THE LONG JOURNEY OF A BOOK

Hi folks—thought I’d switch it up a bit by talking about the twisted path a book sometimes takes to publication.

Yesterday, in chatting with an acquaintance at a publishing company, I mentioned that my agent Chip MacGregor was about ready to start sending out my memoir, Adrenaline Junkie, and wondered if perhaps her house might want a look-see. She said—absolutely, send it along.

Hopefully, they’ll take it or someone else will. If and when it achieves publication, it will have traveled a long and twisted road to borrow from some pertinent song lyrics.

Ten years ago, I had a publishing contract in my grubby little hands for this same book. It had a different title then. It was titled My Secret Life. The reason it was titled thusly was because at the time, very few of my acquaintances knew of my checkered past the memoir covered—my time as a criminal where I committed over 400 burglaries as well as strong-armed and armed robberies, the years spent in prison, as well as my other “careers” which included working for an escort service serving older wealthy women as their “date,” using and dealing drugs, being involved in high speed car chases with the cops (I outran them, in case you’re interested), shootouts, being married five times, living with one of New Orleans’ top call girls and participating in “gigs” with her involving one of NOLA’s most prominent politicians, having that same call girl girlfriend stabbing and almost killing another girlfriend, as well as shooting at me and trying to run over me with the car I’d bought for her, being a top hairstylist with a show on fashion and hair on Cox Cable in New Orleans, working for some of the top salons in the country, including being the styles director at Snobs in NOLA and working at many other leading salons in New Orleans and California, being homeless… the list goes on. None of my friends at the time knew of any of this. I was teaching creative writing at some pretty good schools, including the UCLA Writer’s Program and being Writer-in-Residence for three years at the University of Toledo. After my release from prison (Pendleton, in Indiana), I’d gone to college and obtained a B.A. from Indiana University and then my MFA in Writing from Vermont College. I had several books published and was considered a “respectable person” by everyone I knew. I figured at the time it was best to keep my past hidden. I didn’t realize that my past was actually an asset and not the negative I assumed it was. I just assumed that if people knew how bad of a citizen I’d been, I’d be unable to get a decent teaching gig or get my books published. I later found out it helped, rather than hurt.

Which is why I’ve changed the title to Adrenaline Junkie because that's really what my life had been all about.

Anyway, at the time, I was on a roll. I’d had three books published on the beauty business (still selling well—every year I still get a royalty check for a couple of thousand bucks for books published in the 80s), as well as my first novel, The Death of Tarpons, which won a Special Citation from the Violet Crown Book Awards and was nominated for a slew of other literary awards, and a collection of my short stories, Monday’s Meal, which was also a finalist for the Violet Crown and which garnered a rave review in The NY Times, comparing me to my hero, Raymond Carver. Both had been published by the University of North Texas Press (UNT). And, I had just sold my third book to them. My memoir. Both UNT’s publisher, Fran Vick, and the Managing Editor, Charlotte Wright, had loved it and had taken it to the Board of Regents and gotten it okayed and a contract sent to me.

This is when things began to get hinky.

A couple of weeks after I signed the contract for My Secret Life, I went out to California for pitch meetings. I was teaching at the time for the UCLA Writer’s Program, and one of my students, Barbara Bennett, was married to a top manager, Paul Bennett, and Paul had agreed to become my manager for the screenplays I was writing. I’d just written one in two days (literally) which had become a semifinalist in the Academy’s Nichol’s Awards, and even though Paul dealt strictly at the time with above-the-line talent, took me on as his first below-the-line client. We had a great meeting and during it, I passed on my good news that my memoir had just sold and I was in the process of working with an editor at UNT on the rewrite.

Paul was a former Vice-President of HBO (Paul was the guy who created the Comedy Relief specials), and had a couple of years before resigned and become a manager. However, he still had many contacts at HBO. That night, he sat down to read a few pages of it, and, as I found out the next day, he’d ended up staying up all night as he said he couldn’t put it down. At our meeting the next day, he told me how much he loved it and he said he thought perhaps HBO might be interested in it and would I mind if he showed it to them.

Duh…

He gave it to the president of HBO Films, and the next day this guy (sorry, can’t remember his name) called Paul and said he couldn’t put it down either. If anyone knows anything about Hollywood they know these guys never read anything. For him to do so was remarkable in itself. He told Paul that they (HBO) wanted it and to not even show it to anyone else. He compared it to the bestselling book and subsequent movie, Permanent Midnight, and said, it was: Permanent Midnight but with balls.”

Suffice to say, I was in Seventh Heaven!

I went back to Indiana and with renewed energy worked on the rewrite. Then, Fran Vick retired as the publisher of UNT and Charlotte Wright resigned to take the position of Managing Editor of the University of Iowa Press, a position she still holds. I was working with an independent editor UNT had assigned to me for the rewrite and things were going well until about a week after Fran and Charlotte had left the publisher.

And then… weird things began to happen. The first thing was my editor stopped returning my emails and phone calls. Concerned, I began calling the new editor, only to find he was always “out of the office” or would “return my calls as soon as he could.” This went on for a couple of weeks and by now I was in a bit of a panic. Finally, I got through to him and he said he was sorry but he couldn’t find a contract for my book.

What th!?

I had a copy of our contract but my bookkeeping system isn’t the best—actually, it’s a mass of clutter—and I couldn’t find it.

I called Charlotte at the University of Iowa immediately. Told her what had happened and she said she’d been getting other calls from writer’s she’d signed and she said what had happened was the new editor wanted his “own” stable of writers and was doing the same thing to everyone else. She said, yes, I did have a contract—she’d signed it and so had Fran and the Board of Regents, and she could get me a copy… but, did I want a publisher who didn’t want me or my book to publish it? I reluctantly agreed and didn’t pursue it with UNT any longer.

My thought at the time was to hell with them—I’d just find another publisher. But, as so often happens, life and circumstances interfered. I got caught up in other projects and the mss languished in a drawer and eventually I forgot about it. I got a new agent and told him about it and he suggested we sell one of my novels first and then we’d offer it to whoever took the novel. Sounded good, I said, and that’s when the slide into hell really took off.

The novel he was sending out, ended up in an auction, and it got down to between St. Martin’s and Random House. St. Martin’s final offer was $50,000 and Random House’s was for $45,000. My agent said it was up to me which to take and I decided to take the lower offer from Random. Biggest mistake of my life! I won’t go into it here (a later post, perhaps), but I was in Seventh Heaven, especially since they were going to bring it out simultaneously in paper from Ballantine Books and in hardcover from Random House. I was told it would be an instant bestseller because of the number of copies they were publishing.

