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by Miriam
The thing about publishing people is that most of us make a living being all judgy about other people’s work. For some of us, that extends to other areas of our lives. I find myself editing my friends when they start telling me about their job woes, their relationship problems, their kids’ lack of interest in homework, you name it. “If she’d started out with
that information,” goes the internal monologue, “I wouldn’t be making a mental list of what I need at Costco and now have no clue what she’s asking me.” Most of the time, the editing also takes place in my head and I don’t actually ask for a stronger opening and a more concise narration.
Given that a large part of our mission is to tell authors how to ply their trade better, I’m often struck by how hard it is to give truly helpful advice on how to (a) write well and (b) be a successful writer.
These “Writing Aphorisms” in the Huffington Post remind me that while we’re all incredibly preoccupied with the subject, analyzing and communicating the essence of great writing is as difficult as deciphering Gertrude Stein’s meaning…ever.
Can you share five elements that make up great writing for you? I’ll try to come up with
my five and we’ll compare notes.
by Miriam
The year is winding to a close and as
some of us immerse ourselves in lists of 2010’s greatest hits, I’m thinking ahead to 2011 and pondering what I’d like to see more of in that prime number year. In no particular order, I want:
Really good historical fiction. You know, like
The Alienist or
I, Claudius or
The White Queen or
The Crimson Petal and the White—the kind of thing that totally transports you to another era, giving you insights into the lives of the characters, and the cultural mores and political imperatives they were subject to, while also thoroughly immersing you in a transfixing story.
A memoir that makes one individual’s journey mirror the preoccupations, experiences, fears and fantasies many, if not most of us, share. Oh, and if that could come with a funny, self-aware but not self-important, charming protagonist whose life I don’t mind being wrapped up in for 300 pages, that’d be great too.
Gripping science narratives. I was browsing in a book store the other day and came across
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. I stopped to read so long that I was almost late to my appointment. Dr. Mukherjee grabbed my interest from the very first line and I’m his new biggest fan. I’d like to see more of the kind of writing and storytelling that brings scientific or medical topics to life and creates characters out of concepts or ideas.
A political book that explains what’s going on in our crazy republic. Let’s face it, we have some pretty colorful characters running the country (or trying to) these days and I find myself frequently as baffled as entertained by their antics. I’d love to see someone put it all in some kind of historical perspective while analyzing what it is about us (and them) that would make the founding fathers throw up their hands and head to Vegas.
An edge-of-your-seat, can’t-put-it-down, scary-suspenseful-sexy thriller with a hero/heroine who’d give Jack Reacher a run for his money.
Is that too much to ask? What’ve you guys got?
by Miriam
Yes, of course I’m grateful for my amazing family and friends, and my funny, smart, inventive and crazy co-workers. Yadda, yadda. Today, right before we go off to cook and eat until we can’t eat any more only to fix ourselves a sandwich with leftover turkey a few hours later, I want to share some of the things I’m thankful for about the venerable, bloody but unbowed publishing business. In no particular order, I’m grateful that
- I was able to read Jonathan Franzen’s brilliant opus in hardcover (that book is HEAVY!) and Robert Harris’ delicious The Ghost Writer (strongly recommend it) on my Kindle. Turns out I still buy hardcovers and have the equivalent of my bedside table’s weighty load in my e-reader ready to dive into wherever I may be;
- the e-book revolution, while metaphorically violent at times, has led to a fresh look at our raison d’etre: books, how they’re published, who reads them, what their value is;
- there is a new optimism about how we can harness the power of electronic publishing for good and not evil;
- Patti Smith won the National Book Award and pleaded with us not to abandon the book;
- more people talk to me about books they love, loathe, are reading, want to read than ever before;
- we’ve had numerous bestsellers this year, as well as huge sales of books that we hope will be bestsellers in a couple of years, as well as books that we didn’t sell for a lot of money but that were well published to lovely reviews;
- publishers are starting to roll out some ridiculous new boilerplates whereby they try to aggregate every right known or that will eventually be devised by the next Mark Zuckerberg (yes, we agents will fight them tooth and nail on every point because publishers need to find ways to survive and thrive that are not at the expense of authors and their rights, but it indicates to me that they’re not keeling over and dying and are actually putting up a fight to remain relevant);
- I get to meet and/or speak with talented, surprising, fascinating characters almost every day—a number of them clients and some clients to be—and have the opportunity to learn something from all of them (David Morrell told me, upon returning from his successful USO trip to Iraq, that the huge chandelier in Saddam’s main palace was made out of plastic!);
- after 21 years of doing the same thing, I’m still having fun.
Happy Turkey Day everyone!
by Miriam
It is a truth universally acknowledged (here at DGLM) that I am the resident grammar narc. Although, by and large, I’m a fairly “live and let live” type, I can be downright dictatorial when it comes to clean, polished prose. Of course, in my line of work, I have had to learn some forbearance. If I got worked up over every typo, I’d be living in a padded cell and re-reading William Safire columns ad infinitum. That said, I still find it baffling how much material is submitted to us that is sloppy, poorly proofread, and full of grammatical and syntactical mistakes.
