Jessica Barnes brings years of experience to the table, knows the publishing industry, has an instinct for storytelling, and has a great bedside manner as she dissects authors’ work. In addiction to providing me with invaluable feedback about how to improve my book and make it more marketable, she generously gave more of her time so I could interview her about the ins and outs of editing fiction. I hope you’ll find her responses as informative as I did.

LR: First off, do you do any writing yourself?

Jessica: I dabble a bit, and I do enjoy writing, but I realized a couple years ago that I’m a much better editor than I am a writer. As a famous fiction editor named Ellen Seligman once said, “What I am is the ideal reader, not the ideal imaginer.” That describes me to a T. So yes, I do write. Just not with what you’d call purpose.

LR: Why did you decide to become an editor?

Jessica: I’ve always been a reader, a lover of fiction. I wanted to be involved in the making of stories, because story and fiction is so important to culture and society–there’s a reason morality and wisdom has been passed down through storytelling since the beginning of civilization.

Wow. That sounded really pretentious. Mostly, I just love books and wanted to work with books. Editor seemed to be the way to go.

LR: How did you become one?

Jessica: I was an English major in college, and I had this vague idea that editing books would be a cool job, but I didn’t really know how one went about it or what it involved.I took creative writing classes, where I learned about good writing and how to put a story together, and then after college I went to this mini-grad school / summer course called the Denver Publishing Institute. There, in a month, you learn about all the different aspects of publishing, try your hand at some editing and marketing, and meet a lot of industry people. I somehow managed to land a job at a publishing company as an assistant after that, and it turned out all my reading and my writing courses had given me an instinct for good story and good writing.

LR: So you can get a job with an English major. Good to know!

Was an English or writing major required for the Denver Publishing Institute? Are there other such programs available to would-be editors?

Jessica: No, you didn’t have to be an English major to apply for the Publishing Institute. There were people there from other countries, people making career changes, people in related fields that wanted some background in publishing, and, of course, a ton of college students dying to get into the publishing field. The Denver Publishing Institute at Denver University and the Summer Publishing Institute at New York University are the only two summer publishing courses that I know of, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more.

LR: What’s your typical editing process?

Jessica: Editing is an incredibly subjective, gut-instinct kind of process. It’s reading a book, saying “I don’t like this” about an element, figuring out what isn’t working and then how to fix it. There are some black-and-white rules, but in writing, the rules get broken just as often as they get followed, so you can’t rely on them. It’s more about evaluating the experience of the book, making sure it’s as strong and has as great an impact on the reader as possible.

Generally when working with a manuscript, I start big and work my way down to the details. I usually read the manuscript all the way through first, perhaps making some notes on my initial impressions about plot elements or character interactions. Then I read it through again, more slowly and carefully, looking at the plot and structure of the book as a whole, identifying the weak spots, and brainstorming ways to make them stronger. At that point, usually, I give the author my notes and suggestions so they can make some revisions to the book, strengthen those weak spots. Then, on my third pass, I look at the nitty-gritty details and the actual writing. This is the stage where the manuscript gets marked up so that it “bleeds red”–trimming unnecessary words, rephrasing passive voice or clunky passages, making sure all the details are consistent. The author gets it back, goes over my changes, makes any changes they’d like, and then the manuscript is ready for the copy editors!

LR: And how does the copy editing process differ from what you do?

Jessica: Copy editing is the nitty-gritty detailed editing work–punctuation, spelling, formatting, those obscure grammar rules that most of us don’t even know exist. They check facts, making sure everything is accurate and correct. They catch consistency mistakes, they question details that might not, under scrutiny, make sense. Copy editors are amazing and undervalued. They make the author (and the editor) look good, and they rarely ever get credit for their efforts.

LR: How do publishers assign editors to authors?

Jessica: Every publishing house does this a little differently, but in most of them, an editor acquires their own authors. They read the author’s proposal, liked it, bought the book, and take it from there. So in a sense, the editors assign themselves to authors.

LR: So are editors the people who actually field book proposals from agents and read and accept manuscripts for a publisher?

Jessica: Usually, at least in the houses I’m familiar with. The agents communicate directly with the editors on what they’re looking for and pass them proposals. Sometimes these might go through the editorial assistants, but the assistants are more usually digging through the “slush pile” of unsolicitied submissions. But because the editors and agents have a relationship, they work directly with each other. Editors read the submissions from agents and decide which proposals they like enough to take to the acquisition committee, where the rest of the company editors along with some sales and marketing folks evaluate proposals and decide which ones to buy and publish, based on quality, marketability, and how many copies they think they can sell.

LR: How different is a manuscript after you’ve worked on it? Do authors have much input on the editing process?

Jessica: How different a manuscript is after I’m done with it compared to when it came in really depends on the project. I’ve had books on which I did very little–just polished it up, mostly–and I’ve had books in which I gave the author an entire new outline for the latter half of their  book. Most of the time, it falls somewhere in the middle. Maybe 25% of the book changes significantly.

For me, editing is a very collaborative process. I’m very aware, as I work, that this is not MY book. It’s the author’s. The author is trusting me to look at it objectively and make suggestions for how to make it better. Most authors understand this as well, so it’s a very rewarding experience, working hand-in-hand with someone to shape their vision into the best possible version. I love brainstorming with authors, trying to figure out a sticky point in the plot or a way to rewrite this scene so that it accomplishes everything it needs to. In the end, however, the book is the author’s work, and they have the final word. (Doesn’t mean I won’t argue with them a little, but in the end, it’s their call.)

LR: How do authors typically respond to your feedback? Have you ever encountered a really stubborn author who refused your advice and then reception of the book suffered for it?

Jessica: Most of the authors I’ve worked with are favorable to editorial feedback, because they understand I’m helping them, not attacking them. I’ve been lucky that the situation in which a book suffers because an author and I couldn’t work together hasn’t happened to me. Though I’m sure other editors would have a different story for you.

My strengths as a writer do not include a particular talent for naming characters, let’s just establish that from the start. While I despair ever having the knack for it that—oh, anybody else—does, I do try to at least name my characters with significance.

For example, one of my characters in Songs for Piano and Voice is a nosy, tea-and-sympathy-doling, everybody’s mother figure, a la Molly Weasley from the Harry Potter series (who would also be likely to say, “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU $%&@*!”) so I made her a red-head and named her Ginger.  Perhaps not the best example of creativity or originality, though I like to think of her as an homage.

I’m rather proud of how I named my leading lady, Laura Lovelace—though someone-who-shall-not-be-named tells me this name makes him think of Luna Lovegood and thus “Loony Laura Lovegood.” Any of you other Potterfans who’ve also read Songs think of that? (Also, I’m suddenly alarmingly aware of the number of Potter references I make…)

Back to the point…When I was conceptualizing this character, an Italian aria I sang during my brief stint as a voice major kept coming to mind. It contains the phrase “l’aura che tu respiri, alfin respiro,” which roughly translates to “the air you breathe, at last I breathe.” The name Laura was right there in the text, and it was pretty, feminine, and fit the mental image I had for the character.

There’s a story behind Laura’s last name, too.  Lovelace is a play on words: Laura is the romantic interest for a loveless man. Yeah, kinda lame, I know—but as I said, I don’t claim to be particularly good at this aspect of storytelling.

Which brings us to my male lead, John Marks, and an embarrassing confession: John is my placeholder name whenever I can’t think of a male name and want to move on with a project. In this case, I moved on with a whole novel, and by then had spent so much time with the character that I could never think of him as anything but John. He was supposed to be an ordinary thirtysomething pianist, so why not give him the most common male name in the English language?

