Wednesday, October 28, 2015

It's submission day (again)!

Oh, the ecstasy!
The emotions are etched in my memory like a high-contrast, high-definition photograph.
I actually screeched that day six years ago when my then-agent emailed a list of editors at various publishing houses who received my manuscript for consideration.
It would all fall into place from there. I just knew it.
My novel would be on the shelves within a year.
The next novel would result in a bidding war.
Everyone would be reading my stuff.
Yup, that's what happened.
Not!
What a contrast from today.
Today, marks my third submission day (My fourth if I count rewritten and resubmitted work.) and the emotional picture is far less jarring than it was six years ago. It's more like soft-touch through a sepia filter. I feel no euphoria. Only a pleasant buzz.
And I like it that way.
The first time around, rejection was devastating. I had jumped so high that I had a long, long way to fall and the landing hurt -- a lot. My then-agent was new to the business and had set his own expectations just as high.
We had buried several truths in our ignorance:
- The manuscript was not ready.
- My agent did not have the necessary connections. (He now represents only nonfiction.)
- Debut authors are a hard sell.
You know that saying, that ignorance is bliss?
It's not.
Ignorance, in this business, often invites disillusionment. Disillusionment takes weary, broken writers by the shoulders, spins them around and encourages them to walk away from that which has hurt them. They leave their dreams behind because they don't want to experience that kind of severe impact again.
That could have been me, but one thing kept me from surrendering to disillusionment's power: my journalism experience. When the first novel failed to sell, I started researching the business of publishing while writing another novel. I connected with established authors and aspiring writers like me. I asked questions. Lots of them.
I needed realism and I found it.
I met authors who had written multiple novels before they celebrated publication. I became friends with a writer who sold her first novels in mere days, not only because she is that good, but also because she is smart and savvy. She had spent as many years researching the markets and the players as she had writing.
I also met writers who had simply gotten lucky.
I opened my eyes and saw the mistake I'd made in signing with an agent who had no experience beyond his previous job working for a publisher. He knew a great deal about the after-market end of the business, but not enough about selling to publishers.
I left my agent with two completed novels in hand and started all over.
I had just started a third novel when I connected with my current agent, Liz Trupin-Pulli, a woman who has been in the business longer than I can ever hope to be. Liz is calm, but enthusiastic. She is practical, but ambitious. She's connected, but in ways that run deep. Her contacts are more than business associates. Like her clients, most are friends.
And she's worn off on me.
I hope this novel sells, and I'd be lying if I said I don't dream of it. But I won't let those dreams overwhelm or distract me. I refused to pour all of my being into the fate of this one novel. If it sells, I'll be screaming from the roof tops, but I'll wait until that happens to climb up there.
For now, I'll just sit on my porch, where the ground is only a few feet below me, and focus on the next novel like the one under submission doesn't exist. I know I'll lose my balance if this novel doesn't sell. I'm only human, after all. But the landing won't hurt so much and my recovery time will be minimal.
And I'll climb right back up the stairs to the porch and start writing again.

Friday, October 2, 2015

Pink: The color of opportunity

I told myself I would remove the pink silicone bracelet when my sister was cured.
Then she died two months ago and I didn't know what to do.
I couldn't take it off.
I couldn't bear the sight of it.
I nearly kicked down the display of pink I saw in the grocery store only a week after her death, more than a month before the kickoff of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I wanted it gone. Pink made me angry.
A symbol of false hope.
A cash-cow for certain companies that dupe buyers into believing they are donating to the cause.
A month when simply wearing a color makes people feel like they've done something when they've done nothing at all.
All the pink in the world couldn't save my sister.
Pink was a constant reminder of what I'd lost, what her children and husband had lost, what my siblings and her friends had lost, and it was unbearable.
Until last week.
I was at the grocery store again, the same grocery store with the premature display. The clerk was ringing up my groceries when she asked me about the bracelet. I told her about my sister, Kathy Riley. She offered condolences.
"That's why," she said, "I never skip a mammogram."
For a moment, I was furious. How dare she assume my sister didn't heed the same advice? Our mother is a survivor. Our grandmother died of breast cancer. We were vigilant, my three sisters and I. My sister's breast cancer was detected a month after her mammogram. Her then 2-year-old son leaned against her breast and it hurt. She checked and felt a lump.
Then, through my anger, I glimpsed opportunity.
I told her my sister's story and stressed the importance of monthly self-checks. I explained that mammograms can miss cancer in people with dense tissue and that further, more sensitive tests, can sometimes be necessary.
She expressed surprise that anyone could be diagnosed so soon after a mammogram and admitted she never did self-checks. She would from then on, she promised, and suddenly, pink didn't make me so angry anymore.
I am still bothered by the commercialization of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and by those people who seem to revel in the color itself rather than in the meaning behind it. But I am no longer torn when I look at my bracelet.
Pink started that conversation, and who knows? Maybe the insight she gained through our talk will someday save a life. Maybe she'll find a lump early enough for a cure, or maybe she'll tell a friend who will tell a friend, and the conversation will keep going, moving others to do self-checks regularly.
So that's what I ask this month of anyone who reads this.
Don't just wear pink.
Wear it with a purpose.
Wear it as a reminder, as motivation to educate, as a conversation starter. Buy it from companies that donate to research, education or support. Wear while you send a note to someone who is battling the disease or make a meal for a cancer patient or participate in a fundraiser.
It doesn't have to be bold and brilliant.
It can be small and subtle.
Sometimes, it's the little things that catch people's attention.
Little things like the bracelet on my wrist.