by Robin Black
But there are ways to disrupt the process, making it harder for a reader to let go of reality. The mistake of asking the reader to jump too quickly to the thread of the fiction that belongs to her lies at the heart of many such failures. The blue sky. The musty smell of the house. The particular shine of a mirror. The smile reflected in that mirror. If a reader is asked to do too much of the work at the start, to imagine rather than learn too many elements all at once, the spell cannot take hold.
There is a necessary seduction that must take place before a reader’s imagination can be fully engaged. She must know something before she can imagine much. She must be oriented before she can wander on her own, must be secure in the author’s authority before she can begin to challenge it.
There is no perfect balance of course, no formula for this—and no rules. In reality, my “musts” are wispy assertions, subject to challenge, as are all “musts” when applied to writing. But understood as such, they can form a useful lens through which to examine the dynamics of a story’s opening.
The process of crafting fictions is in large part a process of manipulating that which is subject to modification by the reader’s imagination and that which is not. Invitations to imagine punctuated by undeniable facts. And beginnings of stories are very often suited for the sort of clarity that puts a reader in a maximally passive role, the author in charge, if only for a very short time, if only for a few sentences, a few words, if only to bring about the surrender that is necessary at first.
These notions apply to endings as well, where once again those two strands—the author’s to assert, the reader’s to imagine—separate. Because conventional stories don’t have a single ending, but two. There is the resolution of the plot which is the responsibility of the author, and then there are the words that follow that resolution, up to the final words on the final page.
I first heard this theory of double endings in a lecture given by Steven Schwartz. He used the term “fulcrum” to describe that point at which the storyline is resolved and begins a slide into its literal ending. I have come to think of that fulcrum as the point at which the author steps away from the absolutes of plot, over which she has full authority, and begins to give the story to the reader to take away.
An example: The central problem of a story is whether or not a couple will get back together. On the top of page twenty-one, the author asserts that they do. They have reunited. No room for disagreement. But then there is another page or so, a stretch of language in which the author seems to loosen her grip, allowing for more and more interpretation. The sentences are more about atmosphere and mood than event. A metaphor may be introduced. The future may be referenced if only briefly, suggesting a time outside the author’s ken. And as the question of “what happens” recedes, the burden shifts to the reader to begin the process of interpretation, a process that will continue long past the final words. With this shift, what the author held in her imagination, before trapping it onto the page, is entirely transferred to another’s imagination, transformed in the process, recognizable still.
And in the course of the transfer, the author loses control. Even the events of the story, hers to determine, take on a new life as their meaning is mined and worried through. The reader becomes trustee not only of what the author imagined, but of the uncertainty underlying it. Their roles have been blurred, are intersecting, overlapping, indistinct, as the reader continues the process of writing long after the author has stopped.
I had no idea, when I started to write, that the best possible result of hours at the keyboard, years at the keyboard, would be this relinquishment, this acceptance of another’s role in creating what had once seemed so certainly to be mine. But by now I have heard readers argue about my characters as if they were real people, making claims about them that were far from my intent, not even asking me for my view. And for all that my ego may desire a kind of ownership over my creations, there is simply no greater honor, no greater joy, than understanding that it is safe to step away.
The Final Draft:
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
In 1993, my first marriage failed—eight years and two children in—and over the months, the years, that followed, I took on a strange, unanticipated role: advisor to the unhappily wed. How did you know? they would quiz me, at toddlers’ birthday parties, at school assemblies. How did you know to end it? they would ask as we shepherded our Power Rangers, our witches, down dark suburban Halloween streets.
How did you know when to call it quits?
It didn’t take me long to realize that I wanted no part in advising other people about whether or not to end their marriages. I had experienced too thoroughly the inability of any outsider to understand such a relationship and I knew too well how much was at stake. But there was one piece of advice I always felt comfortable giving: If you decide to leave, I would say, be sure you can articulate to yourself exactly why you chose to go, because I promise you there will be times when you doubt your choice, and you will need to have a very clear set of reasons to recite to yourself during those shaky days.
That makes sense, they would say—disappointed, I knew, at the neutrality of my response.
Soon enough, I remarried, and people stopped thinking of me as a poster child for getting-divorced-when-you-have-little-kids, so I heard those questions less and less. But then I took up writing, then started teaching writing, and I began to hear other questions, oddly resonant of those.
How do you know when a story is finished? How do you know when it’s time to send a story out?
How do you know when to call it quits?
It took me a while to realize that the answer I always give to this question is itself an echo of the other, earlier one: I know a story isn’t finished until I can explain to myself exactly why I have made all the craft choices I have made.
Or, to put it another way, if you plan on ending your relationship to a story and exposing it to the harsh gaze of those who didn’t write it, you had better be able to articulate to yourself why you think it’s time, because there are likely to be times when you doubt that you should have done so.