John’s last name, Marks, was the product of a little free-writing to get the feel for how he and Laura interact. I wanted them to hit it off right from the start, when they meet at church, with a bit of banter/flirtation. Now I can’t remember the exactly thought process, but I wound up with a page of dialogue in which Laura teases John about sharing his name with John Mark, a nudist in the Bible. I kept the name, as well as the scene, because emotional nakedness had become a theme in the book.

So you see, while my characters may not be the best named in fiction, they are named with significance.

It turns out that John Marks is a more significant name than I imagined.

One night, while playing a game of Beyond Balderdash with friends, I learned that Johnny Marks was the composer behind all the songs in the old 1960s stop-motion Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, among other popular Christmas tunes.

I did not know this when I named my John, and though part of me is tempted to work this into the story somewhere; it would so be John to bemoan the fact that of all the composers, he would share a name of the one responsible for all his (and the author’s) least favorite Christmas songs. But doing that might undermine the wonderful, amusing coincidence of it all, which is one of the things I love most about being a writer.

In this profession, magic happens.  (And that’s not a Harry Potter reference.)

I’m not at all surprised to like The West Wing, as I was a big fan of Aaron Sorkin’s more recent and more short-lived Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Though it’s a political drama and therefore deals with heavy, issue-driven storylines, it’s full of the same brand of fast-paced, witty, and often humorous dialogue that drew me to Studio 60.

And likeable characters.  Even if you don’t agree with the politics of the show, you can’t help but care about President Bartlet and his staff.  Why?  Because they’re people. Real, fleshed-out people.

Take, for example, this exchange between C.J. Cregg, White House Press Secretary, and Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn,  which occurs during a walk-and-talk about a press briefing in Celestial Navigation:

C.J.
I have a dentist appointment at noon.

SAM
What's wrong?

C.J.
Nothing's wrong.

SAM
C.J.?

C.J.
I'm experiencing some pain.

SAM
For how long?

C.J.
About a month now, but it'll go away by itself.

SAM
When?

C.J.
When I die, Sam. Carol, cancel the appointment.

SAM
Carol, set the briefing for two o'clock. Keep the appointment.

C.J.
Sam!

SAM
Your teeth are the best friends you got, C.J.

C.J.
They are?

SAM
You take care of them, they'll take care of you.

C.J.
When'd you start talking like this?

SAM
I'm nuts for dental hygiene.

Probably not as funny to read as it was to watch, but Mr. Burt and I howled at that last line of Sam’s, Mr. Burt commenting, “That’s so Sam.”  I agreed.  And even though it’s just a throwaway line with no bearing whatsoever on the story of that particular episode, it so cemented the character of Sam Seaborn for me that I haven’t stopped thinking about what a great example “I’m nuts for dental hygiene” is of an apparently insignificant but carefully-chosen detail bridging the gap between fictional character and fictional person.

It makes me think about my own characters and wonder whether I’ve drawn them out in such a way as to make my readers laugh out loud and say, “That is so John!”  What is John nuts for?

And I realize, as I reflect, that I need to do some more work in the quirks and foibles department.  I flirted with the idea of John being a bit of a technophobe – and yet, as my brother pointed out to me, John engages in a bit of cyber repartee that hinges on knowledge of netspeak a technophobe certainly wouldn’t have. An astute reader might laugh at the banter, but ultimately would say, “That’s not John.”

So, another item to add to the revision list – that is, whenever the Burt Squirt gives me a chance to do anything with the ideas I’ve got bouncing around in my head.  Until then, I’ll keep watching good shows like The West Wing and reading good books like the several I’ve been meaning to review, in the hope that Sam and others will continue to inspire me to be a better writer.

“Try to get it published,” I reply.

“Well duh,” says the friend or family member, “but how do you do that?”

“Simple,” I say.  “All it takes is faith and trust, and a little bit of pixie dust.”

My friend or family member’s eyebrows scrunch.  “Isn’t that how you fly?”

Oh, right.  I sometimes get mixed up, because getting published can seem about as impossible as flying.

The good news is, while no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to fly (somewhere, a fairy just fell down dead from my implication that there’s no such thing as pixie dust), persistent work may land me a publishing contract.  If I get lucky.  (See, I do believe in fairies, as well as their dust.)

What I’ve discovered inquiring non-writer minds want to know is:  what exactly is that work which, combined with luck, gets a writer published?  That’s what I’m here to tell you.

The Pitch

Once I’ve completed a novel, I must then reduce those 50-100,000 carefully chosen words to 100 or fewer even more carefully chosen words that summarize what my novel is about, capture my tone and style, and make a stranger want to read my book.  Think back cover blurb.

It sounds easy to write a pitch if you’ve already managed to complete a novel, but don’t ever say that to a writer.  Writing a novel is the easy part.  Pitches make writers curl up into the fetal position and wish they’d worked harder at math.

The Agent

If the purpose of the pitch is to make someone want to read my book, then it logically follows that there’s an audience for my pitch.  That would be where literary agents come in.

One upon a time, writers could pitch novels directly to publishers.  In the current economic climate, publishers can’t afford to bank on books that won’t sell.  Since there are thousands of writers trying to get published, the easiest way for publishers to find the novels that will make the New York Times bestsellers list is to consider only work that comes to them via literary agencies.  Agents weed out the drivel and the dreck from  thousands of submissions because they don’t make any money unless publishers pick up their clients.  (An agent typically receives a 15% commission from a book’s total earnings.)

It’s easy for writers to find agents, because we have our own yellow pages of sorts.  The Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market lists the contact info for hundreds of literary agents.  I prefer to use AgentQuery — same info, but free, and also searchable by genre.

The Query

Armed with a pitch and a list of agents, I begin the query process, which consists of emailing and snail-mailing my pitch to agents.  At first contact, most agents only want to see a pitch; a few will, additionally, ask for a detailed synopsis of the entire novel; even fewer will ask for the pitch and the first couple of pages; fewer still ask for a couple of chapters along with the pitch.  Whatever the agent’s submission requirements, I have very little with which to make a big impression!

The Response

More often than not, my queries are met with rejection letters.  That’s something you have to prepare yourself for if you’re going to seek publication:  you will get rejected.  Again and again.  It sucks, but you have to deal with it.

I deal with it by expecting to be rejected; that way I’m never disappointed (well, not much, and not for long), just pleasantly surprised.

So far, I’ve pitched Songs for Piano and Voice to fourteen agents.  Seven of those fourteen agents gave me flat nos (including a few “dear author” form rejections).  Six haven’t responded, though three I don’t expect will at all, as they specify in their submission guidelines that they only respond to projects that interest them.

One agent has responded positively to my pitch.  She asked to read my first five pages to see if my style suited her representation.  Oddly, as I composed this post, she replied to decline my project.

If she’d liked my pages, however, she probably would have asked to read the rest of my manuscript or a chapter-by-chapter summary.  And if she’d liked that, she probably would have offered to represent me.  Then she would have begun the task of shopping my book to publishers.

Rejection stings (content more so than a simple query), but I remain hopeful that someday I’ll tweak the verb tense in the previous paragraph.  Until then, I’ll continue to query.  After all, I’ve only queried fourteen agents out of hundreds.  And I do believe in fairies, and their dust.

And that’s what you do after you finish writing a novel.  Questions?

Recently several girlfriends and I organized a book club.  Our first read was Persuasion, which I’ve had recommended to me many times as Jane Austen’s best work.

