Dogs Steal Yarn

identity shift?

I'm thinking--just toying with the idea, mind you--of changing the name of the blog. Since there's now one dog, not two, and the one dog doesn't steal yarn. Since that one dog is a little old man who doesn't much care for posing for pictures these days. Since I don't talk about knitting much at all anymore...

I don't know what I'd change the name to. Or if maybe it's a terrible idea to change the name 5 years into a blog with a decent regular readership established... I don't know. What do you, oh regular readers, think?

So maybe I've got the blog blahs

...because I keep thinking I should post here and then keep putting it off. I don't have much to say. Thumper's terrific. The garden is growing. I've got a huge crush on Billy. All the usual stuff. It's rather quiet around here.

Trilce II, the sweater that was to be finished months ago, is still unfinished. I guess that's what happens when you knit all of ten or eleven stitches a week. But no worries. It'll look great with flip flops in August. Or maybe not. But I can put it away for the fall, so...

So yeah. Not so much with the knitting these days.

I'm reading this and loving it.

My friend Emily is up for an award tonight and I'm 97% happy for her. (Okay. 95%. No...maybe 93%. Whatever. Redheads look good in green.)

I'm stalking patio furniture on Craigslist.

Considering getting my mom a worm bin for Mother's Day.

That's about it. Quiet. On the outside, anyway.

Things are starting to come up in the garden. Little blades that want to be spinach, little spade-like shapes that want to be broccoli and kale. Tiny little green spots of leaves promising at beets. The strawberry plants look extremely happy. Yesterday I planted the blueberry bush, which will hopefully start bearing fruit next year.

On a work break today, I read this. Depressing. Oh man, how depressing. But it reinforced this decision of ours to garden. Beyond the smaller economic and health benefits it will afford our little family, there's also the larger sense of the importance of growing some of our own food. Maybe the necessity of growing our own food. I've been joking with Billy about how when the economy collapses it'll be a good thing we can feed ourselves. But of course beneath every joke lies a bit of truth. Or paranoia. Too soon to tell, maybe.

Anyway, a good article, one I hope you'll read if you haven't already.

Happy Sunday. I'm headed back to the narrative coal mine. My characters are dumpster diving today. Writing a novel about squatters, as I am, has impacted the constant narrative in my head in unexpected ways. Ways I can't really express clearly yet. Nor should I...it's all going into the book. But talking about it with Billy recently, he was saying it was good material to write about, that people want to know what the hell has happened to America and that this is a piece of that question. And I think he's right about that, very much right, and so that's something I've been chewing on lately. Something that I'm working through as I write.

I'm reading The Human Stain now during Thumper's naps, am about thirty pages from the end. Its making me think about the whole Monica Lewinsky thing again, making me think about the point we've reached in our culture. And then thinking of how the media jumped on Obama's "bitter" remark, and thinking about the vacuousness of our news media in general, thinking about our short attention spans, our short memories, and feeling sick of it all and just wanting to hole up and garden and ride out the last gasps of our empire's decline. Which is a lazy, cowardly response. But I am a product of the culture, too, yes... And so for a while I despair about where we're at and where we're going but then soon enough I go back to worrying about how much coffee I'm drinking and hating a former co-worker because her debut novel is coming out next month even though she was rejected by my agent (and then feeling ashamed remembering how I'd taken a certain smug satisfaction from that at the time because I am a petty, jealous creature yes I am).

And because I am not one of those people who talks about politics easily or often in public, and because I prefer to hash things out quietly, in my own head, here I go, back down into my hole and back to 1994 and my dumpster-diving squatters. (I hear you can find still-warm reject bagels behind a particular Upper East Side Hot & Crusty.)

Grateful that I'm not a vegan

In Utopia, your neighbors turn up on your doorstep with eggs they've just gathered from their chicken coop.

Aren't they beautiful? The white ones aren't actually white. They're a very pale blue. I've never had eggs quite this fresh before, and I've certainly never before had eggs from chickens I know personally. These eggs will be dinner tonight, along with some steamed broccoli and this week's sourdough.

Not much to say today

So I'll point you in the direction of my friend Michael Deibert, who has plenty to say and says it well.

Onward, yes

But also a bit of wallowing and a bit of sulking. And all while weighted down by the tail end of a cold, and waking up on Wednesday morning with my top lip totally swollen by cold sores (boy did that make me feel pretty. Yeah. Stress sometimes gets the cold sores going on me).

But now it's Sunday again and I'm in the usual Sunday place, working on the novel. And it's a beautiful warm sunny day and I'm sitting next to an open window and outside Portland is walking by in short sleeves and tattoos, and the coffee is good and the novel's moving along well and my guys are hopefully out having fun and all is more or less right with the world. You know...in the immediate small sense. Because of course things are not at all right with the world, but let's not get into that right now.

