Rachel: Reasons I write.

I’ve heard other writers say that when they get a rejection letter, they post it on the wall of their office. A well-known poet I know says his walls are just plastered in them. I have never understood this; it’s one of those things that fly over my head and I’m too ashamed to admit I don’t get it. My own office has hand-painted cards from people I love, art books and poetry books open and propped up. Do the rejection-plasterers find punishment inspiring? Maybe it proves to them that they exist, that at least they’re trying, seeing their name written over and over in print like that, on letterhead from coveted presses and magazines. I assume, maybe incorrectly, that writers who plaster their walls in rejections actually do so because they are in the what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger camp. It makes you stronger like a callus makes your hands stronger when you’ve worked with them awhile. But a callus of the soul or heart isn’t supposed to be a good thing.
When I receive a bunch of rejections (an inevitability as a writer) I am always left facing the reasons I’m writing in the first place, so I can know why to keep going. And I’m faced over and over again with the somewhat uncomfortable fact that one of the reasons I write is to get approval. But the reasons I write change, depending on which one I need. I’ve written them out below, and I’d love to know if anyone has anything to add to this list, especially those writers on who are further along in their careers, and know the feeling of holding their own book in their hands. Anyhow, here’s the list:
1. I write because I like the way it feels. I mean this literally, physically. I came across an old notebook of mine from the time I was around 5. I didn’t know to write in cursive yet, but there are pages and pages of completely unintelligible swirls and dots and lines that I remember intending to be script. I had attached a meaning to it somehow, but it wasn’t English. I had done it for the pure pleasure of putting pen to paper. I do that now, write aimlessly in the morning, simply because the way a certain felt-tip pen feels against a certain texture of paper gives me no end of pleasure. Not just that, I love the way the letters look after I write them. Typing is the same. I love the report of a typewriter keys, the way it is a letterpress in miniature. I love the speed and ease of a computer keyboard. Sometimes when I am composing on a computer I feel I’m a concert pianist, and this obsolete clunky laptop is my finest instrument. Hell, it’s easier than drawing.
2. I write because the books and stories I most want to read sometimes don’t exist yet. When I was around ten I wrote a book that consisted entirely of extending that part of the Babysitters’ Club books that I loved the most and wished would go on for 90 more pages: the detailed descriptions of each character’s outfit. At the time it is most what I wanted to read. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized the value in literature that reflects the things I observe in the world, rather than just lets me escape, and the stories I try to tell now are stories I don’t see anyone else telling, the books I would most like to read. In some ways, this is my most inspiring reason to write because then I can treat it like improvisational reading, my own compulsion unfolding before my eyes. I think this is what people mean when they say they are “in the zone.”
3. I write because it’s the only thing I’m really good at, and the only thing that I have gotten consistent love and approval for my whole life. Or, maybe, admiration that has been an adequate substitute for love. Teachers, parents, relatives, friends, classmates, lovers, all. It’s been hard to separate where the love for the writing ends and the love for me begins. You might call this reason “vanity”. It is the reason most easily eschewed, especially when faced with rejection. It’s a fair-weather friend, a reason I would rather not admit to myself. But it’s one to watch out for. I have continually gotten swept up in the syrupy good feeling of having someone admire me for the emotional havoc I could wreak on them with words. This admiration is fickle. That’s why the other reasons are so important to remember, and to use as a firm foundation. Vanity is the empty calorie of artistic inspiration.
4. Another good, yet somewhat elusive reason that I write, is that it makes life meaningful. When I write stories I make patterns, little crescendos in the joyous, boring senselessness of life. I want to quote Toni Morrison here, although there are two reasons that is embarrassing: One, to compare my creative process to hers is nothing less than ridiculous; and two, I first read this in O Magazine at the doctor’s office. But it stuck with me. Here it is:
After I finished The Bluest Eye, which took me five years to write, I went into a long period of...not deep depression but a kind of melancholy. Then I had another idea for a book, Sula…and the whole world came alive again. Everything I saw or did was potentially data, a word or a sound or something for the book, and then I really realized that for me writing meant having something coherent in the world. And that feels like...not exactly what I was born for, it's more the thing that holds me in the world in healthy relationship, with language, with people, bits of everything filter down, and I can stay here. Everything I see or do, the weather and the water, buildings...everything actual is an advantage when I am writing. It is like a menu, or a giant tool box, and I can pick and choose what I want. When I am not writing, or more important, when I have nothing on my mind for a book, then I see chaos, confusion, disorder.

