SermonsChaim Potok

Twitter timesuck, Agent-cycle, Gilead and Writing that pays

 

I made a decision today to close my Twitter and HooteSuite tabs (I use both, because I use both 300% magnification for an eye disability so I skim HootSuite  to look at writing-related tweets and then read everything else on Twitter.)  I have found it basically impossible NOT to check it 10x a day.  I haven’t listed anything on Ebay for more than a week, which is my usual downtime activity.  But now that I have a May 1 deadline for some Bible curriculum lessons—writing that I actually get paid for,  I need to strap in.  I’m going to check the feeds just twice a day.

So far, I’ve sent out five agent queries and gotten three rejections.  I’ve also just heard from the Dana Awards that my manuscript didn’t make even the honorable mentions.  So the honeymoon is over.  Not everyone sees how exquisite Shea is.  I’m back to “if you’re going to be a writer you have to be able to take rejection and x received 60 thousand rejections before it was finally published blah blah blah” mode.  I am being a bit more careful about my querying though.  Even though I have a template, I’m not sending out the query e-mails on the same day I write them.  I’m let them sit and tweaking at them until I feel good about them.

The first draft of  my query today—meaning first draft of my final paragraph, “Why I am sending this query to you, Ms. Agent”—was about our shared enthusiasm for Mariindexlynne Robinson’s 2005 novel Gilead. That novel made me feel really hopeful when I read it (or listened to it, since I can’t read normal size fonts anymore.) It made me realize there is a place, post-Tolstoy, for novels about people of faith.  Great novels.  It’s sad really, that the term “Christian fiction” immediately brings to mind a genre that is formulaic and trite, when faith should be deep, and awesome and profound.  Which, of course, Gilead is.

With this agent, I’ve shared a little more personal information than I usually do—like that I’ve not used the link to the Kirkus Review of Because the Angels with some other agents because it has “an interesting approach to Christianity” in the title.  I’ll let the letter sit a couple days and see whether I think it’s still a good idea.  Wouldn’t someone who loves Gilead be interested in that?  But does she get fifty queries a day from people claiming a Gilead kinship? Aaargh!

The downside of the shared enthusiasm is that you become more emotionally invested.  Even though I never met this woman, it means more when someone who loves a book you’ve loved rejects you.

But of course, I have a lot to occupy my time.  Six weeks until my sabbatical is over, and I have these thirteen lessons about Jesus’ use of the Hebrew Bible to get done, as well as a bunch of boxes in the hall that I said I was going to go through and get out of the hall before my sabbatical was over.

Bad News and Good News in that order.

So day before yesterday I heard back from the agent who had my manuscript and she said that she got about halfway through it and decided the setting wasn’t convincing and that the character of Iz was too static, i.e., he did not transform fast enough.  One of the regular readers and cheerers-on of my other novels also gave the same critique.  From a previous posting, you know that I was almost anticipating rejection and knowing that a rejection from this particular person would hurt more.

Some of her suggestions I can work with to improve the manuscript.  I’m not sure about Iz, though, because I happen to know that there are some men who can be basically kind-hearted and heroic and know that their infidelities cause a lot of pain but still keep cheating on the women who love them.  When I was walking yesterday in botanical gardens at UCLA while my friend was at a dental appt. I thought about a way I could bring transformed Iz from the future back into the place in the novel just before he has the affair with Zeinab/Dolores.  But then I thought, am I doing that just to make people I like  more ideologically comfortable?  Does that “cheat” the transformation at the the end?

This is where I could really use a writing mentor.  I asked for one on She Writes yesterday, and got some sympathetic responses, but no takers  (because there really was no Marilynne Robinson or Chaim Potok among them.)  Rebecca Forster, who writes legal thrillers noted that she bases her books on real cases but that sometimes she has step back and make sure she isn’t following them too closely because they become plodding if she does.  I actually think my book doesn’t follow Hosea that closely.  I’m sure Hebrew Bible scholars won’t think so!  There’s as much if not more Amos in her climatic  speech at the President Coulter campaign rally as there is Hosea.  But anyway, I’m going to try inserting a section from future Iz today and hope for a mentor.

The good news is that I based on reading someone else’s experience on She Writes, I offered Because the Angels as a free download for five days, and the day after the rejection, I found out that it was the #1 top free download in the political fiction genre and #31 in literary fiction–and most of the ones in the literary fiction category were public domain novels like Moby Dick and Wuthering Heights. I spent most of the day sending out tweets and posting on Facebook pages.  It slipped down to #3 yesterday, but was back up to # 1 today, and it was featured on the Progressive Christian Kindle.   Now, that’s only 259 total downloads, I found out, but it will be interesting to see if something comes of it–reviews, for example.