like a reward for sending off the final copy edits, although the two processes aren’t connected.

I dislike dealing with copy editors so much – even when it’s for my own good – that I put off dealing with the last sixty pages for at least three weeks. The manuscript just sat there on a table. But finally I faced it, and indeed there were unpleasant problems to deal with.

I had gotten some of the dates wrong.

Every section of Fortuna has a time and date, and five of them were obviously wrong. Worse, it wasn’t obvious how to fix them. I had to carefully read each section, the section before it, and the section after it. (It’s been so long that I don’t really remember when all the events happen.)

Beyond that, the process was about accepting or rejecting capitalizations, italicizations, commas and the like. The copy editor’s comments were in red ink, and I either left them or wrote “NO” with a thick blue fiber-tipped pen. The manuscript had two or three “NO’s” on almost every page. I should have enjoyed this power, I supposed, having had my work edited in ways I didn’t like for years. But in fact, I felt bad.

For some reason, the editor-in-chief wants everything to happen on paper, not “on the computer,” as she expresses it, so I had to send the only copy in the world to her via snail mail. I should probably have made a photo copy, but I didn’t want to spend the money. So I just shipped it overnight, which is the safest way. The cost: $67.00.

I am going to end up losing money on this 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

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a few weeks.

July 1, 2009

I am perhaps a little like a combat veteran who, returned home from the wars, doesn’t do too well with loud noises. I have been so angry so many times at the way clients have re-written my copy over the years that the very hint of changing my golden words sets me on edge. Even when they’re not so golden.

And now, the copy-edited manuscript of my novel has arrived. I have talked with the president of Oceanview and she has been absolutely, positively clear that I have the final say. I can reject every change the copy editor has made.. I just write “NO.” That’s it.

And still, I can’t bring myself to open the package.

I recently had a discussion with a psychiatrist about the nature of psychosis vs. a diagnosis of some other mental condition “with psychotic features.” The difference is that with psychosis, you really believe all the people in the restaurant are  talking about you. With a condition that has psychotic features, you know that the people in the restaurant aren’t be talking about you, but you somehow get into it. I mean… even if they’re not, they could be, right?

 I know with my mind that there is nothing in the edits I can’t deal with. For that matter, I can just (metaphorically) click the “reject all” button. But I have kept putting it off.

Today I decide I can wait no longer. I fetch the slightly battered cardboard box, cut through the clear plastic tape that seals it, open the tab and extract the manuscript, which is slightly dog-eared and held together by a thick rubber band. Without really looking, I stick it into my tote and head for a nearby espresso café. I order a double cappucino, dry. I find a table. I find a blue felt-tip pen and then pull out the manuscript and set it on the table. I flip past the front matter (dedication, if wanted, etc. and start reading.

She has eliminated a three-dot ellipsis I’ve use to show a pause, and I reject that with a bold, blue “NO.” I also reject her change of “New Florins” to “new florins” with lower case instead of initial caps. I accept her deletion of a comma.

Seventy-four pages later I note that the quality of my attention is deteriorating, and I stop. I feel bad, not at all elated by the power of final say. I know what it’s like to have someone undo your 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

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a few weeks.

May 18, 2009

I have crossed over a line. A friend from high school attends some sort of literary function and connects with Louise Ure, who has just published her fourth novel. My friends shares the news that I have recently sold my first novel, and Louise says, “Have him get in touch with me.” On the same day that we connect via e-mail, I get a response to another e-mail I sent a couple of weeks ago to to Lisa Unger, who has published several novels. She is apologetic about being so slow to respond. Can I call her in June when she’s finished with the initial promotion of her new book?

It dawns on me that these two women have Been There, still remember what it’s like to be a first-time author, and feel a sense of kinship. Why should I be surprised? When I was working as an advertising copywriter – not the easiest gig in the world to obtain – I always took time to help people who were starting out, looked at their work, told them where I thought they could fit in, etc. Still, I am truly grateful… but I can’t help but wonder if writers who have achieved a higher level of success – Tess Gerritsen comes to mind – will respond to my e-mails.

*   *   *

I call up Louise and she is incredibly helpful. I learn that I should absolutely join International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America. The both “do a great job” of promoting first novels. I also learn the names of the two book stores in the San Francisco Bay Area (where I live) that contribute their statistics to the New York Times best seller list. One of them is a lock for a book signing, as my agent is a close friend of the owner. The other I will have to work on.

Louise also shares the names of a couple of chat rooms I can visit. All together, I can get access to about 50,000 sets of eyeballs, to use the lingo of Web marketeers.