Then, a week after I signed the contract, Random House was taken over by Bertelsmann and several other things happened, and they dropped the novel. I won’t go into all that in this post, but may in a later one. Briefly, it severely affected my life—financial and otherwise—and I’m still trying to recover from all that transpired from that fiasco.

But, my memoir really got buried then! It languished in a drawer until about a year and a half ago, when I decided to work on it again. I rewrote it extensively and when I was taken on by Chip, we decided it was time to send it out and that just happened yesterday.

Anyway, that’s part of the torturous trail this book has traveled! Keep your fingers crossed for me—I’d really appreciate it!

I just thought this might be instructive to other writers. As they say in Hollywood, don’t celebrate until the check clears!

I’ve had my share of setbacks in my writing career, but I’ll always maintain the same philosophy, through good and bad. Just keep writing. The writing is what it’s all about, anyway. The journey’s where the real fun is and everything else is just what happens in life. There are no guarantees and no one is entitled to an easy life. If we don’t have some rough patches, how can we expect to appreciate the good times? As my Canadian friends say and which I think is great advice for life: Keep your stick on the ice.

Blue skies,

Les

Here's a brief excerpt:

            On my first night in Pendleton, in quarantine, I laid on cold steel slats, no mattress. There had been a riot two days before our bunch got there and the inmates had burned everything combustible, including the mattresses. The pillows, too, were gone. They did give us a thin Army-blanket that you had to lay over you in a diamond shape if you were taller than five-ten. I beat that by two and a half inches.

            When I woke the next morning, there was a dusting of snow on my blanket, down at my feet where the blanket had slipped off. My toes were white. Well, the tops were white. Underneath the snow, they were blue. The rioters had busted out the windows as well. Quarantine was in the only cellhouse that had windows to the outside. This was on the thirteenth of February and it also happened to be my birthday. Didn't look like there was going to be any cake or presents.

            The Superintendent announced to the inmates, “You people busted up everything and now you have to live in it. I’m not giving you anything and I’m not fixing the windows, etc.”

            He didn’t either. It was one cold spring. A shitload of guys came down with pneumonia and worse. I don’t know whether anybody died. There were rumors that some did, but then we didn’t exactly have the N.Y. Times to check to see what was really going on. In movies, somebody farts in prison and in six minutes the entire population has the details. In Pendleton, you could have a guy get exed three cells from you and you might not ever know about it for a month.

            Pendleton, at that time, was one of the baddest joints in the country. During the years I spent there, then-President Johnson had commissioned a study on penal institutions. One day, a bunch of us were sitting around watching the only TV in the cellhouse (black and white) on a rec night when Johnson came on to report their findings. He said the study had shown that Pendleton was "categorically, the single worst prison in the U.S." We all stood up and cheered like he was talking about our football team and we'd just won the Rose Bowl or something.

            It was bad. During my stay, I lived through eight riots, not counting the one that had just ended when I arrived, but for which I paid for with snow on my toes and a few other discomforts.

            I'd seen a lot of things before this, but there are things that happened in Pendleton that I'll never be able to talk about. There were some good things too. I made friendships that were stronger than any I've ever had before or since.

            My first week out of Quarantine was my first taste of what prison was like. The guy in the cell next to me, a black guy, had been slowwalking a debt of a carton of Camels to this guy. That night, the guy who was owed the cigarettes walked by his cell and threw a beaker of acid in the black guy's face. He'd gotten the acid from some inmate who worked in I.D. (Identification Department). That was where they printed and photographed all new inmates. It was some kind of acid they used to develop pictures.

            My next-door neighbor lay in his cell and screamed all night. We were on the second tier and just below us I could see the hack at his desk. He never moved or even looked up all night. Just kept sitting there, reading his comic book or whatever. Toward morning, the only sounds coming from my neighbor's cell was little tiny whimpers. When they let us out for breakfast they must have come and dragged his ass out, because he was gone when we came back to get ready for work.

            A few weeks later, the black guy came back from the hospital. Obviously, he hadn't died. He might have wished he had. Half the skin on his face was turned a permanent blotchy pink, the color of bubblegum. He'd lost one eye completely and most of the sight in the other.

            You could get just about anything in the joint you wanted except a girl. That was at a time when they hadn't yet gone to female hacks, so it may be different these days. Although there were guys in there you'd swear were girls and after you'd been in awhile, that's the way you saw them. They went by women's names and you thought of and referred to them as "her" or "she." Any drug you wanted, long as you had money, you could score. Drugs were everywhere. And we ran (shot up) everything. I even knew guys who'd run aspirin and claimed you actually got a high from it.

            One night, a couple of buddies told me they'd scored some embalming fluid. They swore it was the best high you could get. I figure they got it from some inmate who worked on the burial detail. If you died and nobody claimed your body, they had a little cemetery just outside the walls for your final resting place.

            I was all set to shoot up with them, but we had a shakedown at my cellhouse when we were coming in from work and all of J Block was shut down until morning. These two guys from H got out to the gym, where they ran the shit. Killed both of them. That was one time I was happy to have been in a cellhouse shutdown.

NOVEL ENDINGS

Hi folks,
As some of you know, I recently was invited by Lia Keys to be a guest blogger on her really terrific blog, ScribeChat. Lia  has graciously allowed me to repost the article here and I hope you enjoy it. She also invited me to participate in a webcast on the same topic and you may want to visit her site to see a transcript of that as well as the comments the article generated. To get there, just click on http://scribechat.com/archives/2620 or go to the link on this site to her blog.

Hope you enjoy this and find it helpful!

Getting wired before my presentation on the movie THELMA & LOUISE at this year's Microburst at Phoenix College.

NOVEL ENDINGS

By

Les Edgerton

First, I want to thank Lia for having me on as a guest blogger. Thanks a bunch, Lia! This looks like a great crowd you’ve gathered here.

I’d like to talk about novel endings and what makes a compelling finale to your novel. There’s no way I can cover everything that goes into a great ending, but I’ll try to cover some of the more important elements.

Before we get to the ending, we need to discuss what leads up to that point. Let’s look at basic story structure. Simplified, a novel structurally consists of a protagonist and an antagonist as the two most important characters. The protagonist has something happen to him or her (inciting incident) that creates a surface problem (that’s actually symptomatic of a story-worthy problem) which will occupy him or her for the rest of the novel, trying to resolve it. The antagonist also has a goal and it’s his or her goal that provides the opposition for the protagonist in resolving his or her goal. The struggle to resolve the problem(s) against increasing opposition occupies the majority of the novel.

It might be helpful to define our terms before we begin.

Protagonist: Simply the individual through whose persona we (readers) experience the story.

