Archive for November, 2008
Getting The Call
Friday, November 21st, 2008 | Once It Is Sold, Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | 1 Comment
As a writer who has spent ten years pursuing my art, getting the call from my agent that my book sold was the highlight not only of this year, but of my life to date. It is hard to convey the significance of this. I am still trying to process the experience. Everyone has a dream, whatever that dream might be. My dreams, like those of most people, have shifted somewhat over time. From a fasciantion with acting and theatre, I moved into writing fiction ten years ago. Writing novels is all I have wanted to do for the last ten years. I have written more than one complete novel, and now that I have sold one, I am delirious with joy.
Lunch with an Editor
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | Comments Off
When my agent called and told me that the editor we were in negotiation with wanted to meet me to talk about the book, my first question was “Really? Why?” I had never heard of such a meeting, and when I asked my other writer and agent friends, they too had never heard of a writer sitting down with an editor who had not yet bought their book. Or even then. Editors are busy. They have multiple projects coming in at once, many of them late. In spite of the Carrie Bradshaw mythos, editors rarely meet with authors they are working with. Email and phone calls are the methods of communication. Two martini lunches are long gone, if they ever existed at all.
Working With an Editor
Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | Comments Off
In my last blog, I mentioned being conflicted about absorbing serious notes on my current novel. Never before was I faced with having to completely reconceive my work, to step back from it and see it as an almost different form. I have done so now, and I am glad I did.
Always before, I had a very vague notion of what an editor does. I have heard them speak at conferences; I have seen countless books dedicated to the editors who worked on them. But as a writer, I have never understood what an editor’s job actually entails. I probably still don’t, at least not completely. But I know more than I did two weeks ago.
