A Fond Farewell

Since late October 2013, I’ve posted only once on this blog and that’s because my hopes—plans for it—have gone awry.

          When I began this writing blog back in September 2012, I had high hopes of sharing with you my adventures with publishing. I’d seek an agent for the novel I was writing and explore that search with you.

         The agent would find a publisher/editor and I’d let you know about today’s contracts and negotiations.

         The manuscript would go through the publishing process and I’d have a title and cover that you and I could ooh and ah over. Then would come publication and together we’d climb aboard our luge and zoom down the slope of sells and reviews, of readings and signings, of working with social media and the publisher’s marketing department.

         Only one part of that has happened—the agent search last September, October, and November. I’ve e-queried many agents but found no one interested in a historical novel about Palestine in the first-century of the CE.

         Wanting to be published again, I thought perhaps that a memoir might have a better chance of interesting agents and editors. And so I set out in January to collate all my convent stories from my on-line memoir blog Coming Home to Myself. I realized I had many more stories to tell about those nine years, and I hoped to do so this year.

         Because life happens, I haven’t done any collating or writing since the new year began. Moreover, I find myself loath to begin. The project just seems boring to me. And my best writing has always come from the wellspring of my own passion and curiosity.                                                    

What I’m both passionate and curious about right now—and what has held my interest since sixth grade when we studied ancient history at St. Mary’s Grade School—is Bronze Age Greece. Last summer I worked on a first draft for a novel that takes place there in around 1250 BCE.  It may be the first book in a trilogy or I may just continue writing and tell the whole story in a longer book.

         I know, deep down, that the writing itself is the bread, the sustenance. And that getting published is the slathering on of creamy butter. The first is more important than the second. And yet, I do so love butter!

         However, getting publishing—if that ever happens again—is in the distant future. So that leaves little to write about here. And that was what I wanted to share with you.

         Thus, I’ve decided to cease writing on this blog. Anything I have to say about my writing life will go on the other blog, which is, of course, the story of my life. Writing has been a big part of that story. So there is some serendipity here.

         One of the new adventures in my life is memorizing poetry again as I did when I was in my teens. The poem I’m memorizing right now is “Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It ends with these lines:

 Though much is taken, much abides; and though

     We are not now that strength which in old days         

     Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

     One equal temper of heroic hearts.

     Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

     To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

Those words speak to me and convey what motivates me to continue writing. I have stories to tell—on my memoir blog and in manuscripts. I trust that the blog postings will be read. And I trust also that if my writing is for the good of the Universe, it will be published. But I have no control over that. I have control only over what I do and how I respond to the vicissitudes of life.

What I will do is write when I have the time and health and inclination. I will strive, seek, find. There is no yielding when one’s desire to do something leads them to great happiness in the very doing. As to the uncertainty of life—I’m in for the long haul!

         Thank you for following this blog through the past year and a half. Let’s hold each other’s heartwishes in our visualizations, prayers, and thoughts. May all we do be for the good of the Universe. Peace.

Photographs from Wikipedia.

The Ongoing Saga of the Palestine Novel

Two weeks ago I shared with you my disappointment that I’d not heard back from the four agents to whom I’d sent an e-query about my polished manuscript on first-century Palestine. I’ve since received two form rejection letters. One put this whole process in perspective with the following words:

Our agency receives over 700 submissions per month and we only take on a few new clients per year. With the publishing industry being extremely competitive we need to feel a strong conviction when representing your work. While it is not for us another agent may well feel differently.

Just think, 700 submissions per month. That’s 8,400 a year. I’m finding agent names in the book 2013 Guide to Literary Agents, which gives “updated and submission information for more than 1,000 literary agents seeking new clients.”

If, and that’s a big if, all these agents receive 8,400 submissions per year—and some must receive more, some less—then that’s 8,400,000 e-mails sent out yearly by writers like myself. I picture millions of e-query sent to all these agents. Sent with hope and expectation, anxiety and eagerness, heartwishes and visualizations. Those e-queries just swirl through the Ethernet to computers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere! Can’t you see the flurry of speed?!?!? It’s a marvel.

And just think of all the writers sitting at their computers typing novels and exposés, memoirs and cookbooks, humor and how-to books! It boggles the mind.

Now for the “late, breaking news.” The historical novelist Judy Koll Healey—who has been a good friend for many years—has offered to read The Reluctant Spy. 

In an earlier posting on this manuscript, I mentioned the help she gave me in 2002. Since then, she herself has had two highly successful historical novels published by HarperCollins Publishers: The Canterbury Papers in 2005 and The Rebel Princess in 2010. Both take place in twelfth century England and Europe.