I urge writers to never think of the protagonist as the “hero” or even “main character.” To see this character as a hero reduces the character to a one-dimensional, cardboard character, ala “Dudley Doright.” Moral qualities, such as good and bad, shouldn’t apply to the protagonist or the antagonist. Can they be good or bad? Sure, but to define them in that way as their chief characteristic makes it likely you’ll create cartoonish characters rather than fully-developed literary characters. To see this character as your “main character” reduces the value of characterization to the novel and overemphasizes plot. And, there is one protagonist per novel, not several. Not “co-protagonists” or multiple protagonists. That person can have multiple “helpers” or aides or helpers, but it needs to be one person we see.

Antagonist: The individual whose goal conflicts with that of the protagonist’s surface problem goal always and sometimes the story-worthy goal as well.

It’s even more important not to think of the antagonist as a villain. Even more so than the protagonist, that can really lead to a Snidely Whiplash type of character. Can he or she be a bad or evil person? Certainly, but you’ll create a much more believable and interesting character if you simply view that person as an individual whose goal conflicts with that of the protagonist. The villain can also have as many lieutenants or allies as you wish.

Inciting incident: Something that happens to the protagonist that creates and/or reveals the surface story problem to the protagonist. The inciting incident is what needs to begin the contemporary novel. Anything before that event is backstory or setup and shouldn’t precede the inciting incident beginning. If the backstory is important, it can come later, once the reader is invested in the protagonist’s problem. Novels are about one thing only and always—trouble. Today’s novels need to begin when the trouble begins, not before. And, the trouble has to begin with the inciting incident as before that happens there is no trouble, at least not in story terms.

Surface story problem: A bona fide problem that is revealed to the protagonist as a result of the inciting incident. While it is a serious problem, it’s not as serious as the story-worthy problem it’s symptomatic of. Usually, it’s posed as a somewhat superficial goal—love, money, solving a crime, achieving success of some kind, etc.

Story-worthy problem: The “real” problem of the protagonist and which the surface problem is symptomatic of. It’s usually a deep-seated psychological problem. The story-worthy problem isn’t known to the protagonist at the beginning of the story. It is only through the struggle to resolve the surface problem that the more important problem begins to be revealed, and the full realization is usually achieved in the final scene when both the surface problem and story-worthy problem are resolved. Although the story-worthy problem isn’t revealed to the protagonist until they’ve gone through the struggle to resolve the surface problem, the author should be aware of it so that he or she can create an effective plot to get to that point.

Plot: A plot is simply a point-by-point list of all the causal actions that the protagonist takes to resolve the problem. A plot will show such things as: inciting incident, which leads to awareness of problem, first step to resolve the problem, which leads to disaster (failure to achieve the main goal), which leads to step two and so on, against increasing opposition, until the last scene in which the problem is resolved. The “spine” of the book and the plot is the protagonist’s problem and that problem should color every single page in the novel and be behind every action he or she takes. If coincidence occurs, it must always have a negative effect on the protagonist and should never be the source of help or in resolving the problem. If coincidence helps the protagonist, then what you have is what is called a… idiot plot. Don’t go there!

Goals: Both the protagonist and the antagonist have goals. Each of their goals is to resolve their individual surface problems. While the protagonist will also end up having a story-worthy problem goal, the antagonist doesn’t. His or hers is only a surface problem that just happens to be in conflict with the protagonist’s problem.

These definitions may or may not be instantly clear to you at this point, but after our time here together should be. I’d just like you to be aware of them so that this makes sense as you read on.

So, okay, where’s the stuff about novel endings? Relax! It’s coming, I promise.

To illustrate all of this, I’d like to use a teaching model I use quite often. The film, Thelma & Louise, written by Callie Khouri. It’s a film most people have seen so it should be a familiar model. You might want to rent it again to refresh your memory.

Let’s go through the story.

First, the inciting incident. Remember, this is something that happens to the protagonist that creates and/or reveals the surface story problem.

The inciting incident in T&L is in the beginning, where the protagonist, Thelma (no co-protagonists here, although sometimes people mistakenly think Louise is a co-protagonist.) She’s not. She’s the Older Mentor character, if you want to ascribe a label to her. The incident occurs when Thelma’s talking to her husband Darryl as he prepares to leave for work. It’s been established that she is required to ask his permission before embarking on her weekend trip with Louise. She starts to ask him twice for that permission. There’s important backstory here, but it’s not revealed until much later in the story when the two women pick up J.T. and talk and Thelma reveals she’s been married to him for four years and dated him through all four years of high school. The backstory is that she’s been with Darryl for eight years and probably in an abusive relationship. That’s shown by the way they talk to each other. All that’s needed. The intelligent reader/viewer “gets” that instantly.

Thelma is fully aware she’s in a bad situation, and, from time-to-time has performed actions to deal with it. She’s probably spit in Darryl’s food, gossiped and complained about him to Louise, not given her all in bed, whatever. Other times, she ignores her problem. But, it’s not yet to the point where it becomes the biggest single problem in her life and at a stage where nothing can get in the way of her resolving it. That’s what’s required to raise what’s only a “bad situation” to the level of becoming a story. If she can still ignore it for a time, can alibi what her true state is for a time to herself, can even forget her problem for a time… then it’s not yet a story. It’s only when she reaches her tipping point, when that “straw that broke the camel’s back” moment occurs and reveals to her that it’s the single biggest problem in her life and that she can no longer ignore it, even briefly, that it becomes a story. In T&L, Thelma’s inciting incident is a small, dramatic moment. We’ve seen clearly via the phone conversations with Louise that it’s imperative Thelma ask Darryl for permission to go on the trip with her. She even begins to… twice. It’s the second time she starts to ask his permission that constitutes her inciting incident. It’s what Darryl does to her—remember?—the inciting incident is something that happens to the protagonist? What Darryl does, is something he’s no doubt done before, But—this time it’s different. This time it’s the one time too many that he’s done this. And what does he do? Simple. She attempts to ask him the second time for permission and he crudely and rudely dismisses her, treating her as an annoyance rather than as his wife and a person. It’s the tipping point for her, the inciting incident, the thing that finally reveals her problem clearly to her. (Keep in mind that the word “problem” in story terms doesn’t have the same definition as the lay term. In story terms, it’s more than a bad situation—it’s a problem that the protagonist won’t let go away until it’s resolved.)

Here’s the actual scene:

THELMA goes through the living room to the bottom of the stairs and leans on the banister.

THELMA

(hollering again)

Darryl! Honey, you’d better hurry up.

DARRYL comes trotting down the stairs. Polyester was made for this man and he’s dripping in “men’s” jewelry. He manages a Carpeteria.

