The Long Way Home

by Scott, Jessica

  So, bluntly, I think I’m screwed. How do you pitch a book that doesn’t fit into a nice neat genre? Especially in this market? You can pitch to your heart’s content but if you can’t get past the gatekeepers, you can’t get sold. I’m not complaining about agents, mind you. I’m simply stating that I think I pitched my books wrong to the fabulous agents who asked for the full manuscript and ultimately passed with great comments.

  So that’s the end of this, for now. I’m revising once more because I’ve got a song in my head that is making me work on this book, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a dead end. I’ve learned a lot, but the one thing I don’t know how to fix is how to query the next project correctly. Maybe I’ll put in the query: this is not suspense.

  Maybe not.

  Dirty Little Secret of an Unpublished Author

  March 24, 2010

  TWILIGHT WAS STEPHANIE MEYER’S first book. She pitched it to Judy Reamer, who snapped it up and the rest, as they say is history. Allison Brennan’s first sale The Prey debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.

  Dude, we all want to be that guy. But for every writer that happens to, there are thousands more still stuck in the slush pile.

  I’m willing to bet that every single writer looks at that first book and goes “Oh yeah, this is the one, baby.” And when it doesn’t immediately get snapped up for a bajillion dollar advance, movie deal, and foreign rights, well, then publishing sucks and they don’t know what they’re missing out on.

  Welcome to reality. Publishing is hard to break into. Regardless of how much “crap” you’ve read, someone read the same book, liked it, offered on it, and put it into print. Part of the reason that publishing is so hard to break into is that you have to find that one “yes” in a pile of “no”s that can feel higher than Mount Everest. Writing is easy.

  Writing something that sells?

  Not so much.

  The first writer’s group I ever stumbled on had several unpublished writers in it. They weren’t seeking publication because, well, they wrote for themselves and they didn’t want someone changing their work. This was what the world was meant to be and they weren’t going to budge. Which is fine. That does not mean it’s saleable and many, probably the majority of writers out there, are fine with writing just for themselves.

  I’m not one of them, which means that I need feedback. The harsher, the better. I might not want to hear it at the particular time, but I recognize that I do need to hear it. And I might not do anything with it right off the bat but in the back of my mind, I’m working on it. Looking at how I can make the story better.

  Revising, for me, is a bigger part of writing. When I first started out, I looked at what I’d slapped on the page and loved it. Every word. Every fragmented sentence and awkward phrase. I. Loved. It. I wasn’t able to look at it and see what needed to change, which meant that by and large, my so-called revisions were window dressing. They weren’t the kind of change that the book needed to really take shape. I queried. And I got rejected. A lot. A hell of a lot, but you know what? Every rejection that came in that wasn’t a form rejection, I read. I saved. And when I started to really think about revisions on a certain project, I could finally see the things that were wrong.

  I ended up throwing the whole book out. I rewrote it. And I haven’t pitched it again because it’s sitting in my Scrivener file folder, waiting on its turn. Because it’s back to being a first draft and if I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that my first drafts need major work.

  Same story with the second book I pitched. That book landed me an agent but it never went anywhere. I was waiting for revision comments to help me see what needed to change. I never got the comments I thought I needed and my agent and I parted ways, primarily because I wasn’t getting input on the manuscript. I wanted to work. Hell, I was in Iraq and I needed to work. I needed guidance but ultimately, I think I needed too much guidance for her.

  I still need guidance but the one thing I took away from every single rejection that came after I left my agent was that it’s my book. I am responsible for how it turns out. So while I thought my agent was going to give me guidance, until I could see what was wrong with it, I wasn’t going to move forward.

  I am agentless now, but I am not without guidance. As I work on the third project I am getting ready to query, I am better prepared. I am able to take comments from my critique partner and see what’s wrong with, unfortunately, entire chunks of the book. I am able to see better what needs to cut and tighten and trim. Not entirely. I still need her input to give me prompts, but as I work through this book, it is my responsibility to be able to see it.

  No one is going to do that for me. No agent is going to snap me up and turn me into the next Allison Brennan or Stephanie Meyer. Writing the book that gets me sold is my responsibility. I still need guidance and I still need advice and I’ve had some incredible support from the romance writer’s community.

  But it’s my book and I need to be able to see what’s wrong with it before anyone else, agent, editor, or otherwise, is going to polish it up with me.

  Why the iPad Won’t Kill Books

  April 4, 2010

  I’M A BOOK PERSON. I’m not biased against ebooks, but when it comes to reading, I prefer paper books. I like looking at my shelves and seeing Laura Kinsale’s books that I’ve had since I was a teenager. I like looking at my Anne McCaffrey collection that I’ve read every year since I was in seventh grade. I have memories tied into those physical books and when a book earns keeper status, I like nothing more than seeing it on my shelf.

  Don’t get me wrong. I want an iPad. I lusted for a Kindle but never broke down and bought one when Kindle mania was going strong because I was deploying to Iraq and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to download books on it while I was there. The lust passed.