Having now read it, I must disagree.

The story — a second chance at love for an older couple who just couldn’t make it work the first time around — may be her best.  The style?  In my opinion, not so much.

One of the qualities I like about Austen in general is how accessible her novels are to today’s readers.  Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Northanger Abbey, for example, read easily, primarily through lots of dialogue that both tells the stories and develops the characters.  It’s the style I’d come to expect from Austen (and, I have to admit, the style of contemporary novel I prefer).

That said, the divergence from the dialogue-heavy style of Austen’s earlier work took me by surprise in Persuasion. While the prose passages are impeccably written and packed with Austen’s wit, they nonetheless exemplify telling versus showing — the ultimate writing mistake, by today’s standards.  I appreciate that the “rules” of writing have evolved over time as the way people live and read has changed, but even bearing that in mind, I found it difficult to connect with the characters of Persuasion because of it.

Much of the crucial action happens off-stage and is merely summarized  in narrative after the fact.  I suppose on one hand this stylistic choice highlights the reserve and compliance of the heroine, Anne.  On the other, not actually seeing Anne’s first encounter with Captain Wentworth undercuts the emotional impact that should be present when a woman meets her former fiance, with whom she is still in love, eight years after breaking off their engagement.  Imagine if Austen had simply recounted the Netherfield ball instead of showing Elizabeth and Darcy’s dance and their glorious UST.  You wouldn’t root for them to get together in the end, would you?  That’s how I felt reading about Anne and Wentworth.  I rooted for the idea of them, but my imagination wasn’t captured by characters I felt I knew; they remained names whose personalities eluded me.

One character in the novel I did feel I saw rather than merely heard about is Anne’s hypochondriac sister, Mary Musgrove.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she also seems to have more dialogue than any other character.  Even though she’s meant to be tiresome and obnoxious with her constant bellyaching and oblivion to her sisters-in-law’s attempts to avoid her company, she became my favorite character purely on the basis that I knew who she was amid a bunch of virtual strangers.

While I’d rank Persuasion as my least favorite Austen novel (though I have yet to read Mansfield Park), I must concede that it contains my favorite line out of all her works, Captain Wentworth’s achingly romantic “you pierce my soul.”  Guh.

I’ll also repeat that I really like the story, especially after viewing the 1995 film, which rights the wrongs of the novel because the media of film necessarily shows instead of tells. Captain Wentworth’s bitterness and inability to get over Anne are so much more clear to me as performed by Ciarán Hinds.  

On a related note, Persuasion must be one of the more difficult Austen novels to adapt, precisely because of the lack of actual dialogue in the book.  Lots of work required on the part of the screenwriter to create Austen-like dialogue.  I want to say that in the Sense and Sensibility commentary, screenwriter Emma Thompson mentioned that she considered adapting Persuasion (though I might be misremembering; she might have mentioned that a Persuasion film came out the same year as her S&S).  In any case, I’d love to see what she could do with it, as S&S is not only my favorite Austen film, but my favorite movie ever!

Austen enthusiasts and Persuasion fans, do comment and tell me why I’m wrong about this book.

Her Dying Wish (Part 2)

Normally, Saturday mornings were for her (as they are for everybody–as they are for you) bliss.  Waking up is a delight because you have slept well, your subconscious untroubled in slumber by the unpleasant prospect of being woken by an alarm and having to go to work and finding repose in the freedom of an entire day ahead of you to do as you please–or, if you are dying, an entire day to do the things you always wanted to do before you die.

This Saturday, however, she awoke feeling as if she had never slept at all.  She did not remember in any detail the nightmares of Soviet hostels that had prevented her achieving rest, but she vividly recalled her previous night’s struggle with disloyalty to Heavenly Cloud, and hated herself a little now for her reaction of dread for her physical comfort when she became aware of her need for the bathroom, which was precisely the terror that had troubled her sleep.  And when she discovered that the first roll of toilet paper had not been an anomaly in the package, all thoughts were forgotten of how she was going to seize her remaining days.

She retreated to bed, curled up in a fetal position, and resisted the temptation to open her laptop and try to restore the document she had deleted last night.

The extraordinary thing, however, was that if you saw her that day, hiding in her bed from herself and her deepest-seated impulses, you would not have thought her pathetic.  And if you’d known her before she thought she was dying of melanoma, you would say that she had never been this passionate, for good or ill, about anything but Heavenly Cloud toilet paper in her whole life to date.  You would choose to be around this version of her rather than the old, because now even though Heavenly Cloud was, once more, the instigator of her passion, something else lurked beneath the surface.  Something interesting and even inspiring.  The very thing, in fact, which John Roberts observed in her when he watched her run riot through the supermarket.  A few minutes with her would, inevitably, have you thinking of an un-hatched egg which, the night before, had an unblemished shell but which, by this morning, had gained a crack from the chick’s first peck of its tiny beak.

By Sunday, the use of Heavenly Cloud toilet paper had caused even more cracks in the veneer.  Unfortunately, the first person who saw her was Mrs. Reverend Green, who mistook them for simply cracking up.

It can hardly come as a surprise to you that someone who purchased her favorite brand of toilet paper for complete strangers in the supermarket also had been known to tell fellow members of her church that if the custodian someday ceased to purchase Heavenly Cloud for the church bathrooms (he thought less about comfort than about the fact that the brand name had a certain churchy-ness about it) she would have to consider changing congregations.  So, after she’d been tortured for two days by the new formula she thought church would give her sanctuary.  The last thing she needed on top of melanoma was a kidney backup.

Good news was, she didn’t get a kidney backup.

Bad news was, she developed a case of adult-onset potty mouth.

Glossing over the exact words she used, we shall simply say that she found no relief in the first stall of the ladies’ room…

…or the second…

…or the third…

…and saw a loathed diamond weave pattern staring back at her with mockery in its pinprick eyes.

For good measure, she told the moron who built the church and hung all the doors so that they swung inward instead of out where he could go.

“Merciful heavens.”

The merciful heavens were quite the opposite of where she had told Gary Burns to go; they were, however, what Mrs. Reverend Green entreated when she entered the ladies’ room with Nola Davies (who was, at age 97, the oldest member of the congregation and, frighteningly, still drove herself to every church service) and heard the un-churchly words echo from the last stall.

Any other church member, having been caught using bad language in front of Mrs. Green and Nola Davies, would have shuffled meekly out of that bathroom stall, red-faced and unable to make eye contact.  Any other church member would have apologized profusely, made excuses, and prayed God was too busy resting on the Sabbath to notice what words came out of one woman’s mouth.

Not her.

She laughed.

For as she emerged from the last stall and saw Mrs. Green standing in the doorway, a fog she hadn’t been aware of previously cleared from her mind.  Once she’d dreamed about saying a bad word at church.  Mrs. Green’s  dream face had looked just like it did now, a caricature of scandalized.  She was tempted to say another one just so she could snap a picture with her camera phone to record the expression.

If you asked her why she wanted a picture, she would tell you so she could look back and find this perfect happiness again when life inevitably made it elude her–which the melanoma she might (or might not) have would do soon enough.

But she didn’t curse again, or get out her camera phone.  If you asked her why, she would have told you that it was because this wasn’t perfect happiness–though she felt closer to it than when she was wreaking havoc in the Though Shalt Not Touch Aisle or writing her complaint letter/horror story.

