I'll have another. . . disappointment

Sept. 20, 2012

Diary of some writer or other, somebody I don't even know but have seen in the mirror a few times

 

 

(I thought this was worth quoting, even if it's totally irrelevant to anyone else but me.)

It’s as if I can’t think too closely about my life because if I do, I see the emptiness. The failure. The promise not fulfilled. I know I am not the only writer facing this, or at least I hope so. I found a blog post yesterday that said due to financial necessity, literary fiction  has been largely handed back to the literary presses, making it harder for writers because the literary presses must be inundated with stuff. I would imagine at least 80% of it is totally unpublishable, so if you don’t grab them immediately you’re lost.

 

 

 

 

One agent I tried to contact would only read the first 3 pages of my novel.  Her response was, "It just didn't seem to be going anywhere." It killed me, but it told me something about the reality of publishing now.  My hopes for my third novel are in ruins. None of it worked, nobody was interested, and I was crushed because I was *sure* this one would work, bigger than the last 2 combined, maybe even really big.

 

I feel like a total fool for contacting these people, but what could I do? Everyone constantly tells me to “make contacts”, then when I try to, I look stupid and/or desperate. I don’t know how to do it effectively. I’m told all sorts of conflicting things: be outlandish, wear an orange shirt with suspenders and a rainbow wig, and carry one of those honking Harpo Marx things; DON’T be outlandish, wear a three-piece suit and a Smart Phone balanced on your head. Make yourself indispensible, provide certain services, discreetly.  Probably that last one would work best.

 

 

 

 

It could be I am perceived as too old and over the hill, as publishers now want sexy, smoky dust-jacket photos, young women with long hair and a sultry, pouty, “I don’t care if my book sells or not” expression. (I've seen numerous articles about this, but if *I* say it, everyone is horrified I would even think such an awful thing. Oops, there goes my last chance: no one wants to publish anyone spreading such lies just because she's bitter, and too old.) And if you're a graduate of the UBC Creative Writing program, you're practically a shoo-in. I was also told - the identity of this person is forever locked in the vault of my most useful information - that if you're a woman of colour, it really doesn't matter what you write, so long as you write.

 

The problem is, the more queries and manuscripts you send out and have rejected, the worse you look. After a while you’ve used up all your chances, you're perceived as a pest and a failure and a wanna-be, and - then what? 

 

 

 

 

So why am I even thinking of this? To keep up my hope, which you're supposed to do, I suppose.  But I get ahead of myself. I dream too much, and none of it comes true. Then my heart breaks, over and over and over again. Jesus, can I have just *one* more book out, even another failure? Can I do this, am I allowed?  I can’t write another one, it’s not in me to have a big stack of unpublished work that will never see the light of day because all the presses in Canada now see my work and think, "Oh, no, not HER again." (Get out the form rejection letters.) To come crawling like that, and have the door slammed in my face for the 1000^th time - it’s embarrassing, they will be embarrassed for me.

 

It's not as if I've never done this. If anyone calls me "aspiring", I will choke them to death. I won't quote the reviews for my first two novels, except to say about 90% of them were positive, some of them glowing. Some of them even popped up in places which had never received a review copy, such as the U. S. My second novel won a New York City Book Festival award. Big, fat, hairy deal: this meant NOTHING when I tried to get some attention for my Harold Lloyd novel, The Glass Character.

 

 

 

 

Part of the reason might be the fact that no one in Canada has ever heard of Harold Lloyd. There are thousands of small publishers in the U. S. , but that's just the trouble: thousands. . . where do I start? Taking random stabs is a very bad idea because with that many options, you can go on stabbing for years and years without getting anywhere, meanwhile spending vast amounts of time, money, and hope.

 

Not that I haven't tried a few stunts outside the box. I tried to contact Rich Correll, who was like a second son to Harold Lloyd and one of this closest friends. Never got a response.  I sent emails to Harold Lloyd Entertainment, whose CEO is Suzanne Lloyd, Harold's granddaughter (whom Harold raised like a daughter). No dice, only a polite reply. Mostly my attempts were brushed off like dandruff or ignored altogether.

 

I will never get over my bitter disappointment that my talent was never used. You choke on it if you don’t find a way to use it, if you just stick it in a drawer and never look at it again. I used to believe in God, but now I see that it was something like a horse race where you pick the lucky numbers, then stand beside the race-track pumping your fists up and down and shouting, “Go, go, go!” Just like the brief, flukey, heartbreaking career of I’ll Have Another. Yet another "also-ran".

