Recently I dreamt I was climbing a cliff in the dark, hauling myself up by grasping clumps of grass that threatened to break free. It seemed I might fall into the ravine below, but I was following a trusted dog — in dream parlance, my instinct. Suddenly I found myself on top of the cliff, the dog beside me, solid ground beneath our feet.
Publishing my first novel felt just this way.
My first manuscript experience
I met my first agent thirty years ago at the Squaw Valley Writers Conference, where I had the good fortune of being assigned to a workshop led by a renowned editor, the late Ted Solotaroff. Ted founded the North American Review where he devoted himself to discovering new talent.
In his famous essay “Writing in the Cold” he reflected on the many unknown writers he published over the decades, and how their careers ultimately panned out. The ones who became prominent were not necessarily those endowed with the greatest raw talent, but those who doggedly persisted — not only in their efforts to publish but more importantly in their determination to improve.
Something in my workshop piece inspired Ted to mention me to a well-known agent from William Morris. The agent asked to see the entire manuscript and immediately agreed to represent it — no edits required. Sitting in his Manhattan office, he handed me an armful of books by the famous authors he represented, and vowed we would be together until we were old and gray. The next day, he auctioned my book to the big five publishing houses.
All five responded by the auction deadline — with rejections. Many compliments, not a single taker. I was disappointed, but not crushed. After all, I had an agent for life.
A week later I received the manuscript back in the mail — that’s how it worked back then — with a note from my agent’s assistant. I had been dropped. (Yes, in the passive voice). My agent-for-life had lasted less than a month.
With no luck finding another agent, I eventually abandoned the book. My husband, seeing my disappointment, kindly had the manuscript bound for me so that it resembled a real book. It was a sweet gesture, but I couldn’t bear to open it. I stuck it on a shelf where it collected dust for years.
The day came when the room needed repainting and the books had to be moved. I opened the old manuscript and read the first page. It was awful. I flipped through a few chapters. Worse, still. This is not false modesty. The book simply didn’t work. Whatever Ted Solotaroff had seen in a few pages of workshop material did not translate into the story as a whole.
Today I thank the universe, grateful that book was never published. I’d be embarrassed to put my name to it. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become proficient at anything. In retrospect I feel affection for that failed manuscript. It was a learning exercise — not publishable, but valuable.
Building my craft
I persisted, did an MFA, joined writing groups, read countless novels — classics, especially — to learn from other writers. My second novel attempt was better than the first, yet I could not find an agent. My rejections were mostly form letters. When I received actual feedback, I considered it earnestly. If it resonated, I used it to improve the manuscript. If it didn’t, I ignored it. My inner barometer for distinguishing the helpful from the unhelpful began to sharpen.
I finished my MFA, started a family, became a sleep-deprived mother of twins wearily scratching out a few lines of writing each day. Around this time, a beloved former mentor published a book on craft. Eagerly I devoured it — until about halfway through when I came to a passage in which they described a former student. An abysmal feeling descended in my gut. The details of this student’s novel-in-progress were camouflaged, but clearly mine.
My mentor wrote how they had never before come across a case where a student’s mind was so good, the talent so apparent, the purpose so serious, yet the writing so miscast and absurdly conceived. They used words like “madcap,” “shallow,” and “feverishly pitched.” To say my heart sank is an understatement. It felt crushed beneath the heel of a boot. This teacher who I admired had written, in so many words, that I was good at crafting sentences, but terrible at stories.
I decided to quit. After all, the agent who had vowed “until death do us part” had dumped me. The mentor who had praised my work to my face had never actually believed in it. Why was I using my babies’ nap time to write when I myself desperately needed sleep? But my attempt to quit was yet another failure. Published or not, writing was keeping me sane.
I stuck with my writing group, stubbornly working on the very novel my teacher had called absurd. A friend suggested I try her agent. All of the hope had been wrung out of me, but I sent it anyway. Winter turned to spring and summer. Months passed with no acknowledgement that the manuscript had even been received. I didn’t bother trying other agents.
Letting go
July came around. As a high school teacher with the summer off, I spent the month purging my house of clutter. Dripping sweat in our un-air-conditioned Victorian, I found my old manuscript boxes filled with years of feedback from critique groups and teachers. I looked at the recycling schedule. The truck would come the following day. I didn’t hesitate. I lugged one box after another down the steps and out onto the curb.
In the morning, the hard copies of everything I had ever written went flying into the back of the recycling truck. It felt incredibly freeing. I didn’t know what I would do next — if I would resume writing or finally succeed at quitting. All I knew was that for the rest of the day, I was free.
The phone rang, an unfamiliar voice, a name I vaguely remembered typing into a cover letter six months prior. In a rapid tempo, the agent explained that my manuscript had been lost in the bottom of a pile. She had just now read it — and loved it. She wanted to represent it.
I thought perhaps the exertion of purging my house had dampened my brain. “Hold on. My book?” I asked, as if she had dialed wrong.
She kept talking. August was normally a dead month in the publishing world, she said, but she had a hunch about an editor who would love it. Would I mind if she sent it out right away?
I sat down, wiped sweat off my forehead with the hem of my t-shirt. “My book?”
“Yes, and can you mail me a hard copy?” she asked.
I looked out the window to where the recycling truck had disappeared. “Um,” I said.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll send it digitally.”
The following day, while waiting in a hair salon, the editor in question began reading my manuscript on her phone. She kept sneaking peeks while the stylist clipped. The rest of the day she put everything on hold and finished the book. She met with her in-house team to discuss it. Four days after my agent’s first phone call, I had a deal for my novel, April & Oliver.
When I read the offer, I thought they had mistakenly added extra zeroes at the end. Did these people not know that I was only good at writing sentences, not books? That my work was madcap and absurd?
In retrospect, my former teacher’s comments no doubt held some truth. His reflection on his “anonymous student” could have demoralized me unto writerly death, but I decided to keep honing my craft, which for me meant quieting my mind enough to hear the still small voice within, the gentle padding of that dog out ahead of me in the dark.
Today, after the publication of my second novel, Dawnland, I still feel I’m just beginning to hear my own voice.
If you are reading this, you are likely a fellow student of Alan Watt. Alan is a champion of self-trust. I value his toughness, his sincerity, and most of all, his heart-focused feedback. If one day he includes me in a book, I hope 1) that he does a better job disguising me, and 2) that he emphasizes my doggedness — not to get published, but to get better.
If Ted Solotaroff were still alive, I hope he would count me as one of those “durable” writers he discussed in “Writing in the Cold,” scaling a cliff in the dark, trusting the faithful dog of instinct.
Currently I’m working on an expatriate love story set in China where I lived for several years before and after the Tiananmen democracy protests. Like my first two novels, it has taken me longer to complete than I anticipated. When I grow impatient, I remind myself that the true point of writing is not to publish, but to let the book work on me as I work on it. And has it ever!
Recently I had the honor of interviewing George Saunders, a writer praised for the wildness of his imagination, and whose new bestselling novel Vigil has been described as, ahem, feverishly pitched and wonderfully absurd.
If you take anything from this post, I hope it is encouragement to trust yourself, to hear your inner voice, to treat each rejection with curiosity, and to allow your writing to transform you as you transform it. And most of all, don’t lose sight of the dog.