DARRYL

(annoyed)

Dammit, Thelma, don’t holler like that! Haven’t I told

you I can’t stand it when you holler in the morning?

THELMA

(sweetly and coyly)

I’m sorry, Doll, I just didn’t want you to be late.

DARRYL is checking himself out in the hall mirror and it’s obvious he likes what he sees. He exudes confidence for reasons that never become apparent. He likes to think of himself as a real lady-killer. He is making imperceptible adjustments to his overmoused hair. THELMA watches approvingly.

(My note. This was the setup. Now comes the inciting incident.)

THELMA

          Hon.

DARRYL

(still annoyed)

What.

THELMA

(she decides not to tell him.)

Have a good day at work today.

DARRYL

          Uh-huh.

THELMA

Hon?

DARRYL

(as if he’s trying to concentrate.)

What?!

THELMA

          You want anything special for dinner?

And, that’s the inciting incident. For perhaps the hundredth time (or more!) in their relationship, she started to do what she’s always done in the past—ask for her husband’s permission to go on the trip. But… something’s different this time. With his evident attitude—his crude dismissal of her and of anything she’s trying to say—she reaches her limit. Before this point, she’s just put up with him and played the dutiful wife. This time, her problem is clearly revealed to her. The little light in the refrigerator of her mind just clicked on. This is why it’s important to understand the complete definition of the inciting incident. (The inciting incident is something that happens to the protagonist that creates and/or reveals the story problem to her.) If she has what appears to be a problem but it’s not clearly revealed to her that she has, then it’s not yet a problem in story terms. It has to be revealed and clearly to her. That’s the only thing in the definition that has to be there in the inciting incident scene. The problem—at least to others—may have been there for a long time. She may have even been very aware of a bad situation. But, until that moment when it reaches the level of being the most important problem in her life—a problem that she can’t ignore another minute until it’s resolved—it’s only a bad situation and not a story problem.

Also, the inciting incident should be a dramatic scene, not a melodramatic one. And this is.
A small, dramatic opening should then begin to build until the biggest scene of all—the final one. Many writers make the mistake of thinking they have to open with not a dramatic scene, but a melodramatic one. If you open with a murder, kidnapping, bomb explosion and the like—where do you go from there? More murders, more kidnappings, bigger bombs? This is not to say a novel can’t open with that kind of thing, but if your novel’s not a thriller, per se, you might want to reconsider that strategy.

Some believe the inciting incident was when Harlan tried to rape Thelma. Nope. That’s just the “Point of No Return” moment. That event wouldn’t have even been possible if Thelma had asked for Darryl’s permission. That was the real inciting incident—an event from which everything else derived.

And Darryl isn’t the antagonist. Not even close. He’s a one-dimensional, cardboard character. A cartoon. Snidley Whiplash. The antagonist? Hal, the Arkansas cop. Remember, Thelma’s goal, as it evolves, is to escape being caught. Hal’s goal is to catch her. He’s not a bad guy at all (remember, I said to not think of the antagonist as a “villain?”). He’s one of the best and nicest guys in the story. He wants to save the two women, first from going to jail, and in the end, from being killed. His goals are strictly good and honorable. His goal simply opposes Thelma’s goal and that’s the only definition of an antagonist.

Thelma’s surface problem is to escape Darryl’s domination… for a weekend. See who and what kind of  person her husband is, creates instantly reader identification for her as well as sympathy and empathy. Already, we’d like to see her have some fun. It’s obvious she’s had very little with this butthole.

So, her surface problem is Darryl’s domination of her. But, remember I said the surface problem is only symptomatic of the much bigger, much more important, deeper psychological problem the protagonist faces? It’s very true in this story. The story begins with Thelma trying to resolve the surface problem—escaping Darryl’s domination, even if for just a weekend—but, as events progress, little by little, Thelma eventually comes to the realization that she has a much bigger problem. That she’s forced to exist in a male-dominated world. It’s much bigger than just Darryl.

I wanted to go over these things so that the ending—which is what this is all about!—makes complete sense. Now. Here’s the definition of a quality ending:

Ending: A novel ending should contain two elements—a win and a loss. That’s in terms of the protagonist’s goals, both surface and story-worthy. Years ago, we used to teach writers that endings should be either “goal-achieved” or “goal-unachieved.” Like most things, we’ve learned better ways to express story structure. An ending that only achieves the protagonist’s goal as well as an ending in which is the protagonist’s goal is lost are both incomplete and unsatisfactory endings. There must be elements of both to make it a good ending.

Like everything important in a story, the ending should always be presented as a scene. Never by exposition or summary or the character ruminating in his/her head. Through a scene. And, there are particular requirements for this scene. As Janet Burroway, in her classic text, Writing Fiction, says about resolutions: “Here the epiphany, a memory leading to a resolution, has been triggered by an action and sensory details that the reader can share.” (Italics mine.) It’s a scene that can’t depend on conversation to make it work. It can’t, for instance, have the protagonist talking to a priest who then convinces her of a truth, and that gives her her epiphany. The resolution has to be triggered by an action—and an “action” in this case, isn’t dialog. It has to be a physical action.

What’s the physical action in the ending of T&L? That’s easy. They’re just been chased and are now surrounded on all sides by cops who are ordering them to put their hands up or get killed. Surrounded on all sides except in front of them, where the Grand Canyon lies. Sensory details? Plenty! Cops jacking shells into carbines, a helicopter’s rotors swirling dust, an authoritative voice over a bullhorn demanding they surrender. No way out, except… This triggers the epiphany for Thelma. And, what is the memory that leads to a resolution for her? Again, easy. Even though we can’t see it in the film, we understand what’s going through her mind. The memory of Darryl and her abusive relationships, and, even more important, the new knowledge that her entire world is controlled by men as evidenced by what’s happened in their journey. Selfish men, like Darryl, evil men like the tanker truck driver and Harlan, the would-be rapist, manipulative men like J.T., and even good, moral men, like Hal and Louise’s boyfriend, Jimmy. But… all men. At the very end, Thelma realizes her surface problem (getting free of Darryl, even if just for a weekend) is only symptomatic of a much bigger and deeper, psychological problem for her—having to exist in a male-dominated world with no voice at all. She didn’t know this at the beginning. In the beginning, she was only aware that Darryl was a shit. In the end, as a result of everything she’d gone through, she finally comes to the realization that Darryl was only a small part of what she faced in society.

And so, she does the only thing left for her to do. She and Louise tacitly agree to commit suicide. They seal their decision with a kiss and then hold hands as they hurtle into infinity. And, that, satisfies the two elements in a quality ending, by providing both a win and a loss. The loss? Easy. She gives up her life. The win? Again, easy. She achieves her independence from men on her own terms. It cost her her life, but the tradeoff was worth it to her.

