Category Archives: inspiration

April 04, 2011   Jane   advice, fun, inspiration, Jane, opinion, optimism  
12

The Ultimate Lesson

With all of the negative talk about the future of book publishing and what is going to happen to reading and writing, I was reminded this week of a lesson I learned early on: Never give up!

So often during the course of our work, we get discouraged.  Publishers don’t see the proposals or manuscripts the way we do, Authors are depressed when we can’t sell their work right away and we become exhausted by rejection.  Indeed, when I first started out as an agent I would take this rejection quite personally.  Then I had a chat with myself and realized that if I continued to do that, I might as well find another career.

Over the years, I have had my fair share of rejection, but I have also experienced many instances where, after trying and trying to sell something I believed in and refusing to give up, I’ve ultimately succeeded and seen the book I sold become a huge success.  Some examples:  The Simplify Your Life series, In Memory’s Kitchen, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

This week I sold a novel I had shown to over 40 publishers.  I believed in this novel and in its author and I decided I simply wouldn’t give up; the author continued to encourage me to keep going and I did.  Finally, last Thursday afternoon we had our offer and we completed our deal on Friday.  The novel will be published next April.

Once again, my confidence in the value of persistence was renewed.  I’d love to hear your stories of grit and perseverance.

March 28, 2011   Jim   inspiration, Jim, writing  
25

Why do you write?

Bear with me kids. I’m going to make you do the heavy lifting on my blog entry this week. I feel like I’m coming down with something. And since I’m a hypochondriac who watches too many old movies, I think it might be consumption.

Or a cold. Whichever.

Seriously, sometime I’ll share the story about the nurse I cornered at a writers’ conference when I convinced myself I was having a stroke.

Regardless, I was thinking about how many people ask agents whether or not they write or intend to write. While my answer is usually, “What? Do I look crazy?” I am prepared to make a confession: every once in awhile I read a book and think, “I could have done this.” The reality, of course, is that I probably couldn’t. I lack the creativity and (more importantly) sufficient desire to pound through 5,000 words, let alone 80,000.

So I have to ask: why do you do it? What gets you to sit down and commit to churning out a whole book? I imagine it’s different for everyone, but I’m curious if there’s any sort of consensus. Is it a love of language? Characters that won’t leave you alone until you can get them on the page? Desire for a quick buck? (Ha!) I can think of lots of reasons to give up on writing—it’s stressful, it’s competitive, it’s lonely. And I’m very, very thankful that writers DON’T give up. But tell me: where does the motivation and wherewithal come from?

March 16, 2011   Stacey   fun, inspiration, opinion, optimism, Stacey  
1

The young and the famous

By now you regular blog readers know that I am the agency’s eternal optimist. I’m always interested in and often talking about the uplifting, inspiring stories of authors finding their way or books making a positive impact on people. So I was happy to see this nice piece by Charles McGrath (Riverhead editor Sarah McGrath’s dad) in yesterday’s New York Times which highlights not only the author, Téa Obreht’s (age 25), amazing success with her first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, but also calls attention to the young agent who sold it, Seth Fishman (age 30), and the young editor who acquired it, Noah Eaker (at age 26, as his second acquisition). Thanks, Charles, for pointing out those important behind-the-scenes players! It’s so refreshing to see success stories from young people just getting started in their careers, and it looks like this is quite an auspicious start indeed. The novel has received unanimous praise and reviews that describe the novice author as talented well beyond her years. I am eager to read the book, and look forward to submitting my own projects to her editor, who (not surprisingly) was recently promoted. I think it’s a pretty good guess we’ll be seeing the novel on bestseller lists in the coming weeks. Who’s your favorite young author with an old writing soul?

March 15, 2011   John   fun, inspiration, John, production, technology, video  
0

Making Books, Then and Now

Having a 2 ½-year-old son who’s fascinated by any and all things mechanical, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately watching the way things work. Construction sites, roadwork, open manholes, even trash collection have all become occasions for Henry and me to stop and observe machines doing their jobs of making things or taking them apart. And to be honest, we wouldn’t be stopping so often if I wasn’t just as interested by this stuff as Henry. Some of my most vivid childhood memories involve heavy equipment: driving the freight train at my grandfather’s scrapyard in Reading, PA; a tour of the Bethlehem Steel Factory, complete with hard hats (very official!); running pennies through the stamp machine at the U.S. Mint—all of these have stuck in my brain over the years.

Now, what does this have to do with books? Well, I found this awesome video on The Huffington Post this morning from 1947 that shows how books were made nearly 65 years ago. True, the narration is a little hokey, and it’s groan-inducing to see which roles are assigned to men and which go to the “girls.” But check out all the moving parts! Sheets of molten copper! In particular, I love the trimming device that shaves the edges off the pages—so ingenious. I just wish they told us what the finished book was!

