Category Archives: Jessica

October 27, 2011   Jessica   buzz, culture, e-books, interaction, Jessica, multimedia  
14

The Uses of Pudding

From the always innovative Richard Nash, formerly of Soft Skull Press and Red Lemonade, comes an interesting new project called Small Demons. Media bistro covers it here, and Quill and Quire here.  I’m not 100 percent sure that I grasp its  implications, but Small Demons catalogs and compiles details within books, so presumably I could find what fictional characters also listen to Bach’s double concerto or the Stone Roses, both particular favorites of mine, or reproduce a cocktail menu from Brideshead Revisited for an equally fictional party I might throw. The computer can find links across books—resonances, repetitions, relationships–but maybe I’m being too literal and utilitarian when I claim I don’t yet see what it’s for.  What do you think?

Actually, scratch that. I can spy a use for Small Demons, and the site may prove a blessing or curse to lit graduate students, and many a dissertation has been based around this sort of quirky detective work. So whether The Use of Pudding in the Victorian Novel will remain an appropriate field for academic inquiry now that a website can investigate it in seconds is anybody’s guess. However, I’m planning to try it out, and you can too can give it a whirl in its beta site here.

September 29, 2011   Jessica   Jessica, memoir, nonfiction, relationships  
6

All in the Family

In their interview with siblings-in-writing Ben and Jen Percy, Salon points out that similar instances of “brother sister acts” are rare.  When I stopped to consider this I came up only a handful, most of which came from literary families of centuries past: the Wordsworths, Brontes, Alcotts, Rossettis, etc.  I can think of sisters—Margaret Drabble and A.S. Byatt—but their strained relationship might argue that most families can raise only one writer. Do any of you have siblings who write? Is it a bond, a point of contention, competition, or (in this market, especially) commiseration?

Apropos of siblings, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik and his sister Alison, a psychology professor, have produced a joint review of recently published THE SIBLING EFFECT by Jeffrey Kluger   In hindsight, the piece seemed more about the clever Gopnik clan than the Kluger book, but I suppose that further makes the point that some topics–sibling relationships among them–are ever-green, and for this reader (the youngest of five children) endlessly fascinating. Kluger’s argument, that siblings make us who we are, is not especially earth-shattering, but is a fine example of the way in which an artful blend of personal narrative and research-driven reportage can render the familiar new again.

September 15, 2011   Jessica   controversy, critiques, culture, Jessica  
4

Not So Easy Reading

I am still working my way through the New Yorker’s September 12th issue, which like most everything published this last month, is largely about 9/11, and no easy read. Given the state of the American economy, the possible implosion of the EuroZone, the poisonous political discourse, two terrible wars still ongoing, assorted natural disasters here and abroad, it’s hard not to feel a little, well, down.

Here’s a representative sampling. In his article “Coming Apart,” http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/09/12/110912fa_fact_packer, George Packer writes: “In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events on the same scale…no longer have the power: moneyed interests may have become too entrenched, elites too self seeking, institutions too feeble, and the public too polarized and passive for the country to be shocked into fundamental change.”

Ouch.

For me, like most folks who love the written word, one of the joys of reading is escapism. None of that here, but even such dismal fare is not without its rewards. Indeed, just as a good piece of writing can keep the real world at bay, so too can it bring it into provocative, all-too-proximate focus. (Escapism and engagement, are I guess, two sides of the same literary coin.) Packer’s article sent my head to my hands and my heart to my feet, but it was still thoughtful, effective, well-argued, and a pleasure to read. Regardless of whether you agree with Packer’s particular arguments about the past decade, Cassandras of every ideological stripe abound, and the best of them deliver their bad news breathtakingly well. As I’m sure many of you would agree, writing about bleak subjects is hard. Even setting aside the human inclination to shoot the messenger, leading readers over unpleasant terrain is risky. It’s easy to sound shrill, sentimental, paranoid, preachy or hysterical. I’m curious to see how Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum handle this in THAT USED TO BE US, a book about America’s decline, which I will read from under my bed. Just in case the sky is falling. Apropos of the Chicken Little school of publishing, Adam Gopnik has a very entertaining review of a spate of “declinist” books titled “Decline, Fall, Rinse, Repeat” including the Friedman, which cheered me up. A little.

How about you? Would you (broadly) categorize your recent reading as escapism or engagement?