Now, for the first time, she feared her imminent death.  She wasn’t ready to go yet, not without having achieved perfect happiness.  All her life she’d thought it would come from a European vacation or writing a novel, or, by a very slight chance, from skydiving.  But now she knew the key to that happiness lay within her. There was only one thing she could do to find it.

And she had to do it now.

“I’m going home sick,” she said.  “Melanoma, you know.”

She was out the door and on her way, and so missed Mrs. Green shaking her head and saying that, melanoma or not, there was never an excuse to use bad language, and Nola seasoning her speech with salt in a way the Bible didn’t exactly mean.

“I’d sign up for melanoma if it meant I could do the things I always dreamed of and look that happy,” she cried.  “Now help me wash my hands!”

#

If you asked her how she expected to feel and what she expected to happen when she sent the Heavenly Cloud manufacturer a complaint email about the new toilet paper formula, she would have told you stonily:  “Nothing.  I have no expectations.”

The truth was, before she sent the email, she expected to hit ‘send’ and immediately burst out laughing, her head thrown back as it had been that day in the supermarket when she broke the jars of pickles and realized she’d just given in to a heart’s desire.  There had been glee in punching ire into her keyboard, a heart-pumping exhilaration at clicking ‘send’–but it all fled, and no happiness, not even imperfect happiness, took its place.

This was, of course, because it was the results of these actions, the reactions–the supermarket employee running frantically with mop and caution sign to clean up the spilled pickle juice before someone slipped and filed a lawsuit; Mrs. Green looking so scandalized to hear swear words at church–that she had always longed for, not actually the little rebellions against society in and of themselves.

The truth of this hit her as the message went whizzing through cyberspace, and she let out a cry as though struck in the chest.

A complaint email could only be satisfactory if she got an email back in reply, and whether any such thing would appear in her inbox was highly debatable.  Doubtful, even.  Unlikely, as customer service representatives in general weren’t exactly known for providing satisfactory responses to anything.  She definitely wouldn’t hear anything immediately, as today was Sunday.

Also, there simply wasn’t much you could say back to, “Heavenly Cloud would be more aptly renamed Hell Fire,” especially when it was signed, “a very dissatisfied customer who is dying of melanoma and would prefer her last days to be as blissful as the heavenly cloud she will soon inhabit.”

She held out half a hope that maybe the person in the complaint department would also have recently learned he was dying and answer as an act of impulse.  There was nothing to expect except that this would be out of her system, and she would not die and haunt the world as a ghost because she’d left business unfinished.  Because she knew now that she hadn’t really wanted to travel to Europe, write a novel, or skydive before she died.

There was one thing she was expecting, which she had all but forgotten, and that was that her dermatologist was due to call her on Monday with the results of her mole biopsy.  This was not the sort of thing most people forgot.  Since she had diagnosed herself with terminal cancer from the onset, she had not given a second thought to the fact that nothing about her health was actually confirmed.  Thus, fearful expectation of test results had no part in the despondency that fell over her upon emailing the manufacturer.  Instead, it was pure confusion about her desires and what it meant to be happy.  If it had all only been about getting something out of her system, then why had it made her so deliriously glad, teasing her with the promise of perfect bliss?

She slept badly–again–and woke Monday morning in a worse state than she had even after that first morning of using the horrible toilet paper.  She called in sick from work; if she didn’t really know any more what she wanted to do before she died, she at least knew she didn’t want to be at work.  Though she was not consciously expecting anything from this day, her manager thought she sounded anxious–like she’d received a death threat.  Indeed, if you saw her then, you would inevitably think once more of that hatching egg, the shell no longer smooth, unbroken white, but cracked all over and shifting like a miniature buckling of tectonic plates as the little bird within pecked and flapped with frail, new wings.

And then, just as she was drifting off into depressed slumber, her phone rang.

Her heart began to pound.

“Your biopsy’s negative.  You just have a weird mole.  Or had.  It’s the lab’s now.”

Fifteen words.

Fifteen words from a receptionist were all her heart required to break.

She wasn’t dying.

It made sense, considering she’d never felt ill or displayed any other symptom of melanoma.  Her socially deviant behavior, of course, though uncharacteristic for her, would not have been physically connected to cancer even if her mole biopsy had come back malignant.

But it had not.

She supposed she ought to be relieved and thankful, but she was far from it.  She wasn’t dying, but now that she’d done all she wanted to do before she died, she wasn’t sure she had anything left to live for.

All she had to live with was a lot of guilt that came down on her so crushingly that all she could do was lie prone on her bed.

Up till now, she’d not felt badly for a single thing she’d done, her supposed impending death giving her a sort of immunity.  In this moment of learning that she would live on and on, however, bravado fled, and she was pummeled with accusations from her conscience:  destruction of property, coarse language, harassment…And it made her furious.  She had been duped.  Deceived by that serpent who promised knowledge and happiness.  Suckered into sinning, coerced into criminal acts…

Now, this feeling she was mistaking for guilt was actually sorrow that she’d been caught.  If you were dying, no one could excommunicate you or send you to prison.  And that was really all she was thinking now: what did Mrs. Green think of her now for swearing at church?  And Nola Davies?

(Nola was, in fact, praying not to die before next Sunday so she could again see that young woman who swore like a sailor in front of Mrs. Green and was so happy.)

She even felt sick–irrationally–over what that man who’d asked her out in the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle thought of her.  She must have been mistaken about his asking her out; he could only have been trying to mortify her, in some roundabout way, for her rude, crude, and socially unacceptable behavior.

As it turned out, John Roberts was not an irrational thought, as her brain told her, but the key to everything.  The proof that what she was feeling was not guilt, as she erroneously believed, came when there was a knock at her apartment door.

The first thought it prompted was that if there was anything she wanted to do before she died, it was never answer a door again.  But she got up anyway–not really weighed down by immobilizing guilt.

Standing on her tip-toes to look out the peephole, she saw a man in a suit, with his collar open and his tie undone.  On one shoulder he balanced a large, lumpy, blue and white parcel.

Curiosity distracted her from the fact that her heart was no longer in her chest where it was supposed to be, but residing considerably further north, cutting off her flow of air.  When she opened the door the first thing out of her mouth was not, “You’re the handsome executive who asked me out,” but instead was, “Is that…toilet paper?”

It was, and before John could answer, she noted the blue label and told him, “I only use Heavenly Cloud, though I guess I’ll have to switch brands since they changed the formula–”

“Did you buy the Heavenly Cloud in the red package?”

She thought for a moment, more about the fact that she’d previously missed what a pleasantly low, soft quality there was to his voice, than about his question.  It was exactly the male voice she’d always wanted to hear addressing her, pronouncing her name, but had all but given up on hearing, as dates became fewer and farther between.

“Yes,” she answered.

“You should’ve bought the Heavenly Cloud in the blue package.”  John lowered it from his shoulder and held it out to her so that she could see that the plastic wrap read, ‘New!  Heavenly Cloud Ultra Soft.’

“I don’t understand.”  She opened the door a little wider and stepped backward, further into her apartment.  “I’ve always bought the Heavenly Cloud in the red package.  It was always soft enough.”

Beneath his dark hair, his forehead creased.  “I knew the packaging would be confusing.  Our traditional red look went to the Ultra Strong formula.  That’s why it felt like Quilt Thick.”

He tried to press the toilet paper into her hands, and now the twelve-pack fell onto both their toes as she let out a gasp of realization.

“You’re the guy who reads the company’s complaint emails?”  Her face flushed violently hot.

“Not normally.  I’m the External Relations Manager, but I’ve been looking at the complaint emails since we revamped our product.  Yours was the first thing I saw when I went in this morning.”