This blog is rife with palaver about how to get published, how to get an agent, how to craft the perfect query letter, etc., but we seldom discuss the fact that bad grammar and syntax can end your publishing career before it ever gets started
—even if your ideas are fresh and good and your writing actually decent or even great. Although agents and editors are trained to see beyond simple errors that can easily be fixed in copyediting, most of us have to wade through so many submissions that we sometimes can’t get past our irritation with an author who uses random capitals everywhere or who chooses to spell phonetically rather than correctly. These days, it seems that writers are in such a rush to send off their queries the minute the manuscript is finished that they omit the part where they check to make sure that their work is ready for prime time.
Some of the things you may want to be on the lookout for before you hit the “send” key:
Don’t begin sentences with numerals. Ever.
Put the hyphens in the right place when referring to a character’s age: it’s “a four-year-old boy” but “the boy was four years old.”
Don’t use a semi-colon in place of a comma or period…or just because you think it looks sophisticated.
Keep your possessives and your contractions straight. “Its” and “it’s” mean very different things, so do “your” and “you’re.”
Read up on prepositions and their objects. There are songs that make my teeth itch when the singer wails about the love “between you and I.”
However you feel about the serial comma, use it. Doing so will help you avoid a great deal of unnecessary confusion. (I direct you to my friend
Jim Donahue’s blog post on this subject—he’s a big grammar geek too.)
I don’t care how much country music you listen to, it’s not “anyways.”
There is a difference between a hyphen and an em-dash
—one separates two words that are linked to make one concept, the other is used for parenthetical asides. Hint: in that sentence the hyphen is in the word “em-dash” and the em-dash is right after it.
Ellipses, when overused, are the equivalent of heavy breathing and invariably communicate an inherent laziness on the part of the writer who is overusing them.
Check out
The Chicago Manual of Style on numbers usage. It’s very distracting to see a lot of numerals (especially single digit numerals) in non-scientific text.
And, finally, please refrain from repeating the same word or phrase in close proximity unless it’s for a very specific effect.
You know I could go on and on here, but I’m pretty sure you all get the gist. Investing in a couple of good reference books on style and grammar will pay huge dividends. Having someone who’s just a little nitpicky proofread your work will as well. Of course, once sparkling clean prose becomes second nature, you can go ahead and subvert all of the rules
16 Comments on Meticulosity*, last added: 11/19/2010
by Miriam
For someone who’s fanatical about fiction, I’ve always had a soft spot for biographies and memoir (of course, a good account of an interesting life has much in common with the best fiction). Losing oneself in the pages of a novel full of invented characters is a delicious way to spend an afternoon, but there is a particular kind of pleasure in reading about real people’s exploits and experiences and especially how they describe themselves and what they’ve gone through. I find that willingness to share one’s humanity and the courage it takes to air one’s laundry and leave it flapping in the breeze pretty irresistible.
I’ve been charmed by Laurence Olivier’s diffident, self-deprecating take on his prodigious talent and by John Bayley’s loving account of his relationship with the great Iris Murdoch. I’ve been blown away by Paul Monette’s gorgeous
Becoming a Man and Elie Wiesel’s devastating
Night. I’m desperate to read Keith Richards’ surprisingly well-reviewed
Life and Antonia Fraser’s ode to her love affair with Harold Pinter. But, I’ve also got a night table buckling under the weight of memoirs by the likes of Mary Karr, Jeannette Walls and Anne Lamott.
Samuel Johnson, himself the subject of a great biography and the author of the wonderful
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, put it thusly, “I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for...every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use.” He went on for a while after that, but you get the idea. Everyone has a story to tell. Their own.
So, I’d like to propose a memoir contest. Give us a couple of sentences that tell us the gist of your memoir and we’ll put it to a vote and decide whose story has the most potential. (Please keep in mind that this is not a referendum on your life…just on your ability to craft a good pitch for it.) We’ll come up with prizes for first, second and third place entries and let you know what those are as soon as we’ve figured them out.
I look forward to reading.
Life at DGLM has been so hectic today with back-to-back meetings and important literary agent things to do that I’ve not had time to come up with a blog topic, much less write one for your amusement, annoyance, and/or edification. So, in desperation, I looked up writer’s block in Google Images and I found the following from
AmazingSuperPowers by Wes & Tony:
A little extreme, but I get it. Haven’t you ever gotten a little crazy when a deadline’s looming and you’ve got bubkis?
by Miriam
I’ve been beset and besieged by memoir queries of late. An inordinate number of them seem to focus on a bad/negligent/crazy mother and the lasting scars she inflicted on her child—in this case, the memoirist. As the parent of a precociously knowing five-year-old, I feel a level of sympathy for these maligned moms (we mothers don’t have a good track record when it comes to literary depictions of us by our offspring). I feel less sympathy for their whiny kids who not only blame everything that’s wrong with their lives on the poor women who spawned them but, worse yet, do it in ways that are both artless and, frankly, tedious.