 

But I WILL have another, another disappointment, another heart-crush, because it seems the fates have decreed I haven’t had enough of them. I will never get over this because I do not WANT to get over my life’s work, what I was destined to do from the beginning!

 

 

 

The summer's gone. . .

. . . and all the flow'rs are dyin'. . .

But it isn't really fall yet. It won't be for several weeks. But we're still on that same infernal system that probably goes back to feudal days, when kids were kept home in the summer to work the fields. Now they just die of boredom and work the malls.

A certain melancholy descends on me now, as I contemplate what the bleep I am going to do to publish this novel. Then I realize I have three manuscripts that need to be published, and don't know what to do with any of them!

The first one is a book of poems inspired by the diary of Anne Frank. I had several highly critical author/editor types read it, and all praised it lavishly. It bounced back to me several times, and I couldn't go on with it, it had too much of my heart in it.

Then there's Bus People. Oh, oh, oh, BUS PEOPLE! I wrote this novel in 2005, in a kind of storm of inspiration. It's set on Vancouver's notorious Downtown

Eastside.

Just as I have never heard of anyone else writing a novel about Harold Lloyd, I have never heard of anyone else setting a novel on the Downtown

Eastside.

I haven't looked at it in so long that it intimidates me. So which one do I lead with? First, I must get an agent. I'm not sure how I did that the first time, and the truth is it just didn't work out (I thought the first person who was interested in my work would be the best person to represent me to publishers.

Wrong!).

It's as if there is some impenetrable brother/sisterhood in the literary world that I just cannot penetrate. I don't know the secret handshake, or I have the wrong blood type or something. My second novel Mallory was all about social alienation and feeling like a member of another species, but I was not aware then of how excruciatingly true this is of me.

Cold shoulders and closed doors.

When it looks as if a door is about to pop open (those reviews I posted yesterday), it blows shut again, and locks tight.

So. . . I hereby post pictures of two little dolls I made for my granddaughters. They are only about 3" high, and I made them with a Wonder Knitter, a little gizmo that is essentially like the spool knitters of my childhood.

I had no instructions and no pattern, and I knitted them all in one piece, switching the two heads back and forth. The dresses were vastly scaled-down from regular doll dresses, which were scaled-down from baby dresses. I am doing everything in miniature.

This keeps me from going insane with worry and pain.

This hurts, it hurts. I know I am good. It took me this long to find out. I have three manuscripts, all of which have the potential to be published and to reach people. And at this point, it looks as if none of them will be. But I can't give up on it. I can't spend the rest of my life knitting. Something's got to give.

Novel #3: I need a (not-so-secret) agent

Reviews of BETTER THAN LIFE and MALLORY

"Joy - heart-swelling, button-bursting, exhilarating, uplifting, exuberant joy - is at the centre of Margaret Gunning's first novel, Better than Life. The details, the turns of phrase, the sharp observances that evoke both place and characters in a small town in Ontario at the end of the 1960s, are infused with a sense of lightness and humour that borders on the divine. Redemption overrides judgement every time in this carefully crafted novel, and Gunning manages to illuminate that which is dark and secret with that which is rich and riotous in colour. She is an author able to open up the world of a fractured but seeking people and bring them into light, healing and hope. Better Than Life is fiction at its finest."
- Edmonton Journal

"As Anderson-Dargatz did with her town of Likely and Stephen Leacock did with Mariposa, Gunning has created a fictional place that's recognizable to anyone who has ever lived in a small town. . . This delightful novel looks like a contender for the Leacock Medal. It may be just the book to bring some light into the room as the grey days of the rainy season settle in."
- Vancouver Sun

“Gunning does period ambience with a minimum of well-chosen references. Her expressive turns can spur shivers of pleasure. It’s a book that seduces quickly, then pulls you happily through an afternoon.”
- Globe and Mail

“It’s short and breezy, by times droll, intermittently serious and, ultimately, warm as toast. It could be in every shopping cart in the country.”
- Montreal Gazette

"There is a contagious energy to Gunning's prose which often -- and accurately -- delineates Mallory's intense emotional improvisation, child-like perspicacity and surprisingly mature realizations. Marketed as adult fiction, this is a book that could very easily attract a younger crowd, hungry for the extremes of experience and sensation Mallory represents.”
- Globe and Mail

“Margaret Gunning writes with uncanny grace and unflinching clarity about what it is to be a young girl forgotten by the world. She captures the heartbreak of loneliness and separateness, the fear and self-loathing of adolescent girlhood, with a gentle, sympathetic touch. And she manages to make Mallory complex and fully human in the process -- both victim and torturer, brilliant yet painfully naive, innocent yet seething with awakening sexual desire. The ominous feeling that underscores much of the novel is reminiscent of the best work of another Canadian author, Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose girl heroes seem to inhabit this same dark world.”
- Edmonton Journal

OK, maybe you needed to read these first. Maybe that's why my original post disappeared as I tried to cut-and-paste this. Maybe now you'll see why I am so frustrated.

