Good News? Part 2
This is me, bathed in a lovely red light, pondering the change of my short story collection to full fledged novel... (Yes, that is a trucker hat on my head but it's made of wicker!!)...over a beer at Metropolitan bar in Williamsburg.
(continued from previous post)
So, after a week of fretting about my book (this was over two weeks ago) I came up with some thoughts (more like panic attacks): can I turