by Marge Piercy
4. Fail to Read
People are always asking us the best books to read to teach them how to become writers and we tell them to read what they’re going to write. You wouldn’t want to be operated on by a heart specialist who only read The Way of the Surgeon and you don’t want to read a writer who’s only studied how-to books. Writers learn their craft by reading good books in the genre they want to write in, not by seeing the movie version of a books they’re too lazy to read. If you want to write mysteries, read a hundred of them. If you want to write your life story, read memoirs. Your best teacher may be your librarian or your bookseller. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel or the novel.
3. Burn Bridges
The world of publishing is surprisingly small and underpaid. An editor or publicist at one company may very well turn up at another. Moreover, when you’re in the process of submitting a book, you want as many editors and publishing houses open to you as possible. Venting one’s frustrations on someone in the industry may feel good at the time, it may even be warranted, but it is a poor strategy for survival. Wallace Sayre’s Third Law of Politics states: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics because the stakes are so low.” The same might be said about publishing. The vast majority of us—writers, publishers, editors, publicists, sales reps, reviewers, booksellers—are in this business because we love books, not for the remuneration. Because the number of readers is declining, and the number of books published is rising in inverse proportion to the newspaper column inches dedicated to books, we all have to say NO to each other a lot. NO I can’t publish you, review you, blurb you, and so on. Unfortunately, disappointment is all too frequent in the book business, and it’s well to realize that if you write a nasty letter to your publisher (as I once did), you may not remember it in three years time when you are hawking your next book ... but he bloody well will. Every word.
2. Get Jealous
It’s easy to get jealous of other writers who have had some success while you are still struggling but it’s far better to take a wider view: The more people who read a book, the more they are likely to read other books. If they have a good experience with a novel, if it got them through a long, uncomfortable airport layover, or a bout with the flu, or a sleepless night; if they learned something that will change their lives or were genuinely entertained by a book, they will go out and buy another. Successful writers are not siblings getting the attention you deserve, they are business people out there building their customer base.
It is much better to flatter than seethe. The irony is that few successful writers feel successful. The majority of them have been working long and hard in obscurity and know that one well-received book does not guarantee another. They are one and all receptive to flattery, and may even be able to help you with contacts, blurbs, readings, and more. Far better not to boycott the reading of the writer you’re envious of if they’re doing an event in your neighborhood. Better to get a seat in the front row and applaud like mad. Even buy a book! Have them autograph it! It’s not sucking up, it’s networking!
1. Give Up
It takes many years to succeed as a writer. Some quite famous but mediocre talents have succeeded simply because they have hung in and gotten better over time, or long enough to be taken seriously, or outlived their contemporaries. There are many ways to succeed, from big presses with large advances, to small advances and big awards, to small presses and great reviews to bad reviews and fans who adore you. If you love to write ... hang in. Nobody is going to beat the bushes to find you. The world has too many writers. You have to hang in and make yourself visible. It only takes one good match, one publisher who understands your vision, one important review, to begin a career. We published a genuinely brilliant young writer who took his own life exactly three weeks before we called to say we were publishing his first book. Were there other frustrations in his life? I’m sure. Would publishing his book have ended all his problems? I doubt it. The only thing I do know is this: The one sure way to fail to become a writer is to give up trying.
19
Practical Information
Once you have finished a piece of work, whether it is a memoir, a novel, a short story or a poem, what do you do with it? You’ve written it, revised it, perhaps tried it out on your writing group or a friend or ten friends. Now you’re ready to test your luck at getting it published in some form.
First, some information that’s almost too obvious to include, but you’d be surprised to learn that perhaps fifteen percent of writers who submit to our press and all the various zines and journals we have edited over the years don’t include a Stamped Self-Addressed Envelope, a SASE. It does not matter if you want your manuscript back or not. If you do, be sure you include an envelope with sufficient postage for the weight of the manuscript. Don’t guess. If you don’t want it returned, you still want to know whether the work is accepted or rejected. Always include a SASE. Some editors simply discard such unaccompanied manuscripts unread. If the writer isn’t savvy enough to include a SASE, they are unlikely to pass muster in their work. Considering that even the smallest presses receive twenty to thirty manuscripts a week, you should not find it difficult to figure out why the SASE is a prerequisite to being considered. No indie press or zine can afford return postage, not to mention the extra office work involved, on all the manuscripts that come to it. The easier you make it for them to give you an answer, the likelier you are to receive one.
We also see a great many manuscripts that do not put the writer’s last name and a running short title at the top of every page. Apparently these writers, too, do not understand the volume of submissions all editors receive. The stuff falls on the floor. The cat knocks it over or it gets moved aside to make room for lunch. A wind blows through an open window. The ceiling leaks. Use your imagination. We have also received manuscripts that were unnumbered. How they expected anyone to keep that manuscript intact and in order is anybody’s guess. If you make it difficult to read your submission, then the editor will be in no hurry to read it and may not bother at all. After all, you are in a pile with sixty to one hundred others. If yours offers particular problems, it will often go unread or be given only grudging attention.
Do not put your manuscript in a fancy package, use blue paper or pink ribbons or draw pictures unless they are part of your text. It is a turn-off to see a gussied-up manuscript. The editor suspects the manuscript needed that ribbon or that lavender paper to stand out.
Be sure your printout is clear and dark. Again, no editor who has been reading manuscripts for six hours is going to bother with one that is hard to read. Don’t imagine you can make the manuscript look shorter by using a smaller font. Every editor knows that trick and resents it. If your editor’s eyes are tired, she will not give your manuscript the reading you would desire. As we have said in the chapter on Beginnings, you can count on an editor reading perhaps two pages of a short piece and perhaps ten pages of a long piece. If you haven’t grabbed the editor’s attention by then, you will not have a second chance.
An increasing number of editors are accepting e-mail submissions but they want them on their terms. For instance, at Leapfrog, for reasons of computer security, we automatically delete any unsolicited attachments and, due to the sheer enormity of the number of e-mail submissions, we do not respond unless we have some interest in the book the author is pitching. That is, we’ll accept an e-mail query and if we’re interested, we’ll ask to see the first forty pages in hard copy. Some New York editors we know welcome e-mail submissions but they will not read any that do not come from an agent. Always do your homework to find the editor’s submission guidelines. This information can usually be found on the publisher’s web site.
Unless the editor asks you to, do not call the publisher. Frankly, it marks you as something of a pest. The U.S. Postal Service may not be perfect but it usually works. If you want to know whether your manuscript arrived, enclose a post card addressed to yourself or send an e-mail. If
you have not heard from a publisher, it is more than likely because they have not read your submission yet and will not be able to until they have the time. Once they have read it, you can be sure they will get back to you. If they like the book, they’re excited about the possibility of signing it. If they don’t, there is no advantage to keeping it in the office. Publishers do know how much of an author’s time and self-esteem go into a book. But authors should also know what goes into publishing a book. There is an irony involved in the schedule of publishing that may account for the fact that many publishing offices are in a state of constant catch-up. Books are signed and announced a year or more ahead of publication. While one book is in the acquisition process, others are being produced and released so that the publishing staff is almost always in a state of completing work on projects they had contracted many months ago and which are approaching deadline—writing catalog copy, presenting to the sales reps, overseeing jacket copy, cover design, internal design, printing, galleys, sending out galleys, marketing, writing advertising and publicity copy, trying to get the book reviewed, sending out complementary copies once the book returns from the printer, trying to get readings and booksignings and interviews for the author. It’s a costly and time-consuming process for large, independent and very small presses alike. Once a book is accepted, it goes to the head of the line and grabs the available attention, as it should. The manuscripts waiting to be read have to wait some more.
The best writer is one who meets deadlines and then does readings, interviews and other publicity. A book doesn’t sell itself. Readings add value to a book; they give the bookstore and the potential buyer an evening of free entertainment. They add a personal dimension. In anticipation of a reading, a bookstore may order thirty or more copies of your book, display and advertise it. (They will not keep more than a few copies of the book in stock after the reading, however, unless they feel your reading has generated some excitement; i.e., potential sales.) Two writers can be equally good. One will give as good a reading to the three people who show up on a snowy night in January as to a packed house of one hundred. That same writer will solicit readings for herself and not simply wait for the publisher to do it or for lightning to strike. That writer will sell books. The one who sits home will not.
Some publishers and zines state that multiple submissions are fine with them; others state quite clearly that they are not. With these, you have to follow your own conscience. I know we used to permit multiple submissions, because as writers as well as editors we were sympathetic to the length of time it takes to get word back on a manuscript. Then we got stung. We read a novel, spent the time to critique it—and we are talking now about an investment of days, not hours—only to find that the writer had submitted elsewhere and had already sold the book, without telling us. No, we’re not going to have the writer arrested for stealing our time; but neither are we likely to forget his name.
Always keep a record of where you send your work. Years ago I sent a submission to the Minnesota Review. The rejection slip came back with my poems, and the notation on it, We did not care for these poems the first time we saw them and our opinion has not changed with time. I was embarrassed and I had wasted my time and postage. Always keep a chart on the wall or a record on your computer of where your work has gone. If an editor rejects your work but sends an encouraging letter, do not send more work immediately. Wait a month or so and then send more, reminding them gently that they had encouraged your submission. Do not wait a year. The editor will have long forgotten your work; in fact, there may even be a new editor reading manuscripts.