Has anyone else felt this way? Do other writers have more reasons to write? Do your reasons change once you have an audience of readers that you’ve never met? I’d be interested to know.

Dan: Nothing Beats a Bookseller

I just got back from almost a full month of touring, in Germany, England, and the US, and overall it was a big success. Sometimes I had huge groups at my signings, and sometimes I had no one at all, but even the bad events were good, in a way, because they allowed me to meet the booksellers and shake their hands and talk about my book, and no offense to the readers out there but a single bookseller on my team is usually more valuable, long term, than a whole group of you. Why are booksellers so important? I will illustrate.

I visited a Borders in San Diego (in Mission Valley—say hi to Christina and RJ while you’re there), on an unscheduled stop on my way to another signing, and as soon as I walked in and introduced myself the clerk said “Oh good! We’ve been expecting you!” This was news to me, since I hadn’t even been expecting myself until 30 seconds earlier when I’d found the place by accident. The clerk introduced me to the manager, RJ, who introduced me to one of the booksellers on staff, Christina, who literally clapped her hands when she saw me. “I saw your book a few weeks ago when I was stocking the shelves,” she said, “and I thought it looked interesting. I read it and I LOVED IT! I knew you were on tour in the area, so I told everyone to watch for you in case you stopped by.”

I nodded and smiled happily, thanking her, and RJ handed me a big stack of books. “She hand-sold our first batch in the next few days. This is our second shipment, and she’s already sold a bunch of these, two.”

I looked at the stack of books. “How many are there?”

“Only seventeen left. She’s been selling them quite a bit.”

I literally whistled, right there, which I didn’t think people actually did. Every Borders I’d visited on my tour had had five copies, or maybe four if they’d gotten lucky and managed to sell one. This store, and this bookseller, had already sold at least twice that. Christina and RJ both wanted personalized copies, so there was two more sales, and then I signed the other fifteen copies, and on the way out I saw Christina already pitching the book to another customer.

I don’t say this to brag—it was far more common for me to show up at a store, introduce myself, and get completely disinterested shrugs from the manager. Especially at the B&N in Burbank; that manager could not possibly have cared less that I even existed. No, what I’m trying to point out is that having a couple of really good booksellers on your side is just about the best possible thing that can happen to an author. That Borders in Mission Valley will sell a zillion copies of my book (relatively speaking), not because they’re getting special treatment, or because the people in the area read more thrillers or buy more books in general, but because Christina and RJ have read my book, and liked it, and now they suggest it to everyone who comes in. In most stores the customers are on their own—they’ll only buy my book if they happen to walk past the right section, go down the right aisle, look at the right shelf, see the right cover, and become intrigued. Even then, there’s no guarantee that “intrigued” will translate into “purchased.” Having a bookseller like your book will increase its visibility by a hundred-fold, and give you an on-site advocate ready to hand-sell your book to everyone who walks in.

Official book trailer for SEA! (Heidi)

Michael: Cookin' up a bookaversary vlog

My first year as an author has given me plenty of food for thought.

Sara: I won't be sorry, but neither will you.

Dear query persons who respond to my rejections with a "you will be sorry" and sometimes with a "you will always regret this":

The thing is, neither you nor I shall be sorry. I promise. You want an agent who adores your writing, who is passionate about your book and who feels confident that they know how to sell it. No matter how good your book is, an agent who feels lukewarm about it will not be an asset to you. We say this often, but it is true- agents turn down saleable projects because we don't have the right experience or enthusiasm for the material. All agents might turn down a project that goes on to be published and performs well, and think maybe we should have rethought taking on that project, but this business is so subjective, we have to go with our gut. We did not love it, so we did not take it on, and someone who loved it sold it and another person who loved it bought it, and that is probably why it is doing so well.