Which got me thinking about why so many people write memoirs and why so few of them end up successfully published. Simply being the victim of physical or psychological abuse, real or perceived, doesn’t do it. Well crafted prose that lovingly explores the contents of one’s navel doesn’t either. Exotic experiences involving travel or bizarre encounters don’t guarantee a good read. Universal themes are a good starting point but don’t always add up to anything more than intellectual meanderings that either veer toward the Hallmark Card or obscure German philosopher ends of the literary spectrum. I’ve always felt that, like good fiction, a successful memoir is powerful, moving, charming, well-written, well-paced, and relatable in that been-there-felt-that kind of way, with a minimum of tiresome self-absorption (despite the fact that the subject is the self).
And then I came across
this piece about the delightful Michel de Montaigne whose solipsism is, well, the whole point of his essays, and whose interest in the minutiae of everyday life is boundless. So, how come he still engages us across the centuries? And how come so many authors with more interesting life stories and horrible mommies fail so often to do so?
What makes you pick up a memoir? And what personal narratives are among your favorites?
by Miriam
Years ago I found myself positively gleeful at the news that Oscar Hijuelos had won a Pulitzer for his gorgeous novel,
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. I’d not long before finished reading the book and was foisting it upon everyone and anyone—people would read it just to shut me up. Of course, part of my delight was due to the fact that Hijuelos was (and is) Cuban American, as am I. The prize seemed to validate not just my wonderful reading experience but also Hijuelos’ and my shared cultural memories and references.
A few days ago, I was thrilled to hear about another prize won by a Latin American author. This time, it was Mario Vargas Llosa’s Nobel, a prize that eluded him for decades—long after his arch-nemesis Gabriel Garcia Marquez won it and proceeded to rub it in his face at every gathering of illustrious Spanish speaking novelists (okay, maybe this just happens in my imagination and the first congratulatory phone call Mario received was from Gabriel).
On the one hand, it seems silly that these prizes (and their siblings, the Booker, the National Book Award, etc.) should in any way influence our regard for these authors. On the other,
check out what the indefatigably witty Adam Gopnik says about this laudatory season.
Do prizes make you pick up books (or avoid them)? Do they influence how you view certain authors? Are you above such trifles?
by Miriam
It’s been my experience that writers (especially great writers) seem to see-saw between outsize egomania and despondent insecurity. But, as
this delightful excerpt from Hunter S. Thompson’s job application demonstrates, they tend to be wittier than the average Joe at expressing both of those states (and all the ones in between).
What are your favorite examples of writerly arrogance (or self-deprecation)?
via The Millions
by Miriam
Our client and friend Kathryn Casey posted a link on Facebook the other day to a blog featuring a 2005 piece by Stephen King that promises to teach you everything you need to know about being a successful writer. Now, Stephen (if I may call him that) and I have always had a troubled relationship. No, not like that! I’ve never met the man. Even though I’ve only ever seen him in person across a crowded Javits Center at BEA back when it was the ABA, like many of you I’ve followed his literary peregrinations with great interest despite the fact that I find every new book by him increasingly impossible to wade through. My feeling is that his prodigious talent as a storyteller and prose stylist notwithstanding, he just misses being one of the “greats” (you know who they are). In recent years, however, I’ve become a fan of his
EW columns and I always enjoy his quirky take on pop culture. The guy’s smart and successful and he obviously has a lot of wisdom to impart but he does it in an accessible manner and never seems to take himself too seriously.
Whether you’re a fan of Stephen King’s work or not, however, you have to admit that he has fashioned a brilliant career as a writer and
these tips are both amusing and dead-on. Except for #11, of course. You
do need an agent to turn everything else to gold—maybe not when SK was starting out, but definitely now that the business has become a multi-headed hydra.
What do you guys think of SK’s advice? Anything that especially jumps out at you here?
by Miriam
This short piece in Salon (originally a letter in the Reading Club) last week got me thinking about boredom, specifically the kind of boredom that we publishing folks experience on an almost hourly basis. Of the thousands of queries and manuscripts that we sift through every year, a significant percentage suffer from a serious case of
boring. The good stuff is exciting, thrilling, energizing, and…not boring. The very bad is tragic, hilarious, depressing, and baffling, but, again, not boring. Then there’s that other category of submissions: the inescapably, suffocatingly, mind-numbingly boring. For me, getting through these is the hardest part of my job. Saying “next” when it’s an unsolicited query or manuscript that’s dragging you down into the arms of Morpheus is one thing. It’s quite another when it’s a manuscript by a client or a client’s referral.
When it comes to explaining to a client why his or her novel doesn’t work, “Because it’s boring!” is not an option. You have to dig around for problems of plot, characterization, themes, etc., and that entails reading much more of the material than you can stay awake for without the aid of artificial stimulants. The biggest problem is, of course, that the book is boring, but people who will happily take eviscerating criticism about their prose style or their lack of character development would run you over with their SUVs if you mentioned the “B” word.
Which is why I was so amused by this phrase in axelrod’s letter regarding MFA workshop critiques: “If we didn't like a piece, we could talk about anything but the one thing that mattered, the awful, dreaded taboo word: boring.” Heh. I know just what he means.
by Miriam
If, like me, you’re the kind of annoying person who corrects your friends when they use a word inappropriately or find yourself taking a pen to typos in restaurant menus, you’ll have fun with
this top ten list. Some typographical/grammatical errors, in fact, are so egregious that they cross the line into delightful. I don’t know about you, but I always find myself cackling at
stories of misspelled tattoos. I mean, if you’re going to permanently etch something onto your body….