This is a fairly common ending. It’s seen, for instance, in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, where the mother kills her child to keep her from having to live in slavery. It’s seen in any number of war novels where the protagonist gives up his or her life to preserve a way of life for loved ones.

This doesn’t mean protagonist have to commit suicide to achieve a good ending. This is just one of countless possible endings. But, however you end your story, just make sure it contains both a win and a loss for the protagonist. That’s key.

What’s interesting about this movie is that some of the studio execs wanted to change Khouri’s brilliant ending to a typical Hollywood “happy-sappy” ending. One where they surrendered, spent a few years in prison, and were released to live out some kind of Stepford wives’ existence ever after…

Thankfully, she stood her ground and they released the intelligent version!

Hope this helps you in creating your own endings. Hope to see your work on the shelves of Border’s and Barnes & Noble!

BTW, if you’re interested in seeing how actions can inform character arc, you might want to look at a post I have on my blog where I again use this movie to illustrate that technique.

Blue skies,

Les Edgerton

Musings on the place I have to live...

The following is an essay I wrote awhile back and is part of a collection of essays and short stories that I'm getting ready for submission. It probably won't sell well in Ft. Wayne...

WE'RE NUMBER ONE (With a bullet)!

Some Idle Musings on Food and Sports and the Weather in Ft. Wayne, Indiana

            I'm darned proud to be a Hoosier.

            Especially lately.

            In the last year alone, we were declared by a national magazine to rank near the top, nationally, in obesity.

            Just as we were getting over basking in the glow of that singular honor, Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry announced the results of a highly-scientific poll he'd recently conducted... that Indiana had clearly won the title of the "Silliest State Nickname."

            Hoosiers.

            Yep. Thas' the one. Not to be confused with "Hoseheads." Them's the folks from Canada, I think.

            No other state was even close in the balloting. Of course, this was a vote taken in Miami, Florida, so who knows if hanging chads were counted and if not, how accurate the poll actually was.

            No matter. We'll take it, by cracky. (Famous Hoosier euphemism.)

            With the twofer honor we nailed this year, it may be a good opportunity to update our glorious nickname. Something like, "Hoosier Tubbies." Now, that's got a ring to it, by golly (another interesting Hoosier euphemism), and if we could get the state legislature to act on it (or act on anything), it's not inconceivable that we could end up with an unprecedented "two-peat" next year as winners of Barry's poll.

            The next year we go for Hoosier Starchbabies and score an unprecedented "three-peat!"

            Although, I don't understand how our great state ends up skinny-challenged. Have you checked out the grub we eat? I moved here after living in Texas, California and New Orleans and other environs and immediately noticed a difference in the cuisine.

            Mondo difference.

            The first entrée I was introduced to upon entering "Hoosierland" (another adorable Hoosier euphemism) was a delightful little number called... well, I don't know what it was called. I named it "white stuff." Mashed potatoes dumped on top of noodles.

            Or maybe it was the other way around. Hard to tell. They're both white. Upon reflection, I think it was noodles on top of mashed potatoes. Noodles are the slimy things, right? And potatoes are the lumpy objects? Then, I stand corrected. It was noodles on top of potatoes. Usually served with white bread slathered with oleo. Washed down with milk.

            Really.

            Honest-to-God.

            I can still remember the one-of-a-kind flavor. Kind of like what I imagine a dish made up of pulverized flakes from the box your Amana refrigerator came in, mixed in with lead-based white paint (glossy) might taste like. And the servings! Hoosier chefs don't serve those little sissy portions like you might get in a four-star French restaurant. Nosiree! (Yet another of those catchy Hoosier euphemisms) Nope—you get a mound of white stuff plopped on your plate, high enough that you have to kind of raise up in your seat to see your dining partner across from you.

            Actually, to make eye contact, you'd both have to raise up.

            Folks were asking for seconds.

            As Dave Barry might say: "I'm not making this up."

            I quickly discovered a Hoosier's idea of a spice rack. That would consist of a pair of salt and pepper shakers.

            I've learned it's best to pray after you eat in Indiana.

            And turn the smoke alarm off until after the dishes (Hoosiers pronounce this word "deeshes") are done. Only... we don't say, "after the dishes deeshes are done. We say, "We're fixin' to rid up the table and warsh the deeshes."

            I'm not making this up, either.

            I wish I was.

            And, speaking of religion, that allows me to lead smoothly and seamlessly into... you guessed it...

            Sports!

            Specifically, sports as reported by Fort Wayne sportswriters.

            Now, I lived in South Bend for quite a while and the sports reporting there is actually quite good. On a par with any newspapers in the country. But, then, they've got an advantage. They have an actual team close by. Notre Dame. A team that people farther than twenty miles away from town have heard of.

            Ft. Wayne's a bit different.

            The main sports "team" in town is a group of dentally-challenged guys who play something called "hockey." Before 7,633 "Hoosier Tubbies" wandering around Memorial Coliseum, crabbing about the long lines at the Ice Cream Dots stand. Notre Dame, on the other hand, has ten thousand people waiting to use the restrooms at an average football game at any given moment. There're 20,000 people who couldn't get a ticket tailgating in the N.D. parking lot during games.

            Which gives Ft. Wayne sportswriters an inferiority complex. Most of 'em didn't start out to cover a sport drawing a crowd that would be comfortable in a phone booth. They had grand visions of writing Red Smith-like stories about real sports and recognizable teams and individuals. Instead, they found themselves in... Ft. Wayne.

            You gotta feel for 'em.

            I have to stop here and explain why I picked Ft. Wayne for this discourse. Reason is, this is where I currently live. It's not my first choice (to be honest, it isn't in my list of the first 1200 places I'd pick to live either), but it's where my stuff is and I have to be here to watch it.

            If you want to experience what life was like in this country 211 years ago, just come to Ft. Wayne and wander around. BTW, that used to be the official Indiana slogan, displayed on license plates. Wander Indiana. I’m not making this up.I always got images of travelers, lost in cornfields, looking for a way out… There's no other town like Ft. Wayne in Indiana. Or the country. It was settled by German burghers and has managed to retain the mindset of the original settlers. Picture a giant croissant roll, smothered with real butter. That's the official symbol for the Ft. Wayne mindset. That's because of the geography. It's miles and miles from anything. South Bend, a similarly-sized city, is a cosmopolitan environment for a couple-three reasons. There's Notre Dame with a sophisticated student body and professors from all over the world. Smart people. Hip people. It's also in close proximity to Chicago and that helps South Benders keep up with the current century somewhat. It was also settled by more diverse cultures than these Germans here in the Fort. Italians, Poles, Belgians, just for starters.