There is a preoccupation with the idea that agents are often proven wrong and are sitting at our desks ruing the day we tossed that manuscript aside, and I can see why it is an appealing vision to someone in the midst of the frustrating, lengthy process of looking for the right agent. At every conference I have attended I am asked if I passed on something that I regret. I do see why you want to know, because we agents deal with rejections, too. We sometimes lose a new client that we want to another agent, and we have editors rejecting our submissions. We understand. But we have to focus on clients that want us as much as we want them, and on finding the editor who loves the project as much as we do, not on the editors who don't.

So please, don't call me to plead your case, or keep sending me the query I passed on. I am not going to change my mind on that particular query (however, if the agent said she would be willing to read again if you revise down the line, you should). And you can always query with a different project.

Instead of resending the same query over and over to the same agent, spend your time looking for the right agent, not trying to convince the wrong agent that she is right. Spend time on perfecting your query letter and on perfecting your manuscript, to give your project the best chance of success with the next agent who reads it.

Here is the hopeful side of this-- many successful books were once rejected by lots of agents, which means that even if one agent doesn't love it, another will. And that one or more rejections is not the end of the road.

But my no, on that particular query, is still a no.

Varian: The Symbolism of Color in The Great Gilly Hopkins

Last week, my YA novel Saving Maddie was released. The novel has a very striking cover—the juxtaposition of Madeline’s purple lipstick with the cross around her neck points to one of the main themes of the novel: the balance between the spiritual and the seductive.

While Madeline has sported purple lipstick since the first draft of the novel, I didn’t think much about the use of color in a symbolic way until my first semester at Vermont College, when I was reintroduced to Katherine Paterson’s The Great Gilly Hopkins. In the novel, Paterson uses color to symbolically hint at Gilly’s true desire—something Gilly herself doesn’t even realize.

The novel opens with Gilly being taken to the home of her new foster parent, Maime Trotter. The outside of Trotter’s house is “old and brown”, and the furniture inside of the house includes a brown couch, brown chair, and a brown piano bench. In addition, the brown couch is topped with a “pile of cushions covered in graying lace”. A black table supports the television, and a black upright piano stands between the door and the chair. Lastly, Trotter’s other foster child, William Earnest Teague, is a young boy with thick glasses and “muddy brown hair.” (4-6)

Paterson’s use of brown and other dark colors at first seems like a quirky character trait associated with Maime Trotter. However, we soon begin to see other instances of color. In Chapter 2, as Gilly unpacks her brown suitcase in the brown house, she reflects back on her time spent with past foster parents. “The Nevinses’ house had been square and white and dustless, just like every other square, white, dustless house in the treeless development where they had lived. She had been the only thing out of place” (10).

Then Gilly unpacks her most prized possession—a photograph of a woman with brown eyes that “laughed up at her as they always had”, and glossy black hair that “hung in gentle waves without one hair astray.” Gilly was looking at a picture of her mother (Paterson, 10-11).

We quickly realize that Gilly has been waiting for her mother to show up and rescue her from the Nevinses, Richmonds, Newmans, and all the other foster families that have abandoned her. Gilly believes that everything will be okay once this beautiful, brown eyed, black haired woman reappears and takes her back home.

Of course, what Gilly doesn’t realize is that she can find everything she’s ever wanted at the brown house in Thompson Park. This is solidified throughout the novel, as we are introduced to Mr. Randolph, the blind Black man that lives in the grey house next door (Paterson 13), and her teacher, Miss Harris, a “tall, tea-colored woman, crowned with a bush of black hair” (Paterson 24).

Gilly eventually comes to love and trust her make-shift family, and is alarmed when her maternal grandmother arrives to take custody of her. However, Paterson lets the reader know that Gilly doesn’t need to worry; Paterson describes Gilly’s grandmother as “…a small, plump woman whose grey hair peaked out from under a close-fitting black felt hat. She wore black gloves and a black-and-tweed overcoat, which was a little too long to be fashionable, and carried a slightly worn black alligator bag over one arm” (129).