“Great external relations.”

John grinned.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mary.

Or is it Mary Beth?  And that was a great email.  Instrument of torture in a Soviet hostel, huh?”

She went by just plain Mary, but was too flummoxed to tell him.  “You knew it would be me here.  How?”

“You said you were dying of melanoma.  I saw you buy Heavenly Cloud Ultra Strong.  I knew you were a woman who does whatever you please, even if it’s not a social norm, and that it makes you very happy.”  His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his gaze flicked down to her lips.  His tongue darted out to moisten his own.  “I just knew.”

Mary held the doorknob for support, and she felt herself swaying toward him.  But she held back, a lump suddenly lodging in her throat.  “I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“Not dying and not happy and not doing what I please.  The serpent–”

“The serpent?  Are you sure your name isn’t Eve?”  He grinned; it was a smile she couldn’t help returning.  “No, it was all you, Mary Beth, and you’re definitely a happy woman, and I have to say I’m very, very happy to hear you’re not dying.”  John leaned toward her, reached out as if to touch her, but then withdrew.  “What do you say we go to a fancy restaurant tonight?  You can go in jeans and a t-shirt, and I–well, I’ve always wanted to put ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ to a test.  Haven’t you?”

#

From that moment onward, if you asked Mary Beth Jameson what she wanted to do before she died, she would tell you things surprising and remarkable: not to travel to Europe (though she and John had booked a ski trip to Switzerland for this coming Christmas), not to write a novel, nor to go skydiving, not even if she was feeling adventurous when you asked her.

(Although, that did not mean she was opposed to the idea; in fact, she and Nola Davies had signed up to take skydiving lessons.  But that was Nola Davies’ dream, not hers.)

If she told you what she did want to do before she died, you would not believe her, because these were not the things everyone wanted to do before they died–certainly not the things you yourself want to do before you die.

Or at least not the things you yourself admit to wanting to do before you die.

Regardless of whether or not you believed she really wanted to do these things, if she told you she wanted to, she would be telling you the truth.  Because unlike everyone else who said they wanted to travel to Europe or write a novel before they died, Mary Beth Jameson had actually done the things she had always wanted to do before she died, was doing them on a regular basis, because the only thing she had really wanted to do before she died was to live.

And she began by putting the rest of her package of Heavenly Cloud to good use…

…TPing Reverend and Mrs. Green’s house.

Since my readers are probably more interested in what I write than in how I write it, I’ll kick off Fiction Fridays with a short story I wrote a few years ago.  Actually, it’s not terribly short, so I’ll break it into two parts to post this week and next.  It’s a humor piece, and a love story, and it stars a roll of toilet paper.  Something for everyone.

Her Dying Wish

by LR Burt

If you asked her what she wanted to do before she died, she would tell you things unsurprising and unremarkable: to travel to Europe, to write a novel, to go skydiving, maybe, if she was feeling adventurous.

If she told you this, you would believe her; after all, everybody, yourself included, wants to travel to Europe, write a novel, and skydive before they die.

Like everyone who claims these dying wishes, she never put spare change in a jar to save for that European vacation; she never sat down to write the first line of the novel that came to her as a lightning bolt of inspiration; she definitely never felt adventurous enough to sign up for a skydiving course.

No, what she dreamed of, in her secret heart, was to knock glass jars off supermarket shelves; to say swear words in places and in front of people she shouldn’t; to write a scathing letter to a person of great importance.

In short, what she wanted to do before she died was to become a menace to society.

Of course, if you asked her, she would never tell you that, because as far as she knew, she really and truly believed she was exactly like everybody else–and nobody else wanted to become a menace to society before they died. At least, no one told her otherwise. If anyone had, she might have recognized her real dreams sooner, without resistance or thinking she was going mad, and by pleasanter means than the threat of her imminent death.

Although, if she had recognized her real dreams under less urgent circumstances, she would not have realized that she’d never really lived at all, or felt so acutely what it meant to come to life.

“This mole concerns me.  I’d like to remove it and send it for a biopsy.”

Fifteen words from a dermatologist were all her imagination required to self-diagnose melanoma.  This was not a typical reaction.  Most people would pay their $25 co-pay, then spend the rest of the day phoning family and friends to help them deny the possibility of anything being seriously wrong with them.  She, having no one, called her boss to say she wouldn’t be coming in for a half day as planned.  Because, as she didn’t say, she knew she would be too busy googling ‘melanoma’ to get any work done.

On her way home, she hit the drive-thru for a burger, which she never touched; when she flopped down on her couch with her laptop to eat it, she couldn’t stop herself clicking to view the image results of her search, which made her imagine every mole on her body swelling up to hamburger patty proportions.  Needless to say, this was not what she could expect for the progression of the disease if she had it.  (And you must remember, there was no hard evidence that she did.)  But the imagination is not known for medical realism–and to be fair, pictures of cancerous moles would make almost anyone lose their appetite.

Rather than navigating away from the images, or, better yet, closing her browser session completely and escaping into the world of daytime television, she continued to look.  In what to her mind was a rational way, she accepted that appetite loss would be a condition to which she would soon grow accustomed when she began aggressive chemotherapy.  Not that she had very long to get used to not eating, with a 9-15% survival rate.

At which point she began to wonder:  did she really want pass the few days remaining to her in a hospital bed?  She could live with the fact that her predestined date with her Maker was coming soon and very soon.

The operative word being live.

As her own voice replayed in her head stating all the things she’d always said she wanted to do before she died, her cursor once more found its way into the browser search box.  Her fingers, as though commanded by an irresistible inner urging, clicked over the keyboard, rattling out the query:  ‘European dream vacation.’

Despite having no real, heartfelt desire to tour Europe before her death, her appetite returned with the pictures of gourmet French restaurants and Venetian cafes; she now believed more strongly than ever that these were her dying wishes.  When her stomach’s gurgles increased to un-ignorable growls, she got up from her sofa, strode purposefully across her apartment, slid on the flip flops she’d abandoned at the door, and stepped out into the clear evening.  She would just pop into the supermarket for French onion soup fixings, a loaf of sourdough, maybe biscotti for dessert, definitely a bottle of cabernet.  She’d watch the Travel Channel from the kitchen while the soup simmered.  After the meal she’d book her vacation, then settle down to write the first chapter or two of her novel.

(Also, she was out of toilet paper and couldn’t wait much longer.)

As of a minute ago she’d never had one single idea for a novel.  Now, entire, beautifully worded paragraphs were sure to spring from her mind, fully formed like the goddess Athena from Zeus’ head.  Her novel would be about a woman with less than six months to live who decided to do all the things she’d always said she wanted to do before she died.  Like go skydiving.

Or it would have been, had she been predestined to make it to the produce section.  Alas, she never did…

…or the liquor aisle…

…or the one with the broth….

…or the bakery…

…and therefore she was predestined not to have her European inspired meal or plan the vacation she did not really, in her heart of hearts, want to take.

En route to the produce section, she was distracted by the aisle which she had, since childhood, always thought of as the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle.  This, of course, was the one where jars of pickles, mayonnaise, salad dressing, mustard, ketchup, barbecue sauce, marinades, and jams, jellies, and preserves stood on shelves, a veritable rainbow encased in glass and gleaming under halogen lights.

A serpent whispered in her ear:  Hast thy mother really said thou shalt not touch the merchandise on this aisle?

Her mother definitely had; her nightmares were haunted by a white-faced and tight-lipped wagging-fingered warning which even in adulthood kept her dead center of the aisle, hands glued to her cart, too intimidated to actually shop.