  I’ve since discovered the Kindle app on my iPhone. I’ve read a bunch of preview chapters and one book on it. I can see me buying more books if I had the iPad or even a Kindle, but shelling out $200-$500 for the pleasure of reading books is not something I can justify at the moment.

  Then there’s the limitations of ebook readers. I can’t read a Kindle during take-off and landing in an airplane. I wouldn’t want to take my shiny new iPad to Padre Island, where sand and wind nearly wrecked my iPhone a few weeks ago. And God forbid one of my kids get ahold of the files and delete them. It’s a heck of a lot easier to lose a file than a physical book.

  I’m torn about digital media in general. In cleaning out my garage this weekend, my husband found three CDs that I’d bought in Germany. Seeing the covers brought me back to being nineteen years old and living on my own for the first time in a foreign country. Hearing the songs took me all the way back. I would have had the same memories by just hearing the song, but holding the busted CD case and seeing the names of bands I’d long since forgotten gave it a little extra poignancy.

  I’ve spent hours looking for a song. It was a CD I’d had since Germany, some unknown techno compilation. I Googled the song. I searched my files. It was gone. Not on iTunes, not anywhere. Gone.

  It happened to be on a blank CD compilation I’d made up over ten years ago. How easy was it for me to find that? Had it not been for the physical CD, it would have been nothing but a fading memory.

  So there’s something to the tangible. A real book inspires memories. A real CD holds forgotten songs. Kindles and iPads are great for the right now, but what about the memories? For me, a file will not hold the same sensory input as a physical book.

  Don’t get me wrong, I still want an iPad. But for me, physical books are still the treasure I hold and smell and touch and absorb. And given the premium price for a Kindle and even more for an iPad, I believe those that sing the death knell of physical books are a tad premature.

  Walk in Their Boots

  April 10, 2010

  FOR THAT MATTER, JUST put them on for a while before you condemn our soldiers. Twitter is all abuzz today about the killing of two journa
lists by pilots in 2007. The incident is not new. We’ve known about the death of those Reuters reporters since it happened. It was also mentioned in Finkel’s The Good Soldiers.

  It is unfortunate that innocents are killed in war. It is tragic when our soldiers turn to rape and murder like in the Stephen Green case from Mahmoudiya.

  This incident in July 2007 was not another Mahmoudiya. It was not another Haditha. This was combat pilots in the air, providing air support for soldiers on the ground during the Surge. They believed the men in their sights were a threat, if not to them, then to the soldiers they were defending.

  I have not flown in the cockpit of an Apache. I have not walked the streets during the Surge. But I have deployed and I do know the suspicion, the stress, and the judgment calls that are made in battle cannot be second-guessed by Monday morning quarterbacks who have never worn the boots, let alone walked a mile in combat in them.

  I watched the video.

  Yes, we dehumanize the enemy. Yes, we make crude jokes about the people around us. Yes, we use black humor to get through what is arguably the darkest situation you can put a human being in. Killing another human being is not easy and it is not nice and the men and women who have gone to war come back changed forever. How each soldier copes with what they have done during war is not for us to judge.

  As an Army, we do our best to fight within the laws of war. Most of our soldiers go out with the intention of coming back. What they have to do to accomplish that, to bring their buddies home, is not for those who have never served to question.

  Soldiers come home and question what they’ve done during war. When battle is over and you’re back in the States, you have time to really think about what you’ve done. You cannot change it. As an Army, we train by putting our soldiers in these situations before they deploy. We train to try and avoid things like this where innocents are killed. We conduct after action reviews to learn what we can do better. But you don’t get a do-over. Once you pull that trigger, it’s an irrevocable choice.

  It is unfortunate that these reporters were mistaken for insurgents. Was it a reasonable mistake? Yes. Because insurgents had decoyed themselves as media, as medics, as women, in order to get closer to our soldiers in the past. We do our best not to violate the laws of war. The same cannot be said about the enemy, which blatantly use mosques, schools, and hospitals as staging areas for their weapons caches. And yet, we condemn our soldiers when we put them in impossible situations.

  Those pilots made the best decision they could. The fact that later reports were different does not surprise me. An initial assessment of what’s going on often changes when the fog clears and people have time to really sift through what happened. I’ve stood in the TOC (tactical operations cell) and listened to initial reports only to read later that what originally came through was not, indeed, what happened. Does that mean someone lied? No, it doesn’t.

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again until I’m blue in the face. Don’t you dare condemn us as dishonorable until you have worn the uniform and gone through combat. Each individual is responsible for his or her actions, even in a time of war. But war means death and destruction, and unfortunately, innocents are caught in that.

  War is not pretty. It never has been. So don’t pretend to sit there and say how horrible these pilots were because they were making wise-ass remarks and smarting off. They were in combat and they were mentally in a place that allowed them to take another human life in defense of their brothers, under the orders of a nation that sent them there.

  If they are to be judged, let it be by their peers. Men and women who have sat in that cockpit, who have flown in combat and who have had to make the same decisions they have. Those are their peers. Not some media group leaking classified information in the name of transparency when all they want to do is find another excuse to complain about Iraq and in doing so, paint the actions of our soldiers as murderers and thugs.