September 08, 2011   Jessica   favorites, format, guilty pleasures, Jessica  
5

Fun with Fonts

I have a bit of a fixation with fonts. I like the notes in the back of books that describe the provenance of the typeface. When I was a kid, my family subscribed to the now defunct but nerdily wonderful u&lc magazine (upper and lower case) and I have whiled away unconscionable hours with the font pull down menus on assorted word processing programs. So it is perhaps not a surprise that I greeted the publication of Simon Garfield’s Just My Type with real pleasure http://www.npr.org/2011/09/04/140126278/know-this-headlines-font-youre-just-my-type.

Garfield writes “Twenty years ago we hardly knew them, but now we all have favorites. Computers have rendered us all gods of type, a privilege we could never have anticipated in the age of the typewriter.”

Here’s a video of the author “judging some books by their covers” http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2010/oct/17/typography.

Do you have a favorite font? My default is Times New Roman, but I regularly use Arial for e-mails, and I have a weakness for Sylfaen even though I think it’s a bit fey. I hate reading in Courier, such that if I am able, I will change the typeface before I read a manuscript in what I find an arid, joyless type style. (Unlike those who fetishize the Smith Corona, apparentlyI have painful memories of using an actual typewriter.)

Anyway, I probably lean more serif than sans in the most general sense, and I am prone to reading into the font choices of those who e-mail me (Aqua Palatino. Hmmm…)

How about you?

August 25, 2011   Michael   inspiration, Jessica, Michael, rejection, self-publishing, selling  
10

It must be important

Jessica and I have been blogging on the same day for well over a year now, and this has never once happened: we both wrote on the same thing. It would be more surprising if it weren’t for the inspiration: Edan Lepucki’s excellent piece for The Millions about what happens when a book doesn’t sell. It’s clear that this piece has struck a chord, and I have a feeling ours won’t be the last blog posts about it.

Normally, I’d have suggested that one of us write something new, especially because there isn’t much that Jessica and I disagree about here. But I think it’s worth hearing the anecdotes we both have to share, and I hope our experiences (along with Edan’s) serve as inspiration.

– M.

From Jessica:

Last week I met with a client whose move from west coast to east finally afforded us an opportunity to sit down face to face. He is a prodigiously talented writer whose historical novel I submitted to more than thirty houses. Although a few of the editors to whom I sent it tried to make a case for acquisition, the novel did not sell. I know literary fiction is always difficult to place, and I am acquainted with the challenges of the present market, but this novel was so gloriously written, so seamlessly researched, so peopled with terrific characters (not least a sympathetic, intelligent and interestingly flawed narrator) that its quiet-ish plot seemed a non-issue. The houses to which I submitted, however, did not agree, and while all editors were profligate in their praise, we came away with no offers. Inasmuch as rejection is something I am trained to take in stride, I still wanted to storm the meeting rooms, kick down the doors, rail against naysayers (see Miriam’s post re: poisonous  invective) and ideally, have the phrase “we just don’t know how to sell this” stricken from the language.  Needless to say, my recent meeting with my client was bittersweet, and we spent much of our time talking about his next book. Which is why I found Edan Lepucki’s piece in the Millions so affecting.

If you have had a book that has not sold, or even found representation, at what point do you, like Lepucki, consign it to a drawer? True, we live in an era in which self-publishing is on the rise, but both Lepucki and this particular client decided that for assorted reasons, this route is not for them. So although I tend to share clients’ Churchillian inclination to never, never, never give in, an approach that has served me well with literary novels and works in translation, sanity, pragmatism and big picture considerations of an author’s career can mean it’s time to move on.

From Michael:

In the past, we’ve blogged a bit about books we weren’t able to sell, and how much that frustrates us.  It does.  When I sign something up, I’m in love with it.  The kind of getting-married-lifetime-commitment-love that one usually saves for spouses or cats.  So if something doesn’t sell, I’m wounded.  Being the agent, I figure I experience about 15% of the wound, with the author holding on to the other 85%.  Though authors can be notorious over-sharers, I sometimes feel like they shut down when their book doesn’t sell, and I often don’t know what’s going on inside their heads.  So I was eager to read this piece over on The Millions by Edan Lepucki.

Her reaction, after dealing with the hurt and disappointment, is exactly the way I’d hope my clients would react: move right on to the next thing.  But move on with the knowledge gained from the process submitting the first book, learning from whatever helpful comments might have been offered.  I have an author who is now working on his second book.  The first didn’t sell.  We were bummed, to say the least, but he jumped into the second one having synthesized what all of the editors had to say (lucky for him, editors liked his book enough to provide lots of thoughts–rare these days).  Not only was he eager to get back to work, but he was eager to implement what he’d learned.  And though we haven’t gotten to the submission part of things yet, I know that we’re much better positioned to succeed this time around, all because he was able to both accept the rejection and embrace the criticism.  That combination is going to serve him very well.