On a more practical level, I hope that in this age of ebooks this video provides just a little more ammunition/inspiration for print lovers not to give up the fight just yet. During my editorial career, I was lucky to visit the printer/binder a few times, and each trip was a great reminder of how much work, care, and physical manipulation goes into making each and every book you hold in your hands. True, there are far fewer print-shop workers today than in 1947, and the typesetting is mostly done by computers. But the printers still have the big rollers, the sewing machines, the glue bindery, and lots of other heavy equipment, all housed in cavernous, noisy factory spaces like they were way back when.

So check out the video, or if you can, take a tour of a printer near you—better yet, take along your kids. Not only will it reaffirm the wonder and value of the printed page, but it’s a great opportunity to see some really cool machines in action!

February 14, 2011   Jane   inspiration, Jane, reading, writing  
6

Where do those incredible ideas come from?

We all know that memoirs are based on the writer’s life experiences, and other narrative non-fiction is written because the author has an interest in the subject and usually has to do a great deal of research into what he or she is writing about.

But what about fiction?

Many people say they write about what they know, at least in their first novel.

I suspect a book like Room has a basis in real life events, although the point of view is totally fresh and the author’s talent is superb.  But what about others like The Hunger Games or our own Jacqueline Carey’s world creation in the Kushiel series? What about Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow? Where do those ideas come from?

There was a superb piece in this last weekend’s Wall Street Journal entitled “The Life Well-Read” by Eric Ormsby which discusses where writers’ inspirations come from.  Many rely on books they have read—especially as children.

The other very important point this piece makes, though, is that we all remember books by how they feel and look; will we remember them as well if all we have done is read them on an electronic monitor?  What a good question.

I wonder what books you remember, what you think inspired their authors, and whether you think you would remember these reading experiences in the same way if you had read them on an electronic device rather than in hard copy?

November 05, 2010   DG&B   characters, inspiration, Rachel S., writing  
3

My life would make a boring memoir

by Rachel

This morning, as I was locking up my bike by the subway out of Brooklyn and into the city, a man and his son approached me asking about a phone number for a local cab company. Thinking nothing of it and glad that I was actually able to help, I happily gave it and turned to take the steps down into the train. It was only at that moment that I noticed the dozens of people milling about, frantically calling co-workers, friends and car services. Another large group anxiously waited for an oncoming bus. Of course this would happen at 8:30 on a weekday morning- there was an emergency in the subway and all trains into Manhattan were stopped.

After a moment of panic, genius that I am, I remembered that I did in fact have a bicycle and could pedal over the bridge just as fast, if not faster than any subway making stops or car in traffic. Though it wasn’t my ideal mode of transport on a workday, and I was totally out of bridge-biking shape as it’s been at least a month since I’ve done so, it would have to do. As I bent down to unlock my bike, a girl pulled up next to me and I ruefully informed her of the situation. She wasn’t too put out and we both went off together over the bridge and into the city, chatting all the way as if we’d known each other for years instead of minutes.

Oddly, this sort of thing happens to me all of the time. With relative frequency, I am approached by an incredible variety of people who say they see me all over the place and feel obliged to make an introduction. In my head, I affectionately refer to these people as my “neighborhood friends.” I don’t know why I come across as particularly approachable, but it’s certainly led me to all sorts of people I would never have known otherwise. Some are interested in the book I’m reading, many inquire on the progress I’ve made on that day’s crossword (invariably, I can be found every morning in the same coffee shop, using their New York Times solely for that one page in the Arts section) and others still find another instrument of acquaintance.

However it happens, I’ve grown to know some of these people beyond a casual chat on the street. There’s the amazing painter who also writes science questions for standardized tests, the girl who works in a wine shop while designing album covers and logos and the unicyclist who works in trend forecasting- among many, many others. I find these people fascinating and enjoy the friendly waves and hellos that come my way when we pass. But more than that, each is so fantastically unique and none are personae that I could myself have crafted.

There has been a lot of talk about memoirs on this blog recently, and while using personal experiences in writing is a wonderful thing, not everyone has lead a life interesting enough to make other people want to read about it. Inspiration has to come from outside as well as from within. Personally, if I were to ever sit down and attempt to pen something that might be somewhere inside me (who knows), it would be from all of these unique people- those that were never friends that I initially sought out, that I would draw my character details, motivations and intricacies from.

Who inspires you?

(And I did make it to work on time…just a little windblown and breathless.)

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