I’m working on a manuscript that my agent wants to read. That sounds ordinary enough but it’s actually unusual. I like my agent and he enjoys my company enough to laugh at my jokes, something of a litmus test given the fact we’re both invested in a process that resembles the Catholic Church and its official fuzzy position on sex and procreation, a process that has many rules, written and unwritten, whose tenets and precepts are often contradictory, whose outcome is unknown. Like the Church we want to see bouncing new offspring to swell the ranks down the road; the simple fact is that to produce a baby a man and a woman must have sex. They do not, however, have to enjoy it. The rhythm method of birth control dictates a largely intuitive and frequently incorrect evaluation of lunar cycles, hormonal surges, moments of opportunity and the confluence of many external forces. I owe my existence to the rhythm method.
In business we prefer to drain the mystery from the transactional process, to work toward objectives that logically flow from planning and execution. That’s why Bert, the literary agent, wants me to write stuff he can sell, or that he thinks might sell. It’s a negotiation of subtle and delicate hints, nods, winks; he doesn’t say ‘write this or don’t write that.’ Bert muses about what is selling. Chick lit? Vampire novels? Cozy mysteries? Who knows? I use the rhythm method to decide what to write about; if offspring, in this case a book deal is born, a series of happy accidents must take place.
Getting read: this is not as easy as it sounds. In our enterprise together Bert and I have gotten read by the wrong people, the right people in the wrong house, editors whose lists are full, assistant editors who live with fourteen roommates and can’t afford to be wrong. So we continue to probe the outer defenses of the publishing world with a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I noticed the other day that an editor who passed on my novel last year recently took a job with another house where, according to Publishers Marketplace, he is now building a list. Maybe our timing was off or maybe the book sucks. Logically, though, books that suck seem to thrive like weeds in an untended garden, but how trustworthy can my observations be in the fog of war?
My list of happy accidents stops there. I think Miss Snark would agree that if you don’t get read by the right person at the right time birth will not occur. Bert is marketing a proposal while I work on the next thing. If the rhythm method seems random I can take consolation in the fact that if Catholic parents can overcome guilt, eternal damnation and contradictory encyclicals to produce children, anything is possible. Even a book deal.