            They've even got the Mafia in South Bend. Even though Ft. Wayne's got three rivers, which you'd imagine would come in handy for dumping unreasonable business associates, the Mafia would never consider setting up a branch office here. The reason? That white stuff people make you eat. Can you picture that guy on The Sopranos wading through a pile of noodles and mashed potatoes? He'd be laughed out of the Cosa Nostra. Plus the fact that they wouldn't be able to film him without going to wide screen technology.

            Ft. Wayne gives itself two titles. "The City of Churches" is one. That's basically in homage to the entertainment value of the place. Gobs of folks all over the country are packing their Bibles up right now so they can move to a place with hundreds of churches. On every corner. Believe it!

            The second title Ft. Wayner's give themselves is... are you ready? "The City of Restaurants."

            Go ahead. I'll wait a minute while you get that last little fit of giggling out and compose yourself.

            There're restaurants, all right. Tons of them. Drive down the street and you'll see: Church, restaurant, church, restaurant, church... well, you get the picture. Problem is, they all have the same menu, which looks like this:

*                                                          *                                                          *

Today's Special:

"White stuff."

Manager's guarantee:

Absolutely guaranteed to not have a scintilla of flavor or double your money back. Second and even third helpings encouraged. Our doggie bags are the Great Danes of doggy bags. They're the Shetland ponies of doggie bags! Enjoy!

*                                                          *                                                          *

            One of the local rags used to have a "Food Critic" (I use the term loosely), whose idea of great restaurant was a joint that "served all the fish (pronounced "feesh"—another of those colorful Hoosier euphemisms) you can eat for 99¢." She'd rave about all the bread they served and the desserts. If she'd ever opened her own café, an appropriate name might have been, "Starch and Sugar By The Forklift." She got the gig as food critic because of an important talent she possessed. She liked to eat. A lot. Often. She even wrote reviews of fast-food outlets, those places she liked to visit between main meals to keep her typing strength up. Very entertaining and informative. James Beard perhaps she wasn't, but if you wanted to know who served "all the feesh you can eat for 99¢" she was your critic. She once wrote a column the main focus of which was the management didn't have crackers on the table to munch on while you were waiting for the main spread and between courses. Another time, she wrote about a dish she'd ordered that had a French name, which literally described the dish. "Piscé a tete" or something like that. Translation: "Fish with the head still attached to the main body and with a sprig of parsley in the mouth orifice." Her entire column was a complaint that they served her a fish with the fish noggin still on it and she should have had the option of having it removed.

            My favorite was the time she reviewed this restaurant and rattled off 10-11 main entrées she'd partaken of, and then, immediately following her rave of all she'd ingested, she wrote this sentence: "And you wouldn't think we'd have room for dessert!" No, you wouldn't, unless you weighed six hundred pounds or were a small country in the Balkans.

            Turns out she found some room, somewhere. Enough for a couple of different pies and cobblers and a random scoop of ice cream or seven, if I disremember right...

            Go figure.

            Since cooking with the head attached results in a more flavorful fish, I can see her point. Her taste buds weren't accustomed to... taste.

            I wrote a somewhat critical "Letter to the Editor" about one of her columns once and was amazed when collecting my mail one day to discover a personal letter from her, a scathing indictment in which she took me to task for daring to question her food judgment. That blasted away whatever naïve assumptions I had about journalistic integrity and ethics in "The City of Churches/Restaurants." Which works differently here, it seems, than in say, Chicago or Goober Falls, Idaho. Ever since then, I've been sweating out a possible visit from the First Amendment Police to give me the rubber hose treatment for daring to... criticize a restaurant critic. (Statute B-11231-d, Indiana State Blue Laws)

            As both Dave Barry and I say, and quite often: "I'm not making this up."

            When I'm not enjoying the local delectable cuisine and chuckling over another sport page article, counting the misspelled words and misquotes, I'm usually sitting outside soaking up the amazing weather. Most often, wearing three sweaters, a parka and long underwear. In August. To completely appreciate the seasons here (in order, there's winter, then sleet, then cold rain, then cloudy weather, then some late snow, then two days of summer during which there's a 62% chance of rain and maybe a tornado), it helps to have a historical perspective of how "The City of Churches" came to be. General Anthony Wayne was ordered to build a military fort here and he couldn't wait to leave. When he got here and stepped off the Amtrak Silver Wayward Bullet, the place was essentially The Dismal Swamp. (I'm not making this up.) General Tony hated the place and couldn't wait to get killed by an Indian or transferred to a more civilized place, like say, Beirut or Hades.

            In conclusion (French word, meaning "I'm wrapping this baby up so I can catch the "Man Show"), I'm sure this highly-accurate, nonpartisan, nonbiased piece will bring a letter or two (written in crayon), providing me with clever, trés-original advice to, "love it or leave it," or, "if you don't like it here, why don't you move?—we like our city and state and there's no room for Commies like you here!"

            I can't wait.

            Just to set the record straight, it's only "The City of Churches" I'm not overly-enthusiastic about. I prefer cities and Ft. Wayne just doesn't fit the definition of a city. Feels more like a spread-out collection of housing additions and developments. Maybe it's the "Caution! Deer Crossing!” signs I see on the "city" streets... On the other hand, South Bend and a number of other places do have the wonderful atmosphere "real" cities do and I really dig getting to go there when I can.

            To balance this op-piece and in the interests of fairness, Ft. Wayne does have some good things going for it.

            Ft. Wayne is proud to be the home of the famous Potato Chip Lady who appeared on the "Tonight Show." I think I can speak for most Ft. Wayner's when I say how chagrined we were when Johnny Carson, during the interview, reached over and ate one of her prized chips. The one that looked like Dick Nixon, I believe.

            Talk about a state of mourning for an entire city! I know of several neighbors who switched to the Letterman Show immediately following that horrifying incident.

            And Johnny Appleseed had the bad luck to die here before he could get out of town and you can visit his grave any time you want to. Talk about your goosebumps and high entertainment value! Looking down on that lump of grass does something to a person.

            That counts for something.

            And, things are changing. We're getting slimmer in these parts. Lots of us are jogging to Mickey D's these days and the pounds are melting off, not piling up as fast. And we're not fat. We're merely "pleasantly-plump."

            Pass the white stuff, willya? Where're the crackers?

 A bustling downtown!

REJECTIONS

REJECTION

Thought I’d post some thoughts on the subject of rejection from agents and publishers. Lately, I’ve been corresponding with several writers about this subject and it seems as if many of today’s writers don’t really know how to deal with their work being turned down. Not that it’s ever been easy, but it seems as if more people give up on their work earlier than in years past. I thought perhaps it might be helpful to give my own experience with rejection, which is similar to what many other writers in the past have gone through.