Gail has decided not to drawer the book. There's nowhere she immediately thinks would be the right next place to submit it, but she wants to keep options open. When/if she comes across an editor who she thinks would receive the book well at a house that she thinks would publish it well, she'll submit it again. So it's in a drawer, but in an open drawer. I'm okay with that.

A key phrase there, "at a house she thinks would publish it well." That matters. Publication at any cost does not serve me well in the long term. When I wrote the last post, I knew there would be some well-intentioned calls to self-publish. I had initially included a big long explanation of why that is not an option, and then deleted it. I'm not going to get into the particulars here, but will just say... No. Self-publishing is not an option. I'm thinking beyond this one little book. Thinking ahead to the writing career as a whole, thinking long term. I worked in book publishing for a long time, and so I'm speaking with some experience here. Self-publishing isn't going to set anyone up for a career in serious literary fiction. Period.

And the teensy tiny very very small presses, while they may do terrific work and I'm glad they're out there, are also not the best option for me at this time. I only get to publish my debut novel once, you know? Or maybe you don't. But I'm going to back away from this for now. I feel like I'm arguing with the bathroom mirror. I've put my career in the hands of an extremely experienced agent, and I trust her.

Last week was a lost week. Time to dig out from under. The house is trashed. I think I cooked dinner all of once last week. I didn't bake any bread, though I did manage to feed the starter. Now, for real, and I mean it,

Onward.

I thought I’d tipped my hand in the previous post when I said that things were rather pointedly not going on on the publishing front, but I guess not. So here’s the thing.

Drowning Practice is most likely going into the drawer. It will, most likely, never be published. It is a good book (if I do say so myself), represented by an excellent agent, Gail Hochman (a far more high-powered agent than I had any right to even hope for fresh out of grad school and unpublished), and it will probably never see light of day.

There have been 17+ submissions to publishers over the past two years. Twelve submissions on the initial round—all rejections—and then a series of revisions to the manuscript—and then 5+ (I’ve now lost track) submissions and rejections on the second round. The first round went out entirely to the bigger houses. In the second round, three of the submissions were to smaller, independent houses. The editors at the larger houses who did say they liked the book also said they weren’t sure how to market it, or were afraid it was too dark, and so passed. The thinking in the second round was that the independent houses might be more willing to take a risk on a less-commercial debut novel. (Independent presses generally pay lower advances and have smaller print runs, so they have to sell fewer copies to turn a profit.) Alas… last week, Wednesday, the final rejection came in from the final house, an independent publisher. The manuscript is not in the hands of anyone right now. Gail is taking a look at where we’ve already gone out to, and is trying to come up with some ideas, but we’ve agreed that it might just be the end of the line with this one.

I worked in book publishing—in the big houses—for twelve years. I know how high the stacks of submitted manuscripts climb in editors’ offices. I know how few of those manuscripts get published. (And I also know how very bad some of the ones that do get published are, and how very good some of the ones that get rejected are, but that’s a gripe for another day, and probably not a public gripe.) So going into this process, I felt prepared. Since I’d already been on the other side of the fence I thought I knew what I was getting into. I felt my chances were pretty good.

Well…there’s something I didn’t realize. Or didn’t want to realize.

Most books don’t get published. Not some books. Not many books. MOST books. See that writer in the corner of the café, wrestling with his laptop? Yeah. He has a book in the drawer. See that published novelist, reading from her second novel at your local bookstore? That second novel is actually her fifth. She has three in the drawer.

Gail has given me permission to share one of her emails with you:

“The problem is that many good things are not selling. All the agents have batches of great first novels--or novels by well-published midlist authors--which we just cannot sell. I know you hear this and don't think it will happen to you--but frankly it happens to most of our clients, that the market is drying up. The problem is that these publishers did not see [Drowning Practice] as commercial and I did not get from their reactions anything that tells me what kind of publisher this WOULD be good for. If we have to move onward, we have to move onward... You are in large silent company, alas.”

I set out to write this post thinking that there was this terrible open secret in the writing world. That we aren’t being told in our MFA programs and workshops and conferences that most of us will not get our books published. But now, as I write it, I’m thinking that’s not true. I’m thinking I heard evidence of it, but I didn’t think it would happen to me. I didn’t truly believe it happened to good books, written by authors who worked really hard. I graduated from the MFA program at Brooklyn College, armed with my big MFA ego. While a fellow at a prestigious artist colony, I was accepted by my first-choice agent. Once I had an agent, I thought I was set.

Yeah.

The good news is that big MFA ego has been tempered a good deal.

Drowning Practice is a good book. It is represented by an excellent agent. (I’m repeating myself here, yet can’t bring myself to delete it. Feeling kind of defensive? Yeah.) I am, indeed, one of those writers who works very very hard at the craft. And we can’t find a publisher to say yes to this book. It seems to be happening to me.