I have long searched for any kind of scaffold on which I can hang an understanding of the role of intent in the process of writing, of how it evolves, ebbs and flows, and finally dominates through draft after draft after draft. In the past, I’ve always told students that first drafts should be as much like vomiting as possible, but I think (and this is happy news for future students) that I will now start saying instead that first drafts are like falling in love. Letting go. Giving in. Following a hunch. Obsessing. Hoping. Fantasizing. Knowing fuck-all about what’s going on. The vocabularies of early drafting and of nascent romance are essentially interchangeable. Even the presence of an irresistible erotic force connects the two.
And mystery. It is all about mystery at the start. If we premised losing our hearts on our ability to explain doing so, we’d none of us ever lose our hearts. And, for many of us, it’s also true that if we stop too long to try and understand our early drafts, we may well find we have indeed stopped too long. At the start of both relationships, something bordering on lunacy is a necessary state.
But then, you show the story to a trusted reader who makes some imperfection in it clear. (You introduce your beloved to your best friend and realize in her company that he laughs too loudly, too long at his own jokes.) You approach the next draft with this flaw in mind, engaging your intellect exactly as you couldn’t do while drafting. (You ponder if there is tact enough in the world to suggest to him that he not convey to others how amusing he finds himself to be.) In writing and in romance, it is both impossible and inadvisable to maintain eternally the state of insanity necessary to get the thing going at the start.
And the hope is, in both pursuits, that even that initial lunatic state will become a little less crazy with experience. The next time you meet a potential love, you may be a bit cannier about what endearing traits will ultimately drive you mad. And i
n writing, an analogous goal motivates us to study craft, in the hope that some of it will become second nature even when we’re in a fevered state.
But the analogy isn’t exact, of course. No genuinely helpful analogy—or metaphor—ever is. (What would be the evocative power of comparing identical phenomena?) Here, the comparison begins to fail around the word “failure” itself. When you leave a marriage it is because it has failed; when you send a story out it is because you believe that it succeeds. For better and worse, we have built into our cultural understanding of marriage that it isn’t meant to be perfect—for better and worse—that it cannot be perfect, and that to insist on perfection is to doom the union; but writers do strive for perfection. Even those of us who know in our hearts that we’ll never get it entirely “right,” even those of us who claim to value a little mess in literature, cherish fantasies of perfection while caught up in a piece—necessarily, I suspect, if quixotically too. That is, unless we let impatience rule the day.
In the aftermath of my divorce, there were many occasions when I saw the pain it caused my children and I needed that list of all the reasons it had been the right thing to do. My silent catechism got me through some very shaky times.
But I wasn’t always so fortunate or so prudent with my work. In that realm, I have been burned by cutting corners. I once sent out a story knowing, knowing, that I didn’t understand why I had ended it the way I had, and that it might well not be right, that it probably wasn’t right; and that suspicion rubbed at me like sandpaper. But being new to the game and desperate for some “success” I decided to take a shot anyway, and it was accepted for publication.
When the journal arrived at my door, I wanted to rip those pages out. When friends told me they had read it, I wanted to apologize for all it didn’t accomplish. When people praised it, I longed to explain why they were wrong. But then, as with old lovers who part too soon, only to meet again and make it work, I had the chance to rewrite that story for my book, and could give it the ending I could explain to myself, the one that justified my letting go. I could finally compose for myself a list of all the reasons behind the choices I had made.
No, the analogy isn’t perfect. But I see enough here, enough to build on, enough, for sure, to spare the next class of students that image of vomiting onto the page—which always gets a good laugh, but also a recoil—and replace it with images of crazy, crazy, ill-fated love.
How (Not?) to Query
When I’m asked for advice about querying agents, I’m always torn about what to say. There’s a part of me that believes in playing such things safe, in following the rules, and not raising any “cuckoo-bird” flags. So with that in mind, I’m tempted to refer people to the many websites about the “proper” way to query, websites where they will find advice about being succinct; about crafting catchy, brief summaries of their work; about trying to sound appealing, exhibiting some personality but still striking a professional tone.
All of which is probably excellent advice, and none of which is what I did. Hence my dilemma.
A couple of summers after completing my MFA, I had a passel of published stories to my name, and I decided I “needed” an agent. (For the record, if anyone with that résumé were now to ask me for advice, I would say: Don’t bother querying agents until you have a book. Write first, and stay out of the business side as long as possible.) Like many “emerging writers” and perhaps especially those no longer young, I was in a hurry. I wanted legitimacy. I wanted to be able to say, “Yes! Indeed, I do,” when people asked me: “Do you have an agent?”—one of the inquiries people mistakenly use to measure a writer’s worth.