Only today, the cart veered slightly to the left of center.  She barely had time to assume that the wheels must be out of alignment (they weren’t) before a disturbing image loomed in her mind, of herself wearing an evil leer as she–purposely–rammed her cart into the pickles.  She envisioned several jars plummeting to the tiled floor below, hitting with a crash; as she imagined jagged shards scattering, she could almost smell the wave of yellow-green, acerbic juice that would flood the aisle if she were really to do such a thing.  In actuality, her fingers locked in a death grip as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, savoring the brine and vinegar tang that swirled upward from the imaginary wreckage and into her slightly flared nostrils.

Like a shark teased by the scent of blood wafting in the water, her eyes snapped open, narrowed but gleaming with madness as she bent over her cart, elbows akimbo, and rammed it into a shelf.

CRASH!

A half-dozen or so pickle jars hit the floor and shattered her dream-state.

Horrified, she saw that she really had carried out the random act of destruction.

Down the aisle, a lean, black-haired man wearing a dark business suit stared at her.  She interpreted his slight smile as a smirk and thought he could only be laughing at the clumsy dork.  Or maybe the crazy maniac.  The intensity of his gaze made a hot flush prickle its way up from the neck of her t-shirt and bloom on her face as she silently told herself of course she was just a clumsy dork, absolutely it had been an accident, she had most definitely not hit the pickle shelf with her cart on purpose.

And then the man spoke:  “Hello.”

Three steps brought him to a more conversational distance from her.  One hand tugged at his tie, which hung loose in the open collar of his dress shirt, as he extended the other to her.  She didn’t shake it, because she was too busy thinking he looked nervous, which he was, and trying to work out why; women wearing grubby t-shirts they got free for donating blood didn’t make handsome men in expensive suits (she thought it might even be Armani) nervous.  Nor would she have believed him if he told her it was because he felt like he was meeting Princess Di or Mother Teresa or some great woman who was living out her life’s destiny regardless of what other people thought about her chosen path.

But nerves and her failure to shake his hand didn’t stop him from saying, “I’m John.  John Roberts.  Would you…want to have a drink?  With me?”

Her heart leapt.  Wouldn’t she! It had been years since she’d had a date, and she’d never had one with a man who wore Armani–

Just as abruptly, her heart fell did a petrifying freefall exactly like the one she imagined she would experience if she ever got adventurous enough to go skydiving.

Years.  She didn’t have years.

“Thanks,” she said, clutching the handle of her shopping cart tighter, trying (unsuccessfully) to ignore the inner twinge at the sight of his hand falling to his side and his cheeks going pink with mortification.  “I can’t.  I’ve got melanoma.  It’s terminal.”

Sure that he would rat her out in revenge for her rejection (he was actually thinking that it was always these angels who were taken too soon–too good for earth, they were), she didn’t wait for his reaction.  Instead, she wheeled her cart around and sped toward the end of the aisle, cringing at the dill spears squashing beneath the wheels and her flip flops, oozing a trail of juice behind her in the dust on the linoleum.

You’ve just committed a hit and run!  You’re a disloyal customer.  A bad citizen.  And you turned down a date with Probably Mr. Right.  You’re a complete and utter social deviant.

Not to mention a total idiot!

But her inner voice contained no authority, and did not command her to stop.  Instead, her pace quickened, carrying her more speedily away from the scene of the crime.  Her haste, however, was not motivated by shame or guilt for destroying private property, or even from regret that she’d turned down John Roberts.

“CLEAN-UP ON AISLE SEVEN!” she shrieked.  Or tried to shriek.  It came out more a squeak, strangled by a peal of laughter that pushed itself out of her lungs.

Her blood bubbled, her heart raced…It felt suspiciously like a thrill.  Which was exactly what it was, though she rejected the notion because normal people weren’t thrilled by deviance or stupid relationship moves.  She settled on exhilaration and blamed it on her impulsiveness, combined with the shock of learning of her own imminent death and being asked out by an incredibly handsome, apparently rich, man.

This was not the same life she had been not-living a few short hours ago.

She didn’t feel like herself at all.

If she had fled the supermarket then, she was not so far given over to her emerging desires that she could not have gone back to life as it had been prior to that point in time.  Sensing this, she panicked a little at the brink of change.  Still speeding toward the supermarket exit, she reasoned that mere months from her death was not the best time to suffer an identity crisis; she’d better go home and have a normal boring evening before she did something she regretted.

As it was, God (probably not the Judeo-Christian God, as He is not, historically, given to promoting delinquent behavior), the Universe, or Destiny, call it whatever you like, intervened.  A sudden burning within reminded her that while she could go home without French onion soup, French bread, biscotti, or cabernet, she could not go home without toilet paper.

So she pulled a u-turn.  She very narrowly avoided a collision with an apron-clad teenaged boy scurrying with a mop and yellow caution sign toward the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle.  The sight made her laugh again.  She raced toward the paper products aisle, astonished by the maniacal quality of her laugh, and yet unable able to stop laughing, not because she thought the situation was very funny so much as the act of laughing simply felt very, physically, good.

She’d never noticed before the precise way a laugh rippled up from her belly, making her chest feel big and full.  It was if the air she was breathing was made of pure joy, which tickled and tingled its way through her throat and out her lips.  And she’d never paid attention to the way the sound rang in her ears and made them feel pricked, alert, like a delighted dog’s or cat’s; or how, when her head was lolling back, her long ponytail whispered against the cotton of her t-shirt; or that her face, tilted up, up like a sunflower, felt so warm in rapture.

They were, of course, the sounds and sensations of a dream coming true.  But as we have established, she didn’t know she’d dreamed of this, so it never occurred to her that she was experiencing the endorphin rush that signified the culmination of a life-long desire.

(It also never occurred to her that John might have followed her or watched her from around the corner of a Heavenly Cloud toilet paper display stacked in the center of the aisle.)

One thought in her mind, of which she was not now fully conscious, but which, over the next few days, would become her singular, driving passion, was that if her melanoma struck her dead right now, as she ran her cart into that very display of Heavenly Cloud, toppling the tower of squashy building blocks, she would die a happy woman.  Or as close to happy as she could be, with dreams yet unrealized.

She was, by far, happier than she had ever been in her life to date.

#

It was the toilet paper that fundamentally altered her future.  A few squares of Heavenly Cloud set her life on an irrevocable course spiraling toward what she eventually would deem bliss.

Bliss was not, however, an adjective she would attach to the new roll of toilet paper.  She had not noticed, in her haste to get her Heavenly Cloud and get out of the supermarket, that the words “NEW AND IMPROVED FORMULA!” were emblazoned across the package.  Her personal experience found the former descriptor to be accurate, but as for improved… The formula violated everything she stood for as a toilet paper consumer–especially one who swore that God Himself stocked the bathrooms of His mansions with this brand.

She used Heavenly Cloud religiously, and if she saw you in the supermarket with any other brand in your cart, she would give you the $6.97 to buy a package of Heavenly Cloud.

Thus her current outrage.  She, who had been so faithful, had been betrayed–as no one in history had been since Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  All those people she’d converted!

Jerking the offending roll off the spring-mount wall holder, she tore off sheet after sheet, tossing them into the toilet.  She flushed it repeatedly until all that remained in her hand was an empty cardboard tube, and in her chest, a heart throbbing with satisfaction and adrenaline which prompted her to sprint to the living room and take up her laptop from where she’d abandoned it on the sofa when she decided to go to the supermarket.

