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.
I feel like I know this poem — did you write it a while back and just recently post it here? Funny, but I was actually thinking about Prometheus today (after doing some reading) and had this vague recollection of a poem you’d written about him. If this is brand new, then I’m either crazy or really tapped in! Thanks for sharing it either way…
Brava! starting with the question catches me. I also love the informal, conversational tone. makes the piece very approachable.
taking a well known myth and spinning it like this is ekphractic! the regenerative nature of the liver is something the greeks may have been aware of experientially. For the myth, it becomes a symbol of regeneration. in your poem, the voice is not taken but “borrowed”, used for and by others and then returned.
they are both heroic myths – and i love this about the piece.
Look at you, getting your poetry all on and everything… 🙂
keep it up. Do i see a poetry chapbook in the offing?