What are some of your favorite grammatical bloopers?
by Miriam
I was on vacation last week, trying to keep off e-mail and the internet, and failing on both counts. When I found myself needing a break from the non-stop thrills of
The Hunger Games trilogy, I’d wander over to the computer and check out my favorite news sites to see what or who was going to hell now. Paris Hilton banned from Vegas? Jan Brewer smiling idiotically at the camera for an hour and a half or so in the worst debate ever? Stephen Hawking jumping on the Christopher Hitchens bandwagon and dissing God? (Well, it does seem to sell books….)
But then my pleasure reading dovetailed nicely with my need to keep up with the relentless news cycle. I was still savoring Collins’ wonderful referencing of
Fahrenheit 451 in
Mockingjay when I read about the Florida pastor who seems to think it a novel and fine idea to burn the Quran as a 9/11 protest and I was once again struck by the thought that it’s amazing that our civilization has managed to survive our seeming inability to learn anything from history. And, why is it that religious and political zealots always seem to vent their general hatred of humanity on books? From Savonarola to Hitler to
all those crazy fundamentalists who feel threatened by the dictionary, it seems that every time someone’s pissed off about something, there’s a marshmallow roast at a literary bonfire.
Now, we here at DGLM try to stay out of the political fray as much as possible. One of the tenets of our business is the freedom of ideas and expression. Most of us who work in publishing understand that no matter how loathsome an idea it is necessary to defend its author’s right to communicate it. As readers, we can choose not to buy the book. Or, we can choose to debate and counter that author’s arguments and defeat his/her position with rational and well-conceived rebuttals. Everyone who has been a publishing professional for any length of time has occasionally had to be involved with the publication of a book whose message or viewpoint s/he did not agree with. And most of us are appalled when certain groups rally together to boycott or ban a certain title on political, religious or moral grounds.
The Florida pastor planning the latest book burning is just following in a long tradition of intolerance and ignorance. Clearly, he doesn’t understand that books, like phoenixes, rise from the flames of censorship. The Quran, the Bible, and the Torah, have survived many of these gory ceremonies and come back stronger than ever. As have Anne Frank, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut, and Webster’s dictionary (last I heard they keep adding new words, some of them objectionable). Of course, that kind of attempted repression often (and perversely) makes for the premise of great literature.
What do you think? Is it ever okay to burn books?
Happy summer, everybody! For the next while, there are going to be some absences from the blog as we take vacations, but we'd hate to leave you guys hanging. It's no secret that we blog much more now than when we started this baby, and there are far more of you reading than there were way back when. So we thought we'd bring back some blog entries of days gone by that you may have missed if you just joined us in the last year. We've cued up enough, but if you have any favorites you think your fellow readers might enjoy, give us a shout below!
by Miriam
I hate it when I’m wrong. My type-A tendencies and absolute certainty that I know everything are not a good combination when it comes to taking criticism. Soon after I started working with Jane Dystel (sometime in the Paleozoic Era) she pointed out to me that my editorial memos were mean. I was affronted. I was trying to help authors by giving them the benefit of my brilliant insights and I really didn’t have time to soft-soap my comments! I’m sure Jane was laughing internally when she suggested that maybe I should start my missives with a positive comment or two about the work and then offer my honest opinion in a thoughtful, sensitive way without showing off or trying to make the recipient feel like a no-talent slob. She was right, of course, and I learned that if the goal is to have an author improve his/her work, I needed to be nicer when I offered my feedback. Jane made me realize that we are more likely to digest and respond well to criticism if it’s offered with kindness and sensitivity rather than relish and disdain. It was, for me, an invaluable lesson.
The fact is that a big and important part of our job as agents is to offer constructive criticism that will take a proposal or manuscript to the level it needs to be at in order to maximize our chances of selling it. All of us here at DGLM spend a great deal of time on our clients’ projects helping authors to clearly communicate their message, smooth over rough prose, beef up a weak marketing section, etc. Sometimes, it’s our unpleasant task to tell someone that their work is simply not good enough and that no amount of fixing is going to change that.
In my experience, the best, most talented authors are the ones who take their criticism neat. They knock it back with a big gulp, thank you for your time and effort in reviewing and critiquing their materials, take a little while to process what you’ve told them, and do their best to incorporate your comments and suggestions into that piece of fiction or nonfiction they thought was perfect when they sent it in to you with the expectation that you’d be able to immediately sell it for six figures. These authors put their egos and bruised pride aside (no matter how successful they are) and get to work. They ask follow-up questions and evenly discuss why they think they might or might not agree with one or more of your edits. The result, more often than not, is a much improved proposal or manuscript that has a much better shot at the big time and an author who is genuinely grateful for the help.
Then there are those authors who never get past their anger and disappointment and whose reactions range from the merely childish, “I’m taking my marbles and going elsewhere,” to the unprofessional, “You suck and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Recently, an author suggested that both his editor (someone who’d been successfully plying her craft for over a decade) and I were mistaken in our critique of his work, strongly implying that neither one of us had understood his category well enough to be able to comment intelligently on his novel. His words were offensive in a way that our criticism had not been. We were both trying to help him.