In return, I’ll read an early draft of the final manuscript of her Canterbury trilogy, which she’s working on now. The truth is that determining the problems with someone else’s manuscript is often much easier than realizing what’s amiss with one’s own. As the weeks pass I’ll share with you Judy’s “take” on what I’ve written.

When someone reads our work, we hope for honest criticism. And we hope also that we will listen to that person’s critique with an open mind while separating the wheat from the chaff. That’s the hard point for any writer—recognizing the suggestions that work while resisting those that don’t.

Sometimes a reader makes suggestions that don’t work because they miss the expectation we have for a scene. But even those suggestions can prove helpful for they bring to light something that’s not working in our story. As given, the suggestion won’t work for our plot, but if we look at it from several different angles we get a new perspective on what might work in the manuscript.

This is what happened for me during the first two weeks of January when another fellow writer and friend read the manuscript and made suggestions as to how I might strengthen the tension and create a less lengthy book. She found whole scenes that could be deleted and others that could be cut considerably. She also suggested a change in emphasis in one chapter. I used her suggestions to delete 9,000 words from the manuscript and to polish much of the prose. Her reading was invaluable to me.

Now Judy is reading and I’m hoping that she, too, will find ways I can improve the story. Meanwhile I’m working on the first book of a Bronze-Age- Greece trilogy. I hope to tell you more about that soon.

PS: Many agencies have more than one agent, so perhaps there are only about 600 agencies, each receiving 700 queries a month. That would skew my math. But that’s still a lot of queries a year—and a lot of writers!

“Autumn Leaves,” attributed to Tina Phillips is from freedigitalphotographs.com

On the Road to Thebes

Last week I shared my Amazon Breakthrough Novel pitch with you and asked for your response. Several of you liked it as is; others gave me excellent suggestions for what might make it more intriguing to an agent. This coming week I’m going to begin honing that pitch to use in agent query letters. In a future posting I’ll share with you the process of finding agents to whom I might send a letter.

         Today, however, I want to return to the novel on which I’m now working—Three Roads Diverged. Two weeks ago I shared with you the research I did back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Let’s pick up from there.

         Crown published A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story in October 1992 and then sold rights to publishers in China, Japan, Korea, and Germany. The advances and royalties enabled me to purchase a new Mac and a printer, take six months off from freelancing, and travel to Greece to do research.

Here I am on the road between Thebes and Delphi.

        

         I’d wanted to see Greece, especially Thebes, since sixth grade when our class studied Ancient History. In late 1947 when Sister Mary McCauley introduced us to Greece, I saw Thebes on a map. Suddenly a frisson of remembrance about that city-state gripped me. In the depths of my mind, I could see ancient Thebes; my senses knew it. That was my first déjà vu experience.

         In November 1993, forty-six years after my introduction to the Bronze Age, I flew to Greece with a friend. For three weeks, we visited many of the sites I knew would be part of Three Roads Diverged. We rented a car. My friend drove; I navigated. We visited Athens, Knossos, Thebes, Delphi, Dodona, Olympia, Pylos, Mycenae, Lerna, Tiryns, Nauplia, and Epidaurus.          

         With a small camera I took pictures, as did she, of all these places. As the months pass, I’ll share with you some of the ruins I visited. Sometimes the photographs will be blurred because I really knew nothing about framing a scene. However, they will show you the sites about which I’ll be writing.

This is the path at the foot of the Parthenon in Athens.

When we flew home in late November, I began to write. For six months I used all the research I’d done to produce the beginnings of a first draft for the novel I hoped would one day be published.  

         Then in June 1994, I ceased to write. Why? Because the words of a fellow writer had burst the bubble of belief I had in myself about being able to write anything well, much less a novel. From then until now, that draft—the first third of the proposed novel—moldered on the computer, awaiting the click of reactivation.

         Then, two weeks ago, I printed out what I had—some 60,000 words. For nearly twenty years, I’d expected the novel—if ever completed—would divide itself naturally into three sections that would reflect the three Oedipus plays written by Sophocles.

         Using those three dramas as a foundation for the arc of Antigone’s life, I’d weave a story of who she was, what she did, and why. I’d search out the definitions that prompted her actions. By doing so, I planned to fill out the bare outlines of her life as given in Sophocles’ plays.

         His was the skeleton; I’d provide flesh, blood, tears, and sweat. Antigone would be given lungs with which to speak to a new audience. She’d be given a mind with which to enthrall us. A heart to woo us.

         As I read those 60,000 words these past two weeks, I’ve succumbed to her charms. Now I’ve realized how best to present her life. I’ll share that realization with you in the next couple of weeks. Peace.