Actually, this post was triggered by a client of mine, whom I won’t name, but I don’t think she’d mind my using her as an example. I’ll call her “Ruth.”

A bit of background. I was hired by Ruth to coach her in the final rewrite of her novel—an amazing book, by the way. After she wrote “The End” I recommended her and her novel to five leading literary agencies. From four of them, she received invitations to submit her entire novel and the fifth requested the first fifty pages. This, in itself, is fairly remarkable. Not a single pass among the bunch! As this was Ruth’s first experience in submitting to professionals, she assumed this was the norm.

As it transpired, almost immediately she received an offer of representation from one of the agencies. She emailed me and asked what she should do. I suggested she email the remaining four to let them know she had an offer and would give them a few days to respond before she made a decision. Two of them wrote back with lengthy emails to her telling her how remarkable her novel was (and it is!), but they both passed for legitimate reasons, none of which were because of the quality of the work, but more because of the state of the market. She’s still waiting on the other two who are feverishly reading it before the weekend. She has a scheduled phonecon with the agent who offered representation. We’ll know by Monday probably who she’ll sign with. This is all happening within two weeks of her finishing her novel.

Anyway, what prompted me to consider writing this was a question Ruth posed in an email to me during all of this, when she asked: “Is it common to get two rejections?”

Here was my reply:

Hi Ruth,
I had to laugh at your question, "Is it common to get two rejections?" Why? Because my first novel got 86 rejections... and that's closer to “normal”... And, it was purely an accident it was taken by the 87th. So, two rejections is... not anything at all. What's really abnormal is to get 4-5 top agents to even look at a manuscript, especially today. To even get an agent to look at it--the odds are that if a writer sent out 20 queries, she'd probably get a request for a partial would be one or two at most. Probably none for a full mss. And, chances are slim that the one or two who asked for a partial would ask for more. It's really a jungle out there. It is much easier these days with email from before when we only had snail mail and had to provide postage for a return and wait for the mails both ways, but it's still difficult. Getting four of five agents to look at a full mss and the other to ask for the first fifty pages is really incredible.

Ruth’s question was perfectly legitimate considering this was her first novel and her first foray into obtaining an agent. It also seems to reflect the mindset of many writers these days. It’s just not realistic, as she’ll find out as time goes on and she begins to see the experience of other authors. Although, she’s going to end up with an agent fairly readily and I anticipate publication of her novel and even high sales. It’s that good and it’s a timely novel for a lot of reasons. I think it will be one of those rare first novels that garners awards and enjoys handsome sales.

But, her experience is not the norm. Not even close. I might add that what I worked on with her wasn’t a first draft. She’s taken over twenty classes in writing, written innumerable drafts, and had her work edited by a great number of people. I was just the last. She’d spent three years writing it. It was a polished version that she ended up with. She’d absolutely gone the distance and done everything she should have with her novel. In other words, she was prepared for the opportunity that came along.

But, even so, it was remarkable to get these responses from these agents, all of whom are considered the tops in the business.

Here was my own experience a long time ago. Markedly different as you’ll see.

I sent my first novel, The Death of Tarpons, out 86 times to editors. Eighty-six times! My wife Mary describes me as “bullheaded,” while I prefer the much more accurate, “stubborn.”

Sending out a novel in those days (eighties and nineties) was vastly different than today. For one thing, we didn’t have email. Al Gore was inventing other stuff then, I imagine. How to find the perfect massage, possibly… We did have email, but very few, if any, publishers were accepting submissions or queries via the Internet. Everyone insisted on snail mail. The following was the procedure in those days for you younger writers who’ve only known the Internet.

1. Send via snail mail, a query letter, with SASE (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelop). A one-page letter, created especially for the particular publisher. Took some research to individualize each letter. Pay for stamps and envelops and paper.

2. Wait anywhere from a week to six months for a response from the publisher. An average wait would be six to eight weeks. A yea or nay. Sometimes, the next step would be for the publisher to request a partial. Rare to ask for the full mss. Again, this had to be sent via snail mail and had to include return postage and a mailer to return your work in.

3. Wait anywhere for a week to six months for a response. Most of the time that was a “Not for us.” Occasionally, a request for the full mss. Again, sent with postage both ways and a mailer for them to return your mss in. These were all hard copy requests. You either printed the copies yourself (no dot matrix allowed, even though most of us couldn’t afford anything else) which represented significant printer ink cartridge and paper costs) or you took it to a Kinkos or other copy shop and paid for it. You could usually resend the same returned mss a couple of times at best. After that, if it looked the slightest shopworn you couldn’t send it, but had to print up a new copy. I remember searching for places that had “specials” at ten cents a page, and rarely, even five cents a page. When you’re talking about a 400-page manuscript at say the bargain rate of five cents a page, plus postage both ways, plus the cost of two envelops, and/or stationary boxes to send a complete manuscript in, you’re talking about a significant outlay of money. Not to mention the time and energy required to print off copies yourself if you chose that route, or even to drive to and from Kinkos. To send a mss in those days represented a true commitment to their work on the part of the writer! The same situation existed for any kind of submissions, including poetry, short stories and nonfiction book proposals.

Repeat this 86 times. (Actually, 87, as it was the 87^th who finally bought it.) That was my experience. That’s a bit on the high side for most writers who ended up published, but in talking to many of my peers at the time who sold their work, I’d say the average was close to fifty submissions.

This was at a time when we didn’t have much money (kind of the same thing these days, actually…) and my wife, bless her, never begrudged a dime of the literally thousands of dollars I spent in pursuit of publication.

And, the publisher who did end up taking it did so only by accident. If not for her, I might still be sending it out.

What happened was I’d set myself a limit of 100 submissions. Actually, I was almost out of places to send it to.

Let me back up a bit…

On my third submission, a regional publisher in Houston, called me and was really excited about

the book and offered me $10,000 for an advance, a fairly large advance in those days for a first novel. Was I thrilled? You bet. However, I ended up refusing his offer, a decision I second-guess just about every day since then. First, he asked me how autobiographical the book was. About 90-95% I told him. Well, this was the answer he was waiting for, as he got real excited then and said he wanted to bring it out not as a novel, but as an autobiography or memoir. I couldn’t do that, I said, as five to ten percent is fictionalized, and I didn’t think to label it autobiography would be ethical. Okay, he said, visibly disappointed. We still had a deal until he told me the other things he wanted to do with it. One, he said, he wanted to cut certain scenes. A prime example is that in one scene my protagonist’s father whips him with a lived king snake. We’ll have to cut that, he said, so as not to offend the “snake lovers.” That would be what? I asked. Ten-fifteen people? Mostly California residents? I couldn’t do that, I said. For one thing, it was one of the most powerful scenes in the book, and for another, it was one of those “true things” he was gaga about. Our relationship was getting distinctly cool at that point, but we still had a handshake deal until he came out with the thing that broke this camel’s back. I’d named it Spatterdashers and he insisted we rename it, A Boy and His Dog. I distinctly remember beginning to retch when he said that.