I sincerely believe that authors (or any artist for that matter) must be able to defend their vision of and approach to their work. But, they should also have
by Miriam
Authors, agents and publishers tend to agonize over book titles. You want something evocative, witty, literary, whimsical, muscular, funny, quirky, different, but not too different, alliterative, lyrical, short…. You basically want the equivalent of the advertising jingle you can’t get out of your head. But,
as Dan Wilbur points out, readers are sometimes flummoxed by titles that give them no hint of what the story they’re going to spend hours, days, sometimes months trying to get through is about or that don’t quite prepare them for the experience they’re about to embark upon (good or painful).
Some titles, of course, are exquisitely straightforward (
The Old Man and the Sea, for instance, pretty much sums up what you’re up against with the longest short novel ever), but there are plenty that are headscratchers. What are some of the titles you’d like changed for clarity’s sake and what would their replacements be?
by Miriam
My “away” vacation this year was spent in the Outer Banks with my family, mostly eating, drinking and lounging on the beach (actual swimming was not really possible given the profusion of jellyfish). A couple of those days were also spent reading the last installment of Richelle Mead’s delightfully unputdownable (yes, I know, it’s not really a word, but it fits the bill)
Spirit Bound. I could tell you that, by doing so, I was catching up on work – around here, we like to read books from each others’ lists so that we can speak intelligently about them at cocktail parties – but I’d be lying. In fact, I’d been hounding Jim McCarthy for a copy of the book to take with me, even though the ones the publisher had sent over were designated for rights sales. The reality is that ever since Jim urged me to read the first
Vampire Academy book, I’ve been hooked on the series. Will Rose have to kill Dimitri? Will she be able to save him? Will Lissa and Christian work through their issues? The series is about serious teenage vampire angst with a body count and boasts a thoroughly engaging, kick-ass heroine, so as soon as I finish a book, I start bugging Jim for information about the next one. (He doesn’t find this annoying at all.)
As you all know by now, we like to think of ourselves as serious publishing professionals, but we’re also just big old geeky readers who can be sucked in by certain books like swimmers by a riptide. These days, it seems that a lot of the books dragging us out to sea are YA titles. I love Amanda Foreman’s quote about her love of YA books
in this New York Times piece: “A lot of adult literature is all art and no heart, but good Y.A. is like good television. There’s a freshness there; it’s engaging. Y.A. authors aren’t writing about middle-aged anomie or disappointed people.” I think this perfectly explains the boom in this category in recent times and why it is adults are so captivated by literature meant for tweens and teens. Even when tackling difficult, dark subjects, the writing in this genre is all about
possibility, about the ability to overcome obstacles and get to the other side. Who can resist that message and the edge-of-your-seat plot twists?
One of the takeaways for me is that the reason YA is so huge among adults right now may be that readers want good old-fashioned great storytelling that takes them away from their uncomfortable realities (the economy, the state of world affairs, global warming, the Kardashians) and makes them believe in possibility. What do you all think?
By: DGLM,
on 8/10/2010
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by Stephanie
Hi blog readers! Now that both
Jane and
Chasya have so kindly introduced me, it’s my turn to chime in. I guess the best way to begin is to give you a little information on my background here. I may be new to
the website, but I’m
not entirely new to the blog. In fact, I have actually been puttering around this office for longer than you think.
I began at Dystel & Goderich over a year ago as an intern. I was determined to find myself an internship in publishing, particularly during the latter half of my college career. I hadn’t had much luck early on, so by my third year at NYU, nothing was going to stop me. I applied and interviewed for the internship with DGLM all while living in London, where I was spending the spring semester of my junior year. Fully aware that my geographical gap could create a handicap, I knew I had to be persistent. And luckily for me, according to Lauren, I was persistent enough that it exhibited my determination, but not too persistent that it made her want to burn my application and any remaining evidence of my existence. So with that, I was offered the chance to join DGLM that summer as an intern. The semesters passed, I continued to stay with the agency, and before I knew it about a year and a half had gone by and I had graduated from NYU. Then I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity by Jane and Miriam to take over for Chasya as she looks to begin a new chapter in her life. I knew that the timing was right; I felt comfortable here, and I had spent enough time working on the less essential tasks that I had developed the desire to explore the business further and carve out my own place in it. And as clichés go, the rest is history.
In giving this blog post some thought, I remembered something Rachel had said
in her welcome post: “I think the one thing I truly love about working in a literary agency is that I get to see the entire process of publishing, from a rough manuscript to a finished book on the shelves.” I might make fun of Rachel for her love of Vegemite, but her words are very true. I’m very excited to finally get the chance to dive in and take on my own work. My time at DGLM has allowed me to expose myself to an industry I have always wanted to be a part of, and now it’s allowing me to embark on a new journey in my life—one that will allow me to build the career I’ve always wanted.
