How to Get Through Horrifying Process of Literary Agent Submissions
I have reached a critical point in the list of orderly steps in the long march to publication which I have been given by others and have dutifully written down. They are/were as follows:
1. Write the shitty first draft
2. Read it and make less shitty
3. Send it to Kind & Wise Mentory Editor Who Has Read James Joyce
4. Laugh and cry as you read her Kind & Wise suggestions; take 99% of them. Redraft.
5. Send new draft to 28-Year-Old Editor Who Doesn’t Remember President Nixon But Is Much Smarter Than I
6. Enjoy life with no novel to think about and write songs and poems while 28 y-o reads and edits draft.
7. Receive edits from 28-y-o and cry for a month. Decide you are not a novelist. Pick yourself up off the carpet and have a Zoom call with her in which she tells you she had a very hard time editing your novel because it was practically perfect.
8. Wonder if you are crazy.
9. Take 69% of her suggestions and finish the draft.
10. Write a synopsis which is harder than writing the novel
11. Write the query letter which is harder than writing the synopsis
12. Make a list of agents you’d love to work with by finding names in the acknowledgements pages of your favorite novels. Cross off the dead ones.
beautiful nerissa.
there’s a time to look back
and i think that time chooses us
not the other way around
love
karen
i love this. as my own work is reflecting so much on my past right now, i really resonated with this piece.
I dream about those days.
Those days in that box.
Tied up, packed away.
Filled with snowy memories.
Orange walls, green floors.
Icy fields.
Drafty windows.
The cold in every corner
I can relate to this so strongly.
I know the music from your past can still make me remember the good times of my misspent youth. I hope we both can look back at “those days” and not feel the pain so acutely.
Eloquent, clear poem.
Such clarity illuminating being here in life
and having had those experiences
having those experiences enclosed in the past
not integrated or woven into the present existance
must resonate with just about everyone
who has a past life of experience
that gives birth to where we are today.