Hot and Cold: The Tension of Opposition

As I type this, Night and Day is playing in my head, and I start thinking about dualities, but this isn’t a post about dualities (that was a couple of weeks ago). It’s a post about the way my writer’s life seems to swing between extremes: desperate hope and abject fear.  Okay, that was a bit of hyperbole.  The fear and despair isn’t really absolute, but it can be paralyzing at times.  During those times, it’s hard to send work out.

For a long time, I thought the solution to swinging between these extremes was getting a “big book” published or getting an agent.  My friends with agents and big books assure me that this isn’t the answer, that the fear and despair still live at the far swing of the pendulum. 

Yesterday, I mused aloud with my writing friends as I was sending out a new batch of queries that maybe I’d chosen the wrong career.  My friends reminded me that I didn’t choose this, it chose me.  

While that’s not entirely true--I could just write and write and store my work in an empty trunk (okay, at this point it would probably be two trunks) and not worry about publishing--it is somewhat true.  I’ve always written.  It’s been a constant companion.  I told my 6^th grade teacher, Mrs. Hackett, that I was going to be a writer.  And I am.

But, the thing is, I would write whether I was ever published or not. I have a job that pays the bills, but I think the world needs my work.  I think that there are children whose lives might be a little brighter if they could spend time with my characters.  I think there are poets who might find some truth in my words.  I think there are parents and teachers who might see the world and their charges a little differently through my picture books. I tell stories that I would like people to hear.

So, I write, and I’d like my writing shared with a broader audience, so I vacillate between extremes.  I’ve learned that when I’m feeling hopeful, I should send my work out to as many agents and publishers as will read them. 

Yesterday, I felt hopeful.  Did you know Kate DiCamillo was rejected by 45 agents before she finally got representation?  So I sent two picture books and my completed verse memoir out to a total of eight agents. 

Today, I got the nicest rejection from an agent I'd sent my work to earlier this year. The agent said that though the project wasn’t right for him, I should continue querying agents.  That encouragement was enough to keep my on the hopeful side of the pendulum for a little while longer. 

So, I’m headed back to my spreadsheet to send the book out to four more people.  Wish me luck, and good luck to you.  I’ll keep hoping.  I’ll keep working.  I hope you’ll do the same.

Why I Want an Agent

Photo ©  Lori Gravley.  

I have my writer’s group.  Over five years, almost 52 weeks a year, we’ve met, growing only large enough to fit at a single table, though sometimes I notice others join us and write along. Not for four hours like we do and not at 7 AM, like we do.  So, I’ve got my writing group.  Sometimes, I meet them other days and we gossip and complain and plan and cajole and support and then we write.  We always write.

And I’ve got my critique group.  We all have a practice that works.  And we practice and we read and we share what we read and we share the work and look at the work from angles, finding its facets and trying to make it shine a little brighter.

And I’ve got old friends and students.  We email and message and like and smile at each other from a distance. 

I’ve got my presence.  I post a blog a week now, and three or four encouraging messages on my author feed.  I post photographs to Instagram, sometimes incessantly.  Beauty is everywhere.  And I’ve got my website, and every time someone puts one of my words online, I share it there.  And tinker here and there and grow my friends.  And I read poems I love on the radio at WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs, OH, not all the time, but a couple of times a month.  And really, I don’t want to do much more than that because all that leaves just enough time to show up for work, everyday.  And I do.  Two hours or more each day, including weekends.  During the week, I aim for six-hour days, but no matter what (even when I'm traveling around the world for the work that pays the bills), two hours.

What I don’t have, and what I desperately want is an advocate, an adviser, someone to help me grow my career, someone to run my too many ideas by and help me parse out which ones might sell.  Someone who lives inside that publishing world I’ve danced around for so long who can show my work to people who will love it.  I want another pair of trained eyes to look at my work and ask me just the right questions.  I want someone who will believe in me when I can’t quite muster that belief and who will allow me to work knowing that my work might just find the right readers. 

I want a midwife and a doula.  Fifteen percent of what I earn seems a reasonable fee for someone who will do my work in the world so that I can work in the worlds I’ve made in my head. 

I could publish things on my own, and I might.  The historical projects I’m working on may not be saleable.  Or maybe the contemporaries with their little edge of paranormal will have missed the shining paranormal moment in publishing as a reader last year said.  In that case, with these projects I love, I’m willing to work on my own and even pay to get them out in the world.  Someone out there needs those books, and they can’t find them on my hard drive. 

I can publish things on my own.  I’m a poet.  I write a lot of poems that I have to send out (220 last year, thanks Duotrope), so it’s not that I’m afraid to do the hard work of sending things out.

But even with all the opportunities to publish on my own, I want someone on my side.  Someone who will take those saleable concepts and sell them, or at least try.

I want an agent.