There's a myth floating around in writers' circles that if you have one book that is favorably received, you're "in" and don't need to worry any more. So what happens if you have two? The comments above are just a small sampling of my reviews for Better than Life and Mallory, my first two novels. Mallory got no negative reviews at all, and BTL got only one. Both were very favorably reviewed in the books section of Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Several of the reviews appeared in American publications which hadn't even been sent a copy. This just doesn't happen, and my first publisher called it "a miracle" (implying it had been a spontaneous act of God and not the result of my own skill and hard work).

Funny how miracles can come apart, almost as if they never happened. Sales of my first two books were abysmal, and I can't tell you why. I do know, after 25 years of being a reviewer, that some books generate "buzz" before they even go to press. Why? I will never know. It's an alchemy, a magic I don't seem to be able to capture.

I need someone to represent me. That much is plain. I need to make that leap. The novel I am ready to publish is called The Glass Character: a fictional retelling of the life and work of a long-ignored genius, silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd. I didn't just research this topic: I became Harold Lloyd, I saw the world through his glasses, I climbed high, hung on to the hands of the clock, and fell from a great height.

I am ready. But for what? For more head-banging, more trudging around, more slammed doors? I recently received the following rejection, no doubt carefully worded so as not to bruise my delicate feelings: "We may be turning down the next best-seller here, and I am sure it will find a good home soon, but I regret to tell you the answer is no."

People get there, they do. I see it. As a reviewer, I notice that a lot of very ordinary books of a certain genre do very well, and I mean every season. I'm probably breaking the writer's code of keeping your mouth shut no matter what hell you're going through. I should keep smiling while the best book I am ever likely to write goes nowhere.

Does my track record mean nothing? I wonder why no one in the industry can see that I made that "miracle" happen. It was my work, and I have a lot more. Here it is.

My e-mail address is magunning@shaw.ca. Perhaps it should appear in every post from now on.

How to kill the bunny in one easy lifetime

The! Writing! Life!: Myths and Tips your Mother Won’t Yell you

MYTH #1: Once you’re published, you’re “in” and will never experience rejection again.

MYTH #2: You will keep the same publisher for the rest of your life.

MYTH WHATEVER: All agents know what they’re doing and who to approach and how to best represent you to the publisher.

YEAH, AND (while we’re at it), you can protest honestly about how badly you have been treated without serious or fatal repercussions.

Writer’s groups help sharpen your skills and boost morale. But they don’t, and I’ll tell you why:

Most people in them don’t know how to critique, so they just put down an opinion which may be very uninformed and of no use to you at all. And the following:

(i) Most of the critiquing isn’t critiquing at all, but consists of “oh, that’s awesome/lovely”, or words to that effect.

(ii) Everyone will strive to find the atom of good in your piece and play it up so as not to hurt your feelings.

(iii) NO ONE takes criticism well. If they are pretending to, they’re phonies. In fact, no one really wants criticism at all. They want to hear, “oh, that’s awesome/lovely”.

Writer’s groups are a great source of mutual support, no? Guess what. Sharing secrets of what makes writing work for you is deadly. If you were a tennis pro, would you sit down with your competition and say, “Now, here’s how I do my killer backhand”?

Publishing, like most things, is a pyramid, with 98 or 99% of writers at the bottom or in the middle somewhere. Only a couple of percent make it to “the top” and make any real money or get movie deals, like everyone expects to. If you “support” other writers, you are in effect saying to them, “Here, let me give you a leg-up on the ladder and take my spot. I don’t want it.”

Some writers are absolutely ruthless (see “only a couple of percent”: that’s how they got there) and, if you’re any good at all, will do anything to obliterate you and your work. Watch your back.

Some writers, usually those in writer’s groups, will sabotage you in all sorts of subtle ways. They wear away at you like a worm until you are completely undermined. It’s not that they want to succeed; they just want to see you fail.

Rejections never stop hurting, you never get used to them, and they always come on the same day the plumbing fails, the dog dies and you have your period.