The bottom line is, I’m excited to take on this new responsibility within Dystel & Goderich, because now I get to hear from you. Yes, you. I look forward to hearing your ideas, your thoughts, your opinions. You all have stories to tell. Trust me, I’ve read a lot of them. But now I’m ready to do something with them. Turn them into the books they deserve to be. There are certain subjects I’m particularly interested in reading,
which you can find in my bio on our website. So let me hear from you. I can only rearrange the pens on my desk for so long….
by Miriam
Being a lifelong Hemingway fan—yes, few writers are easier to parody, but few have also done so much with clean, well-lit prose—I’ve always found his “iceberg theory” of writing to be absolutely dead on. Instead of trying to throw everything and the refrigerator into your book, why not have your accumulated knowledge inform your characters’ motivations or the choices you make in telling their story rather than overwhelming it. There’s nothing more tedious than a writer who has to show off every bit of research that went in to his/her saga about 19th century pickle canning for instance.
In
this excerpt from George Rabasa’s Views from the Loft: A Portable Writer's Workshop, the author offers some helpful tips to keep the iceberg from sinking your narrative ship. My favorite is #10: “Research does not make the story. The story makes the story.”
Happy summer, everybody! For the next while, there are going to be some absences from the blog as we take vacations, but we'd hate to leave you guys hanging. It's no secret that we blog much more now than when we started this baby, and there are far more of you reading than there were way back when. So we thought we'd bring back some blog entries of days gone by that you may have missed if you just joined us in the last year. We've cued up enough, but if you have any favorites you think your fellow readers might enjoy, give us a shout below!
by Miriam
The perfect query letter does not exist. (Well, perhaps it lives in the fantasy realm of unicorns and dragons, but certainly not in our day-to-day publishing world.) And, yet, everyone seems to be chasing the formula for that elusive, perfect query letter (EPQL) and its pursuit is giving a lot of people agita and heartburn. It's a recurring theme during the Q&A portion of agent presentations at writers conferences. Many internet sites and print publications aimed at writers spend a lot of time on the subject and, in talking with individual authors, it seems that confusion about this subject is universal.
So, I will try to elucidate what makes a query effective -- not perfect, mind you, just effective -- for us here at DGLM:
1. It should be succinct and to the point. The purpose of this missive is to introduce yourself and your project and ascertain if the agent wants to take a look at your proposal/manuscript. It is not the place to go into longwinded detail about the weather, your passion for shell collecting (unless, of course, the book is about shell collecting), or your great-aunt Mary’s faith that you would one day be a published writer. It should, however, be no more than a page long and look and read like a letter not a report.
The first paragraph might mention how you came to query this particular agent and/or agency – perhaps noting that you saw a nice acknowledgement of the agent in a book you admired or you looked on the agency’s web site and identified with the agent’s profile somehow or anything that shows that you did your homework and that this is not just a form letter being sent to 6,000 agents.
The next paragraph should tell the prospective agent what the book is in a couple of sentences. Here is not the place to summarize your entire book. You want to highlight the strongest themes or the elements that make the book distinctive (e.g., “My novel tells the tale of star-crossed teenage lovers separated by their families’ bitter feud.” Not, “Romeo grew up in Verona and was part of the Montague clan. He met and fell in love with Juliet who was a member of the Capulet familiy and who spent an inordinate amount of time on balconies or talking to her nurse….”) Unless you’re very good at writing concise plot summaries, the less said the better. The idea is to get the agent to the actual manuscript.
The final paragraph should tell us anything relevant about you – this is your first novel or you’ve been published in numerous literary journals or John Cheever was your godfather or you’re a neurosurgeon who has an MFA from the Iowa writing program, etc. – and ask if you may send a sample of your project or the complete manuscript.
2. On the technical side of things: Spell check and then carefully proofread the query. We have had instances of great hilarity over a dropped letter in a strategic spot. Someone once queried us for a book about “pubic policy” and, juvenile bunch that we are, we didn’t stop laughing for days. You don’t want the query to go directly to the form rejections pile because of typos, grammatical errors or because you addressed the envelope to one agent and sent it to another.
It’s okay to single space query letters – as you would any other letter – but it’s not okay to make your margins less than one inch wide and your f
by Miriam
I’ve been fascinated by the Arthurian legend since I was a kid. The impossible struggle to be good in the face of temptation and evil, the idea that a belief in magic is as necessary for survival as the quest for something of meaning, the courage and passion and the heartbreaking losses and defeats, the notion that the human spirit can triumph over the darkness that sometimes threatens to engulf us…all that and Excalibur. I’ve read dozens of versions over the years, from Chretien de Troyes’ to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s to John Steinbeck’s to T.H. White’s to Mary Stewart’s to Richard Monaco’s to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s, and always hoped that there was more than myth and folklore to the story of the great King Arthur and his court.
So, it was with great delight that I came upon
this piece in the Daily Mail. How cool is the discovery that there was, in fact, a real Round Table (which was not a table at all)? Hopefully, the new information will spark a new wave of Arthurian storytelling.
by Miriam
So, once every ten weeks or so, each of us at DGLM have to come up with a lengthier than usual blog post. Turns out that on this, the hottest week in memory, it’s my turn to come up with something to charm and/or entertain you, dear readers. Unfortunately, I think the heat has melted several key synapses and I can’t remember a single book I’ve ever read. Heck, I’m not sure I remember how to read. It really is that hot.
