A good friend of the site kindly put me in touch with a published author this week and I had a very edifying and encouraging discussion. He provided me with the kind of practical advice that I’ve been looking for. And it’s not that his information differed from some of the things I’ve been reading but rather that he provided reinforcement for some of the things I had been leaning toward but agonizing about. I will take a page from Camera Girl’s book and as she famously said (and as she claims Nike plagiarized her by saying), “Just do it!”
So, I spent a couple of hours doing a clean up of a copy of the manuscript that I want to send out to a medium sized publishing house that I know is friendly to folks of my political and cultural leanings. Who knew that em-dashes are not welcome everywhere? Well potato/puhtatah. When in Rome do as the Romans do. Tippecanoe and Tyler too, I guess.
Yes, I’m now on the manic climb of the manic/depressive roller coaster and all things are possible and everything is easy. Soon I’ll be crashing down into the abyss of hopelessness and despair. Well …, actually not. There’s a medicine in actually finishing anything. The whole “beginning, middle and end” thing is not just a concept. It’s a part of human nature and there is salvation in typing that last word and hitting the period key. Bang!
So, tomorrow is work and maybe more work. There are new systems at work that have to be learned and used. And people to train and all kinds of boring and stupid things to do. But even that doesn’t daunt me right now. So, I’m looking ahead to sending the manuscript out in the next few days and then I’ll see if there are any agents that I might want to contact. For that I’ll have to put together a query letter which sounds like a goofy thing. It’s a kind of sales pitch to inspire the agent to want to handle your book in discussions with publishers. I imagine Don Draper of Mad Men standing up at a blackboard pointing at a sketch of something inspirational and gesticulating wildly while saying incredibly persuasive things about my creative genius.
But from what I’ve heard it won’t be Don Draper because most agents, editors, publishers and probably everyone else in the publishing business are all women. And probably not fun women like Camera Girl who has a great sense of humor (most of the time) but serious and really annoying women who say “they and them” instead of “she and her.” Well, what can you do? The world is made up of all kinds of folks and as that famous philosopher Rodney King once asked, “Why can’t we all just get along?” So, I must do my best to struggle and survive regardless of my instincts and early training. I will put on my best smile and put my best foot forward and step into the future. But no matter what, there will be no girl-boss in “The Sniper.” Bogey cannot be Bogita!