(Here’s another reason why not to exchange work with other writers.) Be careful no one steals your stuff. It happens, and it’s devastating. It isn’t usually the whole manuscript, just the spiritual core of it, ripped out and shamelessly exploited. If it’s published before yours is (which it probably will be, given the 2-year lag that no one knows about), you will be branded a plagiarist, or at least unoriginal. If you protest or even say anything about it at all, you’ll be considered defensive, insecure and unprofessional. Practice the indispensible skill of enduring abuse silently and with a smile.

Coming up to a published author (especially a famous one) with manuscript trembling in hand is a bad idea. They don’t have time to read your stumbling efforts because they are busy writing their own work. If they did read it, they would likely tell you what they really think. They won’t read it, say “God, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen!”, hand it to their publisher and say, “Here’s the next best-seller. Publish it.”

If the famous author turns down your work, don’t go around telling everyone he/she is a jerk. It’s ungracious and unfair and not true. Well, probably not.

How-to-write books can’t teach you how to write, because writing can’t be taught (though it can be learned). Amassing shelves of them does not mean you are serious and dedicated, it just means you never get to your desk. Why not just pick one and do what it says?

Don’t talk about it endlessly. Most people who say they want to be writers don’t write. It’s easier than facing the blank page/one’s limited talent/terror of being rejected and found out.

Oh, and! I hate to be a pain and go on and on like this, but there are such riches of anguish to impart. If you go to writer’s workshops and conventions, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t, you will hear maddeningly contradictory advice from different instructors. The truth is, there is no right way to do this, and writers detest being told what to do anyway. Real writers don’t even go to these things, for that reason (unless they’re hired as instructors: try to land this gig, it’s great for exposure/covert book-signings and strategic schmoozing/ass-kissing!).

Doing free gigs is supposed to help you get launched. In truth, it's a one-way ticket to Palookaville. Charge money as soon as it is humanly possible, as much as you can get.

I hate to say that the best part is the writing itself, but it is. It’s maybe 90%. It had better be, because your chances of being a real success are slim to none. There – are we feeling better now?

Life's candy, and the sun's a ball of buddah

Eye on the target and wham,

One shot, one gun-shot, and BAM -

Hm. Well, it isn't Mr. Arnstein I'm after, but something infinitely more elusive and devious (and it plays a mean game of poker).

I want to get published again. I need to get published again. I have three books written, all finished and ready to go. Three. All are publishable, as far as I am concerned. But has anyone ever seen them?

That would be a big "no".

People have weird ideas about being published. "Must cost quite a lot, I'd imagine. Are you going to take out a loan?" "Is your book going to be on the bestseller list?" "Don't writers all help each other get published - I mean, kind of like one big artist's colony?" Yeah, like I'm going to tell all my sneaky colleagues how to get published so their nasty little novel can kick MY novel's ass!

It isn't at all what you think.

When my dream came true, after thirty years of pining and longing and bloody hard work, it came true the same way it does for maybe 85 or 90% of writers. There was one big popping flare of fireworks, then fast-fading embers raining down, then . . .

nothing.

It didn't matter how good the reviews were (stuff like "fiction at its finest "- no kidding). They meant nothing. I was supposed to run all over the country on my own dime and try to drum up interest. But I also learned that readings and posters and web sites and all that shit made no difference at all.

So what does make a difference? Something called "buzz". If a novel is "buzzy", it automatically has tons of readers right out of the starting gate.

Buzz is like sex. No one tells you what it's all about, or how to get it. You just sort of fumble around, and fail most of the time. And when the novel fails to sell, guess who gets the blame? Mr. Agent? Ms. Publisher? Don't make me laugh!

I can't stop writing, which I guess means something, good or bad. I have kept writing and kept writing through the most hideous, soul-destroying crises of my life. I now have two novels and a book of poems, all of which I feel deserve publication. I WANT SOMEONE TO READ THEM, GODDAMN IT!

In many people's minds, this is sheer ego. "Oh, isn't writing its own reward? Can't you just do it for self-expression?" (Or, worse, "leave it for your children").

No one expects a concert pianist (or a gymnast, for that matter) to play in an empty hall, but we writers are seen as crass and egotistical if we want someone to look at what we've slaved over for years. Stories must be TOLD, not chucked into a drawer. An untold story isn't even a story.

So, Mr. Arnstein, you big galoot, you mustachio'd rat fink, I'm pursuing you once again. Like Barbra Streisand in that ridiculous sailor suit , it's one roll for the whole shebang.

Hey, all you agents, pundits, arbiters of literary taste - get ready for me, love, 'cause I'm a comer - so even if this fantasy-trip is a bummer -

NOBODY

No, NOBODY
Is gonna

rain

on

myyyyy

paaaaaa

(rrrrrrrr)

rrrAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYD-UH!