Her fingers rattled across the keys in what she intended to be the beginning of a very scathing letter of complaint to the manufacturer of Heavenly Cloud toilet paper…

…only what came out was more like a horror story about a woman who’d found herself captive in a Soviet hostel where this formula of Heavenly Cloud was used as an instrument of torture.  Unable to stop herself from pounding violence and vitriol into her keyboard, she began to laugh, just as she had done while running amok in the supermarket.  She thought of that poor boy who’d had to clean up all those squashed pickles; what would Heavenly Cloud’s complaint department think if she told them cleaning up kitchen accidents was all their toilet paper was good for?

But her laughter and typing ceased when her conscience suddenly screamed, “WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME ARE YOU DOING?”

Fingers still curved in the home key position over the laptop, she sat for a second, chest heaving to catch her breath.  What was she doing?

Heavenly Cloud had never let her down before.  The flushed roll had been just one of twelve.  Perhaps only the one felt like a paper product rather than a textile.  Surely she could give Heavenly Cloud the benefit of the doubt?

With shaking hands, she selected the entire text of her document and punched delete–though not without a tightness in her throat and chest that made her next movements seem sluggish acts of will.

She shut down her computer, set it on the side table, switched off the lamp, and retreated to her bedroom.  Falling into bed, she pulled the covers up to her chin.  She was very tired; drained, in fact–as you tend to feel when a stopper is suddenly placed in your over-brimming happiness.

If only she knew that by writing that letter, the feeling would return and increase–and bring her something entirely unexpected, and even more secretly desired than deviant behavior.

Piano teacher to prepubescent video game addicts…driver of a jalopy that might once upon a time have been a Honda (though no one knows for sure)…prematurely balding…divorced: hardly the life of sophistication and beauty John Marks envisioned when he embarked on a music career. He’s no catch, yet he catches the starry eye of Laura Lovelace, a music student at his old university who initiates their relationship by making fun of his name (which has something to do with a famous nudist and an American president) and disagreeing with his favorite maxim. Though he swore off singers after his ex, John’s nosey pastor’s wife urges him to step into the dubious role of mentor to Laura. Which, apparently, involves playing sheriff (literally, in costume, complete with fake guns) at the parties of substance-abusing music students–but with the bonus of securing his place as Laura’s knight in shining armor–until she discovers that his heart is protected by an entirely different sort of armor, which hid the identity of his ex. Leaving him with yet another ex–and more broken career dreams–unless he can learn to accept himself (receding hairline, rattletrap car, and all).

Ever wanted to read what I spend all that time holed up in my home office writing?  (Ever wondered if I really write anything at all?)  Now you can, because I’ve published the first 16 chapters of my novel, Songs for Piano and Voice, at Authonomy. I’m hopeful this site will help me get published or find an agent, but at the very least I expect I’ll get some helpful feedback. Which is where you guys come in.

Authonomy was set up by the HarperCollins publishing company to help emerging writers get noticed. The way to get noticed is to appear on the bookshelves and watch lists of members, and, of course, to get lots of comments. Each month, an editorial board from the publisher selects the top five rated books to be professionally reviewed. Not only is this a source of invaluable feedback, but it has even led to publishing deals.

You have to register at the site in order to comment on books posted there, but if you could spare a moment to do that (it’s a simple matter of registering your email address and creating a password and screenname) and leave a review saying you loved it, hated it, or have an idea that would make it better, I would be extremely grateful.  And if you’re an avid reader who enjoys promoting the work of aspiring authors, take a nose around the site and read and comment on other books.

Above all, I’m delighted to give this sneak peek of my work.  I hope you enjoy!

Usually, when I must put my occupation on a Not Very Official Form, such as a new patient form at a medical practice, I say I’m a freelance writer, or I leave it blank, depending on how I’m feeling about my writing at that moment.  There was always the homemaker option, but before I had a baby, I never felt comfortable calling myself a homemaker, because homemakers are generally assumed to be stay-at-home moms, not merely stay-at-home wives.  But when I was filling out my Very Official Jury Duty Exemption Form, I was doing so as a new mom, so I happily filled in my occupation as homemaker.  (Even though writer equally applied, as I was getting lots of rejection letters at that time, which a favorite writing teacher of mine always said makes him feel like a real, working writer.)

Fast-forward two weeks, to yesterday.  When, if I’d had to fill in my occupation on a Form of Any Kind, Official or Not, I would have had a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions.   Which I did anyway.  Well, maybe not on the scale of Chernobyl, but there was smudged mascara.

You see, I had to go grocery shopping.  I had to.  If I didn’t, we wouldn’t have anything for dinner.  (Actually, I’m now realizing we had stuff for Sausage and Peppers Rustica or Four Cheese Ravioli with Marinara; I stocked up on that stuff pre-baby for just such a situation as this.)

As you can probably guess, I didn’t make it to the grocery store (and I didn’t remember I had stockpiled for a nuclear holocaust) because I was having One of Those Days with Liam and couldn’t find five spare minutes to make a grocery list, because I couldn’t find five spare minutes before that to to put together a meal plan for the week.  Because the baby wouldn’t take a nap or go in his swing or let me hold him without changing positions every two seconds and crying or stop nursing.

Around noon, I did make it upstairs to the guest room, where Mr. Burt works.  And proceeded to cry.  Louder than the baby.

“Here,” said Mr. Burt, “let me take Liam for a while.  You need a break.”

I did need a break.  “But I don’t deserve a break,” I protested through my tears, withholding Liam from my husband.  “I haven’t done anything today to need a break from.”  I felt guilty for the shower — complete with leg shaving — I’d managed while Liam cried in his bouncer chair.

Mr. Burt looked at me like I didn’t qualify for serving on a jury on grounds of not being of sound mind.  “Haven’t done anything?  You’ve taken care of Liam all morning.”

“I’ve only nursed him and changed his diaper.”

A milder version of the look that said I was crazy was accompanied by a crooning tone of compassion.  “Honey, all he does right now is eat, poop, and sleep.”

This should have made me feel better, but more tears fell.  “Today he doesn’t sleep.  And I need to go to the store or we won’t have anything for dinner.”

“But you’ve been working hard,” said Mr. Burt.  “You deserve a break.”

So I took a break, even though I still didn’t feel like I deserved it — failed homemaker that I was — and the five minute drive to Arby’s for lunch cleared my head.  Mr. Burt was right.  Only nursing is a ridiculous way to look at it.  Newborns nurse 8-12 times a day.  For 20-30 minutes minimum each time.   That’s a full day’s work.  A full-time job.  And if Liam’s fussy, it doesn’t mean I fail at babies.  It just means he’s having a bad day, like we all do.  Or gas.

When I got home, Mr. Burt echoed my thoughts.  “You’re trying to fit Liam in around your old housekeeping routine.  Now you have to fit all that stuff around Liam.  He’s your job now.”

“The job I have no control over,” I said.  “As a writer, I’m used to having control over everybody else.”

Mr. Burt grinned.  “For now, Liam controls us.  It won’t always be that way.  But for now, if the other stuff doesn’t happen, it doesn’t matter.”

I felt better, and didn’t cry as I said, “The grocery shopping has to happen.  We have to eat.”

“Well, yeah,” Mr. Burt acquiesced.  “But we can go out to eat.”