And that was the end of that. I thanked him and pulled the book from him. At the time, I remember thinking that only the third publisher I’d sent it to had wanted it and had offered a decent advance—therefore, this was going to be a breeze selling it.

I had no idea it was going to take over eighty submissions later to do that. If I’d known that, I might have taken his offer.

As it happened, the 87^th place I sent it to was the University of North Texas Press. In my ignorance, I didn’t realize they had never published any fiction at the time. As the story was told to me later, my opus was sitting on the desk of the publisher, Fran Vick, and she was getting ready to slip a form rejection into it and send it back. Her secretary was a bit late in getting her morning coffee to her, so just to kill a minute or two, she decided to read the first page. A purely by chance moment. In the first page, she happened on the words, “Freeport, Texas.” Which was where the novel was set. The town I grew up in. And… coincidentally, the town Ms Vick was from. Seeing her hometown on the first page, prompted her to keep reading. And, once she started, she said she couldn’t put it down. Result: she loved it and phoned me to see if she could buy it.

When it came out, it was nominated for the Violet Crown Book Award and received a Special Citation from the Violet Crown folks. It completely sold out. And, it was the University of North Texas Press’s first fiction offering. They subsequently published a collection of my stories, another “first” for them.

And now… to back it up even further (ala a Pulp Fiction plot structure)…

A scant two weeks before I sent it to UNT, the same manuscript had been selected for a small workshop led by uber-agent Mary Evans in Indianapolis. During a break in the workshop, Mary asked me to go outside with her and while I was toking on a Camel regular, she said, “This is a truly brilliant novel, but you’re having trouble selling this, aren’t you, Les?” Well, yes I was, kind of… Eighty plus rejections would make it fit that assessment… She said she’d had the same problem with her own client, Michael Chabron, with his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Mary said, that what was happening with my novel was the same thing that had happened with Michael’s. Because my protagonist was a 14-year-old boy, publishers were viewing it as a YA. And, she explained, “teenaged boys are the single-worst demographic in publishing.” As a group, they simply don’t read. I protested that I’d never viewed it as a YA and offered up John Knowles A Separate Peace as an example. “That’s about a teenaged boy and nobody thinks of it as a YA,” I said.

Mary agreed, but said that publishers tend to pigeon-hole books and the simple fact that my book began with him at age 14 was dooming it to be considered as a YA. She suggested I do the same thing she’d had Michael do, and that was to write two additional chapters, and transform it into a frame story. Begin, she said, with Cory as an old man looking back on his childhood and make that the new chapter one, and add a chapter at the end, coming back to him in his old age. She said that’s exactly what she’d had Michael do and once he’d done that, it sold to the very next publisher she’d submitted it to.

Well, I took her advice. Added the two chapters, transformed it into a frame story, and the first house I sent it to was… you guessed it. The University of North Texas Press. Also, in the original version, the words “Freeport, Texas” didn’t appear on the first page and Fran would have undoubtedly not kept on reading when her hometown didn’t appear at that first glance.

This is all to illustrate several things. One, that getting published was a whole lot harder back then, not to mention far more expensive and time-consuming… and also, that like then, luck plays a huge part in getting published. It’s often not enough to just be talented and write even a brilliant book. It’s almost as important sometimes to just be lucky. And, also that listening to people who know what they’re talking about is kind of a good thing to do.

The thing is, things have changed and, believe it or not, for the better! Today, with the Internet and most agents and editors accepting email queries and submissions, it’s a whole new world and much, much easier to submit. Of course, that also leads to more people submitting than ever before. I don’t imagine that nearly as many people would send out submissions if it cost them twenty to thirty bucks per submission these days! (I seem to remember the figure $9.20 being the average postage cost, one-way, for a novel submission.) That means that to submit a complete mss, would require $18.40 for postage, a couple of bucks for the mailers and stationary boxes to send it in, printing costs of $15-$20 at five cents a page.

So, to answer Ruth’s question: Yes, it’s pretty common to get two rejections…

Story about short stories and publishing. Years ago, when I was a student at Vermont College getting my MFA, I was a bit discouraged. I had my novel out before going there and UNT was publishing my collection of short stories, and I was writing a lot of short stories then, but somewhat discouraged at the rate of rejection. I asked my then-advisor, Diane Lefer, what the average ratio of acceptance/rejection was for a “good” writer. Diane said that for an established writer, the ratio was roughly about one acceptance for every thirty submissions. Made me feel lots better as I was averaging an acceptance for every 18 submissions. Again, sometimes it just helps to know other writer’s experiences to gauge where you’re at yourself.

Now, for the good news.

I’ve painted kind of a “gloom and doom” picture of submissions/acceptances, but here’s the good news. Once you get your first novel or nonfiction book published; once you get your first few short stories published… the doors begin to swing wide open. I’ve since published nine books with more to shortly become published. I haven’t written short stories in years—to be honest, there’s no money in short stories, so I don’t spend the time on them, but on nonfiction books and novels instead these days—but now I get requests from magazines for stories. And, contrary to popular wisdom, when you achieve a certain status, they actually pay decent money for them. (Don’t expect much money to be offered unless you’re somewhat of a “name,” however—you have to earn your chops before that happens.) So what I do these days is I usually “cannibalize” unsold novels in my “only available in my room” dead novel trunk and send those to the requesting magazine. The point is, once you’re published, it gets infinitely easier from then on.

Just expect rejection when you first begin. It’s something virtually all of us who are now published went through. It’s not fun at all, but it seems pretty du rigueur for those of us who write. Just part of the deal. If you get published easier and quicker, then my hat’s off to you. If you don’t, then don’t give up. If you believe in your work, chances are that one person you need to say yes, will do so at some point. And it only takes one such yes. If you get a hundred no’s and one yes, you’re a success. And, each no you receive is just one step closer to that yes.

Keep writing and keep sending your work out. You may not end up getting it published, but at least there’s the chance you will. If you don’t send it out, there’s no chance at all.

Plus, it’s downright cheap to send stuff out these days! Unbelievably cheap! Take advantage of that.

One way to handle rejection... Maybe not Politically Correct, but then nothing fun (or honest) is...