In my mind’s eye I see a Web-related to-do list that is getting longer and longer. Not only do I have to worry about Louise’s lists (as I have come to think of the various groups I should join) but also the chat lists associated with multi-player online gaming, not to mention the news feeds I have set up via Google alert.

It’s a lot of work. And, of course, there’s the small matter of paying the mortgage every month.

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

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a few weeks.

March 25, 2009

My agent, Kimberley, has assured me that the people at OceanView think the manuscript is “really clean,” and that there won’t be a lot of edits. I call Pat Gussin, Oceanview editor-in-chief, to get a sense of what she’s like. And, like Kimberley, she  assures me that she won’t demand a lot of edits, just some clarification about one of the main character’s motivations. “You know, the MacGuffin,” she says. I don’t reveal to her that I don’t know what this word means. That’s a minor point. The whole conversation worries me. People can have vastly different definitions of what “just a few minor changes” means. She may end up wanting me to change the whole plot.

A few days later I get an envelope from Oceanview that contains 30 pages of edits. Put that way, it sounds much worse than it is. The pages are pages from the manuscript, each one of which has a small edit, e.g. changing “than” to “that,” inserting a “to,” or removing a space between a word and the period that follows it. But she still wants the “What, where, when and why?” revisions. She doesn’t say which actions are unexplained.

I’m not sure what to do. I have to get this right the first time or it will delay the book’s publication. But, come on Pat, I have gone over this book with a fine toothcomb! More significantly, so has my agent and her very bright assistant. It’s rock solid. There are no changes required.

I know I can’t say that. I have to do something. The question is, what? As I start re-reading the book, I catch quite a few such errors myself – ones that she missed. This, plus her lack of specific complains, plus her handwriting and background as an executive, all lead me to a picture of how this woman operates. She’s not detail-oriented. She’s used to telling smart people what to do and trusting them to do it. That’s a good thing. The bad thing is, I can’t find any “what, where, when and why?” omissions. The plot is air-tight. I’ve only got ten pages to go in my re-read and I’m getting frantic. If I’ve learned anything in my career as a freelance writer, when a client asks you to change something, you can’t come back and say nothing needs to be changed.

I finally luck out. There is one thread where motivation is not clear. The fix takes three sentences.

But I sense that’s not enough. So, I take an extra step. I write a list of plot points, e.g. “Leaves Stanford to join Silicon Valley start-up” followed by WHY? Then, I spell out the motivation in a few words, e.g. “Wants to test academic ideas in competitive environment of real world,” and then, I refer to the pages where this is explained. On those pages, I highlight the actual sentences in yellow.

The whole process takes a lot of hours, but it works. She okays the manuscript. It’s on to copy editing.   

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

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a few weeks.

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.

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…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael

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…

October 15, 2005

Today, I write the first page of Fortuna, reproduced below.

Her avatar was a stone statue of the Virgin Mary. The image was not animated like virtually all the others in Fortuna. Not animated – and therefore hastily obtained? But why? The soft voice that now reached his ears carried a hint of echo, as though the speaker were hiding behind the statue. Someone was hiding behind that statue.

“You are in danger,” she said.

Remember, this is only a game.

Jason typed, “Does your husband know about us?” The computer at the other end of this exchange would synthesize the voice of Lucco Pitti, a friend, and later rival, of Cosimo di Medici – Cosimo “the elder.” Jason had chosen Pitti’s voice for reliability. It was not platform-sensitive.

“Worse.”

He stared at the computer screen, the only source of light in the room where he was ensconced. It was on the second floor of a small, relatively new villa where he served as caretaker in exchange for free rent. The owners, who had ridden the 1990’s Silicon Valley boom to early wealth, were in Provence, and would not return for several months. Perhaps never. The villa was eerily quiet.

“Worse?” Jason typed, wondering what she had in mind. She was really good at this. Playing the Fortuna simulation with her was like writing a screenplay – a whole lot better than his life as a computer science grad student at Stanford.

“We must meet. Sunday, at noon, in front of the new cathedral in Pisa.”

This made no sense. Pisa was out of the range of the simulation. Jason typed, “Do you mean Piazza San Marco?”

“No. In front of the new cathedral. In Pisa.”

Was there a new revision he had failed to download, one that added new geography? Surely he would have gotten an e-mail. He quickly launched another browser window and typed “Cathedral of Pisa” into the search window. In three clicks, he was looking at an image of a church completed, according to the caption, in 1350. Within the simulation’s time frame, but not its geography.

Jason weighed the situation for a moment and then decided to risk jumping out of character.

“Pisa isn’t in the game,” he typed.

Very quickly, the voice responded. “This isn’t a game.”

To be continued…