But nothing came of those agent queries in 2007, which were pretty much “by the book,” following the rules I found online. Nothing came of them, including the one I cared most about, to a man named Henry Dunow. He was the agent on whom I had fixated, absolutely convinced he was the one for me—for no better reason than that someone had once told me he might be a good match for my work. In passing. At a weekend convention. Probably while drunk. And never having read my work. “You should work with Henry Dunow. He’s into your kind of stuff. Hic.”
I was unimaginably impressionable back then. A drunk dude told me that Henry Dunow was the agent for me, and it became an idee fixe.
But he didn’t answer my email. Fair enough. He wasn’t the only one. As I said, nothing came of the whole enterprise, and I went back to work.
Flash forward a year, and through a series of incidents, some involving more stories, others involving the kindness of an “insider” who decided to help me, and suddenly I had agents returning my emails—in part because I had managed to produce a novel draft, which I was careful to mention two times for every time I mentioned my short stories. A couple of these folks seemed like real possibilities, but an idee fixe is an idee fixe, and I decided that before I signed with anyone else, I would give Henry Dunow one more try.
But something had changed in a year. Maybe because my by-the-book emails had all failed, maybe because I had just grown weary of trying to play by the rules, my tone had, shall we say, evolved.
Here, in part, is the email that I sent:
“This is where I fess up that I wrote you last summer. Since I didn’t hear back, I’m assuming that’s because you decided against me, but I’m hoping it’s because the email never reached you. I am trying again—for the last time, I promise—because your blurb on the agency’s website says you like literary fiction and voice driven nonfiction, and that is what I write. Since the One Story piece came out, I have had some interest from agents, and it looks like the right time for me to figure this representation thing out, so I thought I would try one more time.
“I apologize if this second query letter qualifies as bugging you. As I say, I won’t send another should this one also go unanswered. My bio is pasted below. I am happy to give you any more information, including a description of the novel, should you want it.”
Professional tone? Not hardly. Catchy summary of my work? Definitely not. Gratuitous reference to the possibility that I’m a stalker? Yeah, I can see that there.
The miracle is that he wrote back. Not only did he write back, but he asked if he could take a look at my novel, a reasonable enough request, given that I had told him it was complete.
My answer:
“Thanks so much for the response! I appreciate that, and your willingness to look at my work.
“Unfortunately, as far as you seeing the novel goes, the short answer is no. Though fully drafted, I don’t think the novel is showable—not without doing myself a disservice and wasting your time.”
(This move, the dangling of a novel followed by its hasty withdrawal, is not commonly advised.)
My email continues:
“It’s a good thing I am a better writer than businesswoman. I had actually decided to put off querying until those revisions were complete, but my situation is that a couple of weeks ago this story of mine came out in One Story and all of a sudden there were agents offering to sign me up, which was initially incredibly exciting. Now though, after a certain amount of soul searching, I’m coming to the view that flattering and tempting as it all is, I don’t just want to sign with an agent, I want to sign with the right agent. I understand that may mean someone for whom the novel is the determining factor, therefore a wait.”
I am 100% certain that nowhere in the literature on How To Query An Agent does anyone suggest that you discuss your “soul searching.”
There’s more:
“I so appreciate your response. My now revised query is whether I could show you this novel once that too is revised? Or is there anything else that would be relevant? Do stories help? I have lots and lots of those, some published, some (too many) that I have never sent out. I am attaching the story that appeared in One Story, just so if you are interested in seeing a sample of my work, there it is. And of course, anything that might be useful can be mailed in the genuine mail if that’s better. Also, below is a
description of the novel. The only person in the industry who has ever heard anything about it told me that you were the right agent, because of your experience and skill selling literary work. That doesn’t mean you would agree, of course, but it had an impact on me…”
And yes, in case you are wondering as you read, I am still cringing. And I’m not even going to share the next email I sent in which I apologize for the previous two and for being such a complete idiot and so on…
Amazingly enough, Henry didn’t run screaming or change his email address or mark my missives spam. He just wrote back, “Okay. I’ll take a look at the story and get back to you,” which I assumed meant he was being polite about trying to get rid of me, but in fact resulted in an email a couple of days later inviting me to give him a call so we could speak. And the rest is history. Not world history, but the part of my history that includes having a terrific agent and friend.
That happy ending isn’t really the point here, though. The important part of this story is not that Henry wanted to work with me once he’d read my work, it’s that he read my work in spite of the decidedly unprofessional tone of my correspondence, in spite of my having broken every rule in the book. The most pressing goal of a query letter isn’t that it result in being signed; it’s that it result in being read.
So what advice am I to give?
I had a chance to go to the expert and ask Henry himself why he bothered to download that story and take a look.
“I remember being charmed,” he said. “You sounded like a real person.”