While casting about for subjects that don’t involve having to research the Modern Library’s 100 greatest books so I can tell you why I like the ones I’ve read or how embarrassed I am about the ones I haven’t, it occurs to me that we haven’t discussed the whole not-everyone-should-be-a-writer thing. Before you all turn on me with the internet equivalent of torches and pitchforks, hear me out.
All of us here at DGLM (including the interns) are inundated with query letters and manuscripts on a daily basis. As you know from all our nattering on about slush and having to decide what to request, we see everything -- from the brilliant to the “what the…?” For the purposes of this post, let’s consider the truly awful queries which are sometimes accompanied by truly awful manuscripts. Contrary to what many of you may think after receiving a rejection letter from an agent or publisher, most of us in the business do not enjoy turning people down. Some of us have harbored our own literary fantasies and come to terms with the fact that we don’t have the courage or the talent to pursue the writing life. Most of us understand how hard and lonely a path this can be and respect the perseverance and love that it takes to plow ahead in the face of doors slamming in one’s face and the dedication to continue to work on one’s craft even when encouragement and support are in short shrift. We don’t like to turn things down, but we have to.
What most of us never say to an author whose unquestionably unreadable work has crossed our desks is that s/he should stop writing with an eye toward publication. In our eternally hopeful society, where the can-do spirit is practically encoded in our collective DNA, telling someone that they should give up trying to do something they’re just not good at is tantamount to shooting puppies. But honestly, some people should not be trying to get published. (Please note, that I’m not saying they shouldn’t be writing – if that is an enjoyable, even therapeutic pastime, carry on! – just that not everyone should be trying to get their writings published.)
Yes, ours is a subjective business and Jim McCarthy may go into a rage if someone says they didn’t love
Madame Bovary while I am often called names when I say I just don’t get what the fuss about Salinger is about. But, those authors and most of the ones that do end up successfully published bring enough talent to the table – whether as storytellers, prose stylists, or thinkers – that their works enrich us on whatever level they touch our lives. Alas, too many people who are bad storytellers, incoherent and ungrammatical writers, and who have nothing new to say, think that they should have a book contract. I’m not sure there’s much that can be done about this, but I do wish we could be more honest and forthright about the fact that they probably should set their sights on other talents they might be able to develop instead of giving them false hope that maybe, if they keep going, they will attain their publishing ambitions.
As writers, do you find yourselves biting your tongue when a colleague you don’t think is particularly talented is railing about how no one “gets” their work?
by Miriam
Reading
this fun piece about books that have been “described, whether by critics or the authors themselves, as the
Ulyssi of their respective cultures” made me remember how much I loathed James Joyce’s masterpiece when we spent what seemed like five years studying it in a graduate school seminar. Maybe it was our professor’s vaguely fascist insistence that this was a masterwork surpassing all others, or my exhaustion at the tautological discussions of the gorgonzola theme in the book, but this class may have influenced my decision to forgo getting a Ph.D. and venture into the publishing business instead.
We’ve all come across books that other people consider the
most, the
best, the
greatest and that we found unreadable. Here are my top five what-are-people-thinking-when-they-rave-about-them-or-force-you-to-study-them-in-school books (the list is, of course, subject to change):
The IliadThe Scarlet LetterMoby DickUlyssesThe Catcher in the RyeWhat are yours?
by Miriam
Around these parts, everyone knows that my love of vampires long precedes the
Twilight phenomenon. Robert Pattinson was probably still in diapers when I was falling in love with Anne Rice’s Lestat and I remember then-starting-out agents at DGLM rolling their eyes at me when I suggested that they fill their lists with vampire books. One who took me seriously was Jim McCarthy and he’s got the delightful and talented Richelle Mead and her
Vampire Academy series, among others, to show for it.
Thing is, it made sense for people to be skeptical. Before Stephenie Meyer re-energized the vampire tale with her sparkly bloodsuckers, this was a tired literary standby.
As Meg Cabot reminds us vampires have been around longer even than Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, and, throughout the ages, they have preyed on our imaginations precisely because they traffic in the two most powerful human preoccupations: sex and death.
I’ve been hearing a lot about
The Passage, Justin Cronin’s contribution to vampire lit (the description of which makes me think of a cross between
28 Days Later and
The Road), including Stephen King’s over-the-top praise of the novel. It’s expected to be one of the summer’s blockbusters. We publishing people are forever trying to predict trends (a fool’s game in the best of times), and we at DGLM often ask ourselves whether the vampire mania is subsiding or getting ready for yet another resurgence. Is it too late to be signing up yet another vampire novel? Or am I right in thinking that this genre will, ahem, never die?
What do you all think?
by Miriam
One of the myriad things we do around here is come up with book ideas. Then, we try to match those ideas with the appropriate writers, help them develop the concept, and hopefully sell the resulting proposal to a publisher for big buckaroos.
“Well, duh!” you might be thinking right about now. “That’s what you agent types are supposed to
do.”
And, yes…well, yes. But creating this perfect match between idea and writer is harder than you might think. It can be immensely frustrating to come up with an idea that could be the next
Tipping Point only to come up empty in terms of who will be the next Malcolm Gladwell. When we look to our client list to create a match, we often fail. The client in mind might have the right credentials but is probably working on his/her own book and won’t be available until that is delivered. He or she might also just have no interest in the subject we’re so excited about. The other approach is to go out and find journalists, professors, bloggers, etc., and pitch the idea to them in the hopes that it sparks their interest. And, of course, they have to be available – not represented by another agent or busy with another book project.