But now that it’s happening to me, I find myself in excellent company. Michael Cunningham, director of my MFA fiction program and a wonderful teacher and mentor, for example. A while ago, when it was first beginning to look truly hopeless, I sent Michael what can only be described as an angsty email of despair. And in response he told me (and then granted me permission to tell you) about his own unpublished novels. Michael Cunningham, one of my literary heroes long before he was my teacher, has two novels in the drawer. (In fact, Gail, our shared agent, has them in a file cabinet under lock and key. They are literally in a drawer.) After those two novels failed to find a publisher, he went on, as you know, to publish some rather brilliant books (two of them on my all-time favorite list) and to win the Pulitzer Prize. So if that doesn’t give me hope, I’m just looking for reasons to feel sorry for myself.

What does one do when it comes time to give up on four years’ worth of work?

Well, if you’re me, first you go on a major book binge at my favorite used book store:

You know you live in a great reading town when this is the quality of book you find at the Goodwill

And then you sit your ass down in front of the computer and get back to work on the next novel. One of many useful things that Michael taught us at Brooklyn College was this: When a book goes out into the world, it is important that you already be well under way with the next project. That way, whatever happens to the book in the world, it’s only something you did in the past. You will by that point care more about whatever it is you’re working on in the present.

And it’s true. It seems almost too simple, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I’m sad for the book that won’t get read, but I care so very much more about the book I’m writing right now.

And so, as Michael and Gail encouraged me, Onward.

Feeling a good deal better

though not entirely healthy yet. But it's been long enough that I'm fairly confident I'm no longer contagious. A good feeling in and of itself, as I don't enjoy going out into the world with the sense that I'm dropping bits of disease in my wake.

There's some stuff going on (or rather pointedly not going on) on the publishing front, and I've been formulating a post on it, talking to you guys in my head about it, but haven't yet had the time or strength of will to sit down and write it. In the next day or two I'll do it. I never think about posts ahead of time like that, but this is kind of a big one, revealing something that matters to me more than I tend to here, and I'm nervous about it. But declaring now my intention to do so, because I think it's important that I do. I've even gotten permission to quote emails from two of the involved parties.

So much thought for a blog post surely bodes ill, but there you have it.

On the more positive front of things going very very well, we have the current novel-in-progress. I had this mini-epiphany the other day. One that seems, in retrospect, almost embarrassingly obvious. But that's the way with epiphanies, isn't it?

I realized that, as a writer of fiction, I am not beholden to historical fact. There. Obvious, right? I told you. But I was feeling so cowed by the history of the current novel, so tied to getting it "right" and to "what happened," and I entirely forgot my right (my imperative?) to take whatever kernels of history that suited the story I wanted to tell and use them as a jumping off point to...you know... make shit up. Make shit up in order to tell the story I want to tell in a more true way than actual fact can do. Why is it so easy to forget that bit? I was so hung up on something that I'm actually not required to do. That I would do best NOT to do. So big relief there, and with big reliefs come big spurts of productivity, and the novel is trotting along nicely now. I'm optimistic about finishing the first draft by the beginning of the summer, and having a draft ready to submit to my agent by the end of the year.

But you know how things go. We'll see.

Remind me to also tell you about the Grace Paley effect. I've been busy at the keyboard.

Which means precious little knitting. Remember how I thought Trilce II would be done...oh...a month ago? Yeah. I've been doing the raglan decreases of the yoke for about a decade now. The pattern had been done and tech edited and test knitted for ages. I really should just release it. But I feel like I want to finish this one last version first, and so there you have it.

And that's all the rambling I can manage for today, as the kiddo is bound to wake from his nap any minute now.

It's been entirely too long since my last post, and I feel like I should want to do something entertaining here for you, but I have a cold--a nasty one--and all I want to do is hide under a blanket for a while and maybe feebly sip some tea.

Alas, nope. Someone should come up with some kind of sick day plan for moms.

Woe is me.

(I know, not really. But ugh.)

Doesn't motherhood have a way of restoring your own mother to something of the saintly position she held in childhood--the one she lost when you turned 13? When I'm feeling this cruddy and still have to go on (still WANT to go on) smiling and singing and playing with the little guy, I really appreciate all the times my own mother did the same and more. I don't remember her ever being sick, but of course that's impossible. So she just never acted sick. She never crawled into bed and took a sick day. Maybe she should have. Maybe she should have asked my dad to call in sick once in a while to help her out with us when she wasn't feeling well. Probably she should have. (It can certainly be said that my mother has a habit of putting herself last way too often.)

I don't want to be quite that demanding of myself. I do need sick days. When I'm really sick--like the food poisoning the other week--I do ask for help, and Billy does stay home from work to get me the rest I need.

So what am I saying here? Damn, my brain is fuzzy today. What I guess it comes down to is that I owe my mom a phone call to say thanks. And that I, not quite the selfless person my mother is, not quite ready to suffer the way she does, will be asking Billy to get up with the kiddo tomorrow morning so I can sleep in.