August 19, 2011   Jessica   deadlines, editing, Jessica  
7

Deadlines

Yesterday was a doozie of a day: I’d scheduled meetings nearly back to back, allowing what I optimistically believed was just enough time to dash from one to another, pausing briefly at the office between my uptown morning and my downtown afternoon to attend to some administrative details. Alas, it was not to be. My train was late, which made me late for my first appointment, and each subsequent meeting ran later and longer and put me further in arrears.   In any event, Thursday is my day to post to the blog, a date shared with the always punctual Mike (sigh) and clearly, I missed my deadline. Worse yet, I’m now repurposing my dog-ate-my-homework tale as some sort of object lesson. Shameless.  Because much as it may not seem that way, trade publishing is, in fact, a deadline driven business.

Although books have a long incubation period, it’s a carefully mapped one. Delivery dates in contracts are taken seriously, and managing editors, the formidable people charged with keeping the trains running on time, are a zealous lot. Understandably so, and for a glimpse of what they do, have a look at this. http://youngtopublishing.com/2011/04/pub-perspectives-managing-ed/

Publication dates are planned, sometimes to the hour, and a finished book is built upon a vast array of deadlines, including but not limited to: the delivery date—the contractually agreed-upon day that the author must send a full manuscript to her editor;  the “transmittal” date, when a revised manuscript is handed over to the production department; plus deadlines for tip sheets (one page cheat sheets created for all upcoming titles for in-house use); author questionnaires; excerpts for  the“ reading notebooks” sent to sales reps;  galley copy;  catalog copy;  cover blurbs, etc. etc,  Few of the dates are soft targets, and meeting them is important. I exhort my clients to be punctual not only to appease managing editors, but because once a book is scheduled, it’s in the author’s best interests not to have it “fall of the list.”

This can be hard. Writing is not building widgets. Output is erratic. For every author who is brilliant with a deadline (here journalists really shine) there are authors for who find handing off their manuscript, proclaiming the book “Done,” is nearly impossible.  I have literally had to pry a flash drive from an author’s reluctant hands lest he give it “just one additional polish.”  Can anyone identify with this? Indeed, I wonder where you fall. Good with deadlines? Loath to let your baby go?  Don’t worry, your answers will not be held against you.

August 11, 2011   Jessica   advice, Jessica, queries, submissions  
5

Your Cup of Tea

In a response to one of last week’s posts, I volunteered to look at some query letters. The upshot was that I got a number of very good ones–apparently only ringers responded.  They were, in fact, so professional and polished that there is little point in posting them here. To paraphrase Aristotle (who was talking about people, not publishing) query letters are “good in but one way, but bad in many.”

In each case, what it came down to was simply an issue of whether the genre or subject matter is one in which I am interested. I rarely take on science fiction of any stripe, but the dystopian novel pitched to me sounded good enough that I would request it. Another was a historical novel set during the Civil War, but despite the richness of the milieu and an engaging enough synopsis, for reasons I cannot myself unpick, I find it hard to feel enthusiastic about the prospect of reading another Civil War novel.  Self-limiting, I know, but there it is.

Quirks of taste and interest are a part of this process, and if I dish them out, so must I take them.  I recently went out with a book in which part of the action takes place in Congo, only to have an editor warn me that novels set in Africa are rarely his cup of tea. Another editor once interrupted me midway through what I thought was a diverting aside about a trip to Peru to say that “Mesoamerica just didn’t do it” for him. Needless to say, that was the end of my report on the Inca Trail.  And I made a mental note never to send him the great Aztec adventure novel that I might someday represent.

That said, I endeavor never to say never, because as we all know, there are also those books that blow these preconceived notions out of the water.  I always think about Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, simply because I have: a) no particular interest in horseracing and b) a deep-seated childhood prejudice against animal stories, since the main plot points invariably included injury or death of the animal in question (Sounder, Old Yeller, Big Red, The Red Pony, etc.).

In any case, I’d love to hear about books that redefined or overturned your own cups of tea.