This type of matchmaking is time consuming and often fruitless but when it works, it’s immensely gratifying. There’s nothing better than seeing your brain child go out into the world and make good.
Right now, for instance, I’m looking for someone who can write lucidly and anecdotally about mathematics and philosophy to do a book on “guesswork”. Any takers?
by Miriam
It’s BEA week (
check this out for an overview of the conference if you’re not familiar with it) which means that some of us are at the Javitz Center checking out publishers’ exhibits, schmoozing with authors who are in from out of town, and loading up free tote bags with galleys of books that are already generating buzz.
For me, the point of BEA has always been collecting those galleys. Invariably, I find myself walking the huge expanse of the Javitz arena ridiculously bogged down by the weight of too many of these advanced readers copies only to realize when I leave the building that getting from 11th Avenue to civilization requires a very long walk to the nearest subway or an endless wait for a cab. No matter. It’s still a thrill to read something in this vulnerable, unfinished format (complete with typos and mostly exaggerated promotional information on the back cover) and then watch the published book race up the bestseller lists, win a huge prize, or both.
I just came across this old piece from New York magazine and was delighted to see how many of those galleys I’d picked up at the 2007 BEA went on to gaudy sales and great acclaim.
Are any of you attending BEA this year? What galleys are you walking away with?
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In light of our most recent exchange, Miriam, here are my five elements:
1. Honest emotion
2. Accurate detail
3. Clever use of language
4. Skilled storytelling
5. A way of making me see a subject/person in way I had never considered
-Feelings or reactions done tightly in a sentence or two.
-Dialogue that makes me laugh or tightens my chest.
-A setting that is active.
-Characters interacting, not just acting next to each other.
-A voice that I would instantly recognize if I met the character walking down the street.
* Smart, witty dialogue
* Colorful descriptions achieved with minimal word usage
* Unexpected twists and turns -- especially the emotional kind
* Characters being real (warts and all)
* Beautiful words sewn together to keep the story moving
1. First and foremost, characters that are multi-dimensional and make me feel deeply- that I quickly become attached to and really care what happens to them. Otherwise, no matter how creative the setting, I'm out.
2. Detailed descriptions of the environment that truly convey mood- not in-depth descriptions of what the characters are wearing...
3. Dialogue that is engaging and believable without being so everyday I feel like I'm overhearing people in line at Starbucks.
4. Style of voice that is genuine and unique to the author- and that makes me want to read more work by them, specifically, instead of thinking "Oh, this reminds me of so and so..."
5. Skill at that alchemy, whatever it is, that pulls me into a book and won't let me go at risk of damaging my fragile eyesight (not all books have enabled text to voice or are out on audio, still, sadly!) That intangible thing that makes you sad as you turn every page that you're getting closer to the end, because you don't ever want the book to end, at all.
Happy Holidays, Ms. Goderich!
~bru
Fun exercise. Off the top of my head:
* Heart. Neither sentimental nor frigid treatment of characters and events. The reader's emotions are evoked.
* Concision. Which is not to say florid styles are no good--au contraire in many cases. Every word and punctuation mark must achieve, or help to achieve, a specific effect.
* Depth. There is an intelligence pervading the text, expressed in the themes of the work at the very least.
* Delight. The text takes pleasure wherever and whenever it can be found, in wordplay (e.g, apt similes and metaphors), in ideas, through any of the five senses, in humor, etc.
* Captivation. Through foreshadowing and rhetorical questions and other aspects of the art of storytelling the writer causes the reader to think s/he will die without knowing what'll happen next.
Great exercise. This one's for all the YA lovers out there.
#1 -- Characters with voices to match.
Rachel Cohn's Cyd Charisse describing her boyfriend:"They take one look at his five-foot-five, surfer-shirt-wearin', baggy-jeans-slouchin', Pop Tart--eatin', spiked-hair-head self and you can just see confusion firebombs exploding in their heads, like they are thinking, Oh no, Cyd Charisse, that young man is not your homes. Dig this: He is.
#2 -- Colorful language.
Diablo Cody in CANDY GIRL, "Jack Frost is a liberal, rangy sadist with ice crystals in his soul patch." And, every word in Libba Bray's GOING BOVINE.
#3 -- Tension.
HUNGER GAMES. Need I say more?
#4 -- Emotion and compelling relationships.
Sara Zarr's Jennifer Harris and Cameron Quick; John Green's Pudge and Alaska; and yes, I'm going there, Stephenie Meyer's Bella and Edward.
#5 -- Original idea, plot or way a story is told.
Lisa McMann's WAKE trilogy; Jay Asher's THIRTEEN REASONS WHY; Ally Condy's MATCHED.
I learned how to write a novel in sixth grade.
1) Somebody has to want something.
2) Somebody else (or something nasty) must get in the way.
3) Our hero must continue taking action to reach his goal (sometimes he wins, sometimes he looses, but usually, in the end, he wins).
4) Repeat as necessary.
The more I follow these steps, the better I write--and the easier it gets!