Through her use of dark colors, Paterson tells the reader that while Gilly is upset she is being forced to live with a woman she’s never met, her grandmother will provide Gilly with the love and attention she has been so desperately searching for.

One point worth noting is that Paterson goes against the traditional stereotypes associated with colors. Dark colors such as black and brown are associated with good, kind characters. Likewise, characters with questionable morals and agendas are painted with light colors. Miss Ellis, the social worker that wants to take Gilly away from Trotter after Gilly steals, had blonde hair and blue eyes. The red-headed Agnes Stokes helps Gilly steal from Mr. Randolph (72-78) and scoffs at the idea of Gilly considering Trotter and William Earnest as family (142-143). The Great Gilly Hopkins herself had straw colored hair (10), and when we are first introduced to her, she is chewing pink bubble gum (1). Gilly’s given name, Galadriel, evokes images of J.R.R. Tolkien’s elf queen of the same name, whom when she is first introduced in The Lord of the Rings is “clad wholly in white” and whose hair “was of deep gold” (398).

Most interesting is Gilly’s perception of her mother when she finally meets her face-to-face. Gilly travels to the airport with her grandmother, and is horrified at the sight of Courtney Rutherford Hopkins. She isn’t “tall and willowy and gorgeous” as Gilly had imagined (Paterson 174). And her hair is not the glossy black that Gilly had expected; instead it is “dull and stringy—a darker version of Agnes Stokes’s [red hair], which had always needed washing” (Paterson 174). Of course, Paterson had hinted at this earlier in the novel: Gilly had already spurned her mother’s pink room for her deceased Uncle Chadwell’s room, with is corduroy brown bed (Paterson 158).

Paterson leaves the reader to wonder if Gilly’s mother had once been good but had transformed into a more dislikeable character over the years since the photo had been taken. Or perhaps, being that it was just a photograph—a vision—Gilly’s perception of her mother was never accurate to begin with. Either way, the reader (and Gilly at this point) knows that Gilly has found a place where she will be cared for and loved. Paterson’s use of color reinforces this revelation—making the novel that much more layered.

Works Cited

Paterson, Katherine. The Great Gilly Hopkins. 1987. New York: Harper Trophy-Harper, 2004.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings Part One: The Fellowship of the Ring. 1954. New York: Ballantine, 1965.

Brian Y: Secret Agent

I am a writer. You are a writer. I am a secret agent. You are a secret agent.

So when friends come over for dinner or we go out to dinner or we go out for some other reason, out where there are other live bipeds doing live biped things, we are carrying with us a world of secrets. Whether you drink your martinis stirred or shaken or whether you just drink beer from a tap, 007 has nothing on you.

I mean today, today my character discovered something essential about the world and tried to communicate it. This made some people really angry because that something involved exposing something they’d done they didn’t want exposed. What would the consequences be? How would it all turn out? All day long I struggled with the subtleties of the situation and what would happen because of them.

Some friends who came over for dinner asked what I’d been up to. I could have said discovering unbelievable essential secrets in the world and emotional violence and struggling with the future, but I thought this might make them uncomfortable.

“Just writing,” I said.

They asked the obligatory question. “What are you working on?”

But I can’t tell. I’m a secret agent. You can’t tell your secrets in casual conversation. They sound dumb. Also talking about secrets, such as what you’re writing before you’ve finished, sometimes makes them disappear. The Writing Gods are always listening. So I either have to remain silent or make something up. “A Podiatrists’ convention,” I might say.

Naturally, (unless they're really into feet, but we won't go there) they begin to talk of other things. Real jobs with real people. Selling, buying, doing. I nod and smile and pretend that their working lives are more interesting than mine. I have to pretend that all I did all day was sit on my butt and stare out my window and type a word here and there between weighty sighs. It’s part of being a secret agent.

But the truth? The truth is a secret.