  True atrocities have taken place in the conduct of this war. This is not one of them.

  Four Months Home From Iraq: Better But Still So Much To Do

  April 12, 2010

  IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE but it’s been four months now since I first stepped off that plane from Iraq. So much has changed and yet, so much still remains.

  January and February will go down as the worst months. Lots of crying and screaming and yelling as the kids tried to figure out where they fit and what they could get away with. Lots of tears on my part as guilt ate away at my soul, partly for leaving and partly for coming home and uprooting them once more. There was the panic over my oldest going from loving school to hating it. The daily battles to get her up in the morning and the ever-present food battles where my oldest proved just how stubborn she truly was.

  But February ushered in March, where things got a little better. There were still bad days, really bad ones. But the distance between them grew a little longer. As we moved forward, each night I fell asleep hoping that tomorrow would be better, that the stress and guilt eating away at me would ease back and we could enjoy being a family for a little while, however long that might be.

  I’ve focused on my oldest because, at five, she is more like a little person. She is more articulate and significantly more vocal than my youngest on so many issues. But lately, my youngest has started to show signs of stress. She’s always cried when we drop her off at daycare in the morning, but now, she cries as soon as she wakes up.

  She’s crying for Grammy, something she has not done in the last four months. I admit to being stunned the day she stood in a crowded rest stop in New Jersey and told me she didn’t think I loved her. I didn’t know what to say or do. As I’ve written before, I was prepared for “I don’t love you,” not “You don’t love me.”

  But now when she gets upset with us, she says she wants to go back to Grammy’s because “hers always nice to me” and “her loves me”. I think my three year old is confused. She doesn’t know where she fits and I worry more about her adjustment than my oldest’s simply because she is so little and she was so young (just over six months old) when I first left her.

  Her difficulty is also painful because she’s always just gone with the flow. She’s never been a fussy kid, always kind of rolling with whatever. The fact that four months into our transition home and she’s suddenly having issues is extra tough to deal with because she’s been so resilient up to this point.

  My little girl has been through a lot. She’s three and a half and she’s been without me for half her life. The guilt I keep thinking I’ve dealt with is like an insurgent, sneaking up when I’m least prepared to deal with it, like the middle of a rest stop. I hope she’ll be okay in the long run, but the simple lack of information about long-term impacts means that my husband and I are simply going in blind and doing the best we can.

  For now, I try to get my mom on the phone as much as I can so my kids can hear her voice. My youngest seems to need this contact more than my oldest. I’m trying to be as understanding and accommodating as I can, but really, how many times can you overlook a roll of toilet paper thrown in the toilet before someone needs to instill some discipline.

  I think she’s doing fine, over all. But it’s those moments when she says how much she misses her Grammy that I feel my own heart breaking. She has no other words to express her confusion about where she fits in the world.

  And I have no way to really pierce through the bubble of my own guilt.

  A Farewell

  April 14, 2010

  I’M SITTING HERE TONIGHT full of emotions that I’m not sure what to do with. My husband and I just got back from farewelling Greywolf 6, the first brigade commander I served under since becoming an officer. They showed a slide show of everything that the brigade had gone through in the last twenty-four months and it’s hard to believe that much time has actually passed.

  The DCO tonight spoke of the mission we had. We were the main effort in Iraq, there to subdue Ninewah province. It had not been done and
yet, we accomplished the mission. We were there to set conditions to pull out of Mosul by June 30th. We did that. But we were more than the main effort in Iraq. We were the tip of the spear for our nation.

  But tonight wasn’t about the mission. It was about saying goodbye to the people I served with on my tour in Iraq. To the brigade commander who will always be Greywolf 6 to me.

  My respect for this man started when I looked back on that week in July 2008, when I was Greywolf 6‘s aide de camp for one hellish week. A week where I learned more about the Army and being an officer than I’d learned in my last fourteen years in service. A week where I learned about what happened in 2004 to Greywolf 6 and why the things he focused on were important to him.

  Everything I did, I did because his priorities were the soldiers on the ground and I never wanted to hear “MEDEVAC follows...” followed by static. Communications were what he tasked me to provide for the brigade. He looked at me the first day he met me and said, “You’re prior service, right? How long?” I told him thirteen years (at the time). He said “I expect you to perform as a major.” And I said “Yes sir.” And held on for dear life. Half the time I was making it up as I went along, the other half, I was stepping on people’s necks trying to get things done.

  The emotions always seem to surprise me. They hit me when I least expect it and in the oddest of times. Tonight was a time for laughs but also for tears. In bidding farewell to Greywolf 6, it was also a farewell to the battalion commanders that I worked for as the brigade S6. It was a farewell to the S3s who jumped up and down on my desk and demanded to know why they couldn’t talk (another story for another time). But in seeing everyone tonight, I realized that I have not fully come home from Iraq. That a part of me that I have locked away surfaces every now and again. I am not the same person I was before I deployed. I don’t know that any of us ever truly are the same again but perhaps, the unexpected emotions are part of my new normal.