August 04, 2011   Jessica   agents, form letter, Jessica, rejection  
21

Further to the Hating

So. Reading through the colorful replies to Jim’s post “Hate on me, Haters” post has been humbling, eye opening and sometimes funny; it’s clear that this is a maddening business for all concerned. In fact, my unscientific guess is that if some intrepid positive psychologists were to study the relative happiness of those involved in the writing world, they would find high levels of frustration, envy, disappointment, and anger.  Plenty of it justified. There are lots of flaws in the way publishing operates. Is the discontent more pervasive than in other lines of work? Hard to say.  Fortunately, it’s rare that anyone’s life hangs in balance. When my closest friend and I trade tales of job-related angst, her noncompliant patient suffering from chronic disease (she’s a doctor) usually trumps my short-sighted publisher. Usually.

Perspective aside, if we could somehow ameliorate one of the worst bits of a rough process, namely the rejection, what would you want to see in a rejection letter? (Aside from a detailed critique, which is just not practical.) More candor? Folks are right that agents and houses lean heavily on certain empty-seeming phrases: “did not fall in love,” “could not get excited,” “don’t know how to sell.” My revised one-size-fits-most form letter would read something like this.

Thanks for your query. This is pretty good. But some combination of your writing skills, my interest in the subject matter, and my assessment of the commercial potential of this project means that I’m just not that interested in pursuing it any further.  Another agent may disagree, land you a significant deal and make this a best-seller, but as bad as I will feel about having passed, you will feel infinitely better for having been right all along. Good luck.  Try not to let form letters get you down.

Anyone want to write the rejection that they’d want to receive?

July 28, 2011   DG&B   awards, interview, Jessica, writing  
5

Late Bloomers

Earlier this week I listened to Terry Gross’s interview with author Donald Ray Pollock, whose novel, The Devil All the Time, was just released. His first book, a collection of short stories titled Knockemstiff, set in the eponymous Southern Ohio town where he grew up, was published in 2008. His gritty, often bleak tales won not only critical acclaim, but the PEN/Robert Bingham Award and the 2009 Devil’s Kitchen Award in Prose. His was an unusual—and protracted—journey to being a writer. According to NPR, “Pollock dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to work in a meatpacking plant. He then spent 32 years working in a paper mill before quitting to pursue his dream of becoming a writer.” I thought this was a pretty terrific story. I found further inspiration re-reading Malcolm Gladwells 2008 New Yorker piece on late bloomers.

In it he writes “On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure: while the late bloomer is revising and despairing and changing course and slashing canvases to ribbons after months or years, what he or she produces will look like the kind of thing produced by the artist who will never bloom at all. Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forbearance and blind faith.”

I wondered if any of you are, like Pollock, relative late (new) comers to creative writing?  Holler if “forbearance and blind faith” sound familiar.

July 21, 2011   Jessica   Jessica, media, nonfiction, reading  
2

Reading Detours

I am a creature of habit; even in the boundless spaces of the internet, I march a well-beaten path between the New York Times, Salon, the Millions, assorted publishing sites and a familiar assortment of blogs.  Last night, in an effort to shake up my routine, I decided to explore some new sites. I began with Brain Pickings, which bills itself as “a discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.” Although I found the description somewhat twee, the brains behind Brain did a good job engaging mine. Smart stuff, including the ambitious if not slightly ridiculous “Everything you need to know about culture in 10 books.”

From there, I poked around at The Atavist, one of the new on-line homes for long form journalism, the meaty, painstakingly researched magazine pieces that occupy the interstices of my life. Philip Gourevich’s article “Climbers” in last week’s New Yorker about the Rwandan Cycling Team is a perfect example. I read it on line at the grocery store.  (If you write in this vein, query me.) The Atavist, bless them, is also looking to monetize their content; they sell original long form pieces, complete with cool multimedia imbeds for the the iPad and iPhone for $2.99. $1.99 buys you a version suitable for Kindle.

I moved on to Byliner, another safe space for the embattled long-form, where I could binge on the collected works of any of scores of established writers and acquaint myself with some new ones.  At that point, relieved that long form journalism is being collected (the “curated” tag bothers me a bit: are these stories museum pieces?) I headed to a source for another endangered species, investigative journalism. I finally checked  out Propublica,  and felt reassured that the practice of muckraking is not so dated as the word that describes it.

I concluded my tour feeling pleased and slightly overwhelmed—as ever, so much to read, so little time. Until, of course, it occurred to me that during this whole exercise (ostensibly a departure from routine), I simply discovered more of the kind of stuff I like.  It’s hard to argue that any of the above, worthy as they are, were substantially broadening my horizons, prying open my mind. Plenty of thinkers have pointed out that the internet can allow us to spend time exclusively with others who reflect back our tastes and opinions. So in the interests of a more mind-blowing detour, can anyone recommend some good sites?

« Older posts
Newer posts »