So we had dinner at Chili’s(where I forgot to pick up my credit card).  Then I made a meal plan for next week.  And a grocery list.  And today I got myself together before Liam woke up, then fed him and got him dressed, and we were out of the house by 9 and home with more than a week’s worth of groceries by 10:45.  The rest of the day, I’ve managed to make the bed, run the dishwasher, bake muffins, and cook dinner around Liam.

Oh — and write this blog post, of course.

Today I was a homemaker (as I was yesterday, whether it felt like it or not; though getting four loads of laundry washed and dried, if not put away, helped).  As long as I’m home with my family, I’m a homemaker.

Maybe tomorrow I can be a writer, too.  I could stand to be in control of a few people.

That was in an agent bio I read yesterday.  Now, she certainly has the credentials to justify name dropping, but it made me laugh nonetheless. Because it made me think of The Office:  “I’m Dwight Schrute, Assistant Regional Manager” and Michael cutting in, “Assistant to the Regional Manager.”  Finding things to laugh about is how I cope with the stress of the agent hunt.  (Actually, it’s how I cope with most stressful things, but this post is not about other stressful things.)

A few of my readers might be writers, and so you’ll know well the process I’m about to describe — and may not have any interest in reliving it!  But for those of you who have ever wondered what happens after a writer has finished a novel and before it’s published, this is what we go through.

After months, or even years (I started my first draft in April, 2008, and finished it in August, 2009), writing, editing and polishing your novel, making it the best it can possibly be, you’ve then got to summarize the entire scope of this 100 thousand word manuscript into a measly 100 words. That’s right:  all you have to sell your novel to an agent, who then must try to sell your novel to a publisher, is 100 words.  And it’s not just your novel you’ve got to sell.  In much fewer than 100 words, you’ve also got to sell yourself as a marketable commodity even if you have zero publications to your name and little writing experience apart from a few short stories in college.  Nothing makes you feel more vulnerable than sending that off to agents whose clients include bestsellers and award winners.  You hit “send” and then are left to wonder whether your novel will sound like the stupidest, most trite bit of writing ever to appear in their inbox.  It’s enough to make you lose sleep, throw up everything you eat (if you can eat at all), chew your nails down to the quicks,or  get really drunk.  Certainly you will check your email compulsively every five minutes.

Fellow writers, this need not be! I have developed the perfect no-stress method for querying agents:

Wait until the last 2-4 weeks of your pregnancy. Querying agents is a great distraction from waiting for your water to break, and nesting the excitement of the impending birth of your child is a great distraction from awaiting replies. And then, when you do receive three rejection letters out of your first four queries, you can’t even really feel that disappointed, because you’ve got a little bundle of joy and unconditional love and acceptance on the way.  It’s an absolutely foolproof strategy, I tell you!

Okay, so it’s really only foolproof if you happen to be pregnant.  What if you don’t have the distraction of a coming baby while you’re in the querying process?  How do you cope with the inevitable rejection?  Because you will be rejected.  Maybe once. Maybe twice.  Maybe three times.  (I was, three times, in the space of 12 hours.)  Maybe more.  Almost certainly more, the more queries you send out.  (And the more agents you query, the more likely you are to find one who wants to represent you.)  How do you deal with the negative responses?

I choose to deal with my rejection letters on a case-by-case basis, looking beyond the “no” for what each agent is really saying about my query.  Here are some examples of my recent rejections.

Rejection Letter #1: The Form Letter

“Dear Author:

Thank you so much for…your query. We’d like to apologize for the impersonal nature of this standard rejection letter. Rest assured that we do read every query letter carefully and, unfortunately, this project is not right for us. Because this business is so subjective and opinions vary widely, we recommend that you pursue other agents. After all, it just takes one “yes” to find the right match.”

On the one hand, I really hate form rejections. They’re so impersonal. Though I think impersonal can be a big help in getting over the rejection, because, obviously, it’s not personal.

At first blush, rejection tends to make me feel embarrassed about the material I sent. The agent must be sitting at her desk laughing her butt off at my terrible pitch and my utter lack of writing experience. How audacious of someone like me to contact someone like her about representing my “work”!

But the truth is, with a form rejection, you can rest assured that the agent is so busy that she’s completely moved on from your query by the time they hit “send.”  You may be a reject, but you’re also a forgotten reject.  Drink deeply of the waters of Lethe!

Rejection #2: The Break-up

“Thanks so much for offering me the chance to consider your material. Unfortunately, your project does not seem right for me. It’s important that you find an agent who will represent you to the best of his or her ability, so I’m going to have to step aside from asking to represent your manuscript.

You should know that my decision reflects my present work-load, and the type and amount of material which I’m presently representing. It does not reflect on your material, and I certainly encourage you to continue to seek representation, especially since this is such a subjective business — what works for one agent or publisher may not work as well for another (I’m afraid, though, that I cannot recommend someone for it).

Our website…contains a wealth of information for writers. You can learn more about some of the projects I represent by visiting the website.

Also, please keep in mind that I welcome queries for exciting new projects from authors who have previously submitted other projects to me.

Best of luck!

Think of rejections as the ultimate “it’s not you, it’s me.”  Which may not seem entirely comforting at the moment, much as it’s not in a breakup, but it’s just as true.  That agent is not right for your project.  She pays her bills by taking on projects she can sell.  Think about that: projects she can sell, not projects that are sellable.  Another agent will be able to sell your project.  But if you give up, you’ll never find The One.

Rejection #3: The Encouragement

Thank you so much for giving [me] a chance to consider your work. While I found your query intriguing I’m afraid I wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic to ask for more at this time.

As I’m sure you know, publishing is a subjective business and I’m sure there’s another agent out there better suited to your work.

I wish you the best of luck and the greatest success.

Again the “it’s not you, it’s me” line, but more explicit this time.  What stands out to me in this rejection is that the agent specifically mentions my query.  She even gives it an adjective: intriguing.  So now I know that I’m not going about this all wrong, that I don’t need to scrap my pitch and start over.  It’s intriguing.  Some other agent, Mr. or Ms. Right, will find it intriguing enough to make them enthusiastic and ask for a sample of the novel.  A real agent said so.  She did not grant me permission to throw up my hands in discouragement to give up this search.  She told me to get my nose back in the Writer’s Marketplace (lately I’ve been using AgentQuery because it’s an online database — a free online database! — searchable by genre, with hyperlinks to agent websites) and pitch my novel to more agents.

To recap, the lessons I’ve learned from my first three rejection letters for this project so far are as follows:

1. Agents will forget about your query. So forget about their rejection.

2. It’s not you, it’s them.

3. The market is very subjective.  Agents have opinions about the books they sell, just as you have opinions about the books you read.  The only opinion that matters is the opinion of the agent who asks to represent your work.

4. Look for encouragement where you can and cling to it.

5. There are more fish in the sea.

One of my college writing professors had the best perspective ever on rejection. He often said, “I’m not a working writer unless I’m getting a lot of rejection letters.”  Whatever responses you get, know that as long as you are querying, you are a working writer.  The second you give up, you cease to work.

Yesterday I found Nicholas Sparks’ literary agent.  Reckon she’d take on my romance?  A bit ambitious — but a little query never hurt anyone.

On a housekeeping note, you may notice that the comment form at the bottom of posts has changed.  No longer must you be a registered user of lrburt.com to respond.  You will still be required to identify yourself by name and a viable email address (I have too much trouble with spam bots if I open anonymous posting), but you don’t have to worry about remembering a password anymore.  And, if you prefer, you can comment using Open ID or your Facebook, Twitter, or Yahoo account.  Also, the new setup allows for comment threads.  I hope this makes it easier for us to interact on my site!