Try to learn the name of the editor—perhaps by using one of the resources we recommend next. Address the note that accompanies your work to the right editor. Don’t send fiction to the poetry editor or vice versa. Get the spelling right. Editors can be quite put out if you misspell their names. If you have been published or won any awards, mention them. However, do not include workshops you have taken. Everybody in the business knows you can take a workshop with almost anyone, and it means nothing. Furthermore, you may be saying you took a workshop with George Fadoodle, and the editor hates him and has ever since Fadoodle wrote a bad review of his work. So you have put a strike against yourself when you needn’t have. If you are submitting poetry, do not bother to say you had an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, no matter how prestigious that is in the medical field. Do not mention your articles in Golf Digest. Only literary work matters when you are submitting literary work. You can mention work in another literary genre than the one you are submitting this time—a poet writing fiction, for instance, may promise an above average style—but that’s all that counts.
For book-length fiction and memoir, in our experience, over-long cover letters, like packages that have enough tape on them to withstand a category three hurricane, mark the writer as an amateur. The function of a cover letter is to introduce yourself and your credentials and to provide a brief overview of the work. Your previous publications are important, but nothing you say in the cover letter will convince the press to publish the manuscript. The work will stand up for itself. It will get read, if only the first few pages. There really is no reason to give a long, detailed synopsis of the manuscript. The flap of a hardcover book is designed to arouse enough of your curiosity to make a purchase. Flap copy is approximately two hundred fifty words long, and is usually a good example of a well-written synopsis, but too long for the synopsis of a cover letter. Have confidence, they will read it eventually no matter what your cover letter says. But a short, three-to-five sentence synopsis is far better than a three-page single spaced outline of every chapter.
I don’t know why, but cover letters seem to adhere to fashion, which once led me to believe that some how-to book was telling writers to include marketing plans with their manuscripts. I never did find out if that was true, but for about a year, manuscripts arrived accompanied by elaborate marketing plans in colorful binders. While an author’s marketing ideas are essential once the decision is made to publish the book, especially if the author is serious in their promise to help the publisher carry it out—many authors, already on to their next book by pub date, do not want to be bothered—it seems somewhat pretentious when accompanying a submission. In any event, it is usually discarded.
There are certain things you can include that might give you a leg up. Most important is your publishing experience. Editors like to know your track record. If you have published before, include the books, zines, publishers and dates. Some people without extensive publishing credentials include their education, but this is not necessary. Whereas telling an editor you graduated a famous writing program may offer some hope that the project which is about to consume her Saturday morning does follow some generally accepted conventions—deeply drawn characters, for instance—she may not, unless she has an affiliation with that program, care. Many people who have succeeded in other professions include a detailed listing of their accomplishments—medical doctors are notorious for this—but it doesn’t help them get their novel published any more than great reviews of your novel would get you into medical school. Other items writers often include are positive comments from previous rejection letters, writing coaches and former teachers. These kinds of things are often skipped. However, if one of those former teachers is a well-known writer and has given you a positive prepublication endorsement, one that you have their permission to use on the book, this very well might make the editor predisposed to the book. For one thing, someone with authority has given your work their imprimatur; for another, the publisher knows that if they publish this book they will have a valuable selling tool to offer their sales representatives, who can use it when presenting to bookstores. But what if you don’t know anybody famous? Have no previous publications? Then what you do have is the work to speak for you—which puts you on the same playing field as all but the very small percentage of people whose names alone will get them published.
There are a number of resource
s for writers that are invaluable. Those who have been writing and sending their work out certainly know about Poets & Writers, Inc. (72 Spring St., New York, NY 10012 or www.pw.org) but it is an important enough resource to mention. Once you have published a certain amount (you must consult them to obtain the current minimum publications), you can be listed in their A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, a publication updated every two years that is used to locate writers, often by organizations who ask you to do readings or workshops. Poets & Writers magazine is the place where almost every writers’ conference in the country and many overseas advertise. You can look through the winter and spring issues to find out where an author you are eager to study with is teaching that summer. There are at least one hundred writers’ conferences, and the author of your dreams is teaching at one and perhaps five of them. Writers’ conferences are particularly useful if you are at the point where you desperately want feedback on work you have done. Not only do you get The Word from an author you admire, but you can share your work with other writers who want feedback on their work as well. Always there are readings and sometimes visits from publishers and/or agents. It makes for a very intense week or so and may really rev you up.
