Six Months

I guess I needed a break.

I was surprised this morning to see that my most recent post was made exactly six months ago. It’s funny, because I didn’t decide to take some time off from writing blog posts. I guess other things took priority. I’ve been working to finish a book I started two years ago and, while taking a break from that (see a pattern?) I wrote another book.

But Peter, you say, how can you write a book so quickly? You may have heard about an organization that goes by the less than catchy name “NaNoWriMo.” It stands for National November Writing Month. The idea is to meet the challenge by writing 50,000 words in November. I did it. I wrote a new novel, finishing with 55,000 words. With editing it’s now up over 60,000 words, which is still short for a novel.

As you can imagine, the writing and rewriting that followed took most of my writing attention.

When I was doing my newspaper column over 20 years, I did one per week, with a few weeks off in a year. Many of those columns are available here on my WordPress blog site. Those, and my blog posts since I stopped doing the columns, are/were about what I think about things. The nice thing about writing fiction is that it’s about what my characters think and do. Some of me leaks in, I’m sure, but I like imagining what those people would say or do.

I’ve also been sending my “Interesting Things” newsletter twice per month. They’re free and take only a few minutes to read. Here’s an example of some of the splendid things of interest from a few months ago:

1. A “drupe” is a fleshy fruit that contains a single seed, like a peach. Blackberries and raspberries are “drupelets” because they consist of an amalgamation of many little drupes that are fused together.
2. “Croup,” also called laryngotracheobronchitis, is a type of respiratory infection in children. Traditional treatment involved exposing the patient to winter air.
3. The first known use of the word “goop” occurred in 1918, which was way before Gwyneth Paltrow was born.
4. “Cooper’s Droop” denotes the sagging of women’s breasts due to the Cooper’s ligaments wearing out.
5. The two-door “coupe” is named after the two-seater horse-drawn carriage called the coupé.
6. “Poop” can mean a superstructure on the stern of a ship, a disagreeable person, or excrement. There is something called the Bristol Stool Chart to help describe different types of the latter. Really!
7. A “stoop” is a porch or steps. To stoop is to bend or to lower oneself. It also describes a bird swooping down on its prey. A swoop stoop.
8. A “troop” can be a group of soldiers, monkeys, actors (troupe), Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts.
9. A “dupe” is someone who is easily deceived. A fool. Or is it?
10. The “Sloop John B.” was a hit song by the Beach Boys. It is based on a Bahamian folk song about a sunken boat. Who knew?

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During this time when live podcasts or produced videos have taken over our communications I’m sticking with the written word. I know the trend is to be outrageous in order to get people to like and follow you, but that doesn’t feel like something I’d be good at. Maybe I’ll start something called “Only Fans of My Writing.” I can do a live cam of me writing without a shirt on, or something. That will have to wait for warmer weather.

I Was Warned

They told me it would be difficult to get an agent to represent my book. Famous authors often talk about the struggles they went through to get their first book published, starting with the travails of finding an agent willing to represent them.

The book business has changed, like everything else, and getting something published in the traditional way has gotten more difficult. Of course, self-publishing has never been easier, and if the old-fashioned way of getting my brilliant prose into people’s hands fails, I can always take the modern route.

I have a couple of observations about my quest, so far. I realize it’s probably risky to mention these things, but it would be difficult not to notice. First, there are a lot of literary agents out there! Lots of literary agencies, and most have ten or so agents. Second, most of them are women. By “most” I don’t mean 51%. I would say it’s over 80%. That’s not surprising or troubling, but interesting.

Third, an overwhelming majority of agencies and agents strongly encourage authors from “underrepresented” groups to submit manuscripts. Women authors are favored by many of the agents.

Here’s something interesting about women authors: About half of authors are women, but only a third of published books are by women. Yet, about 65% of books are purchased by women. I could analyze all that, but there are too many factors at play to draw any conclusions.

So, my situation is that I’m in an over-represented group of male authors, I’m not part of any underrepresented groups, and I really don’t know if my book is great or horrible. As the number of queries I send grows, with no positive response, I think it is probably not so great. Maybe there is an agent who will see some possibilities in it.

The thing is, even though there are thousands of books for sale out there, most books don’t get published. I imagine that most songs that are written aren’t recorded and that most artwork that is created isn’t sold.

Whenever I see a successful musician performing, I think about all the people who play and sing better than that person, but don’t have the drive or the interest to pursue stardom.

It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in trying to get the attention of an agent. Right now there are probably thousands of writers hitting “send” on an email to an agent, hoping she or he will be the one who sees something in their writing that the other agents couldn’t see. I take heart in knowing that I have a much, much better chance of getting an agent than I’d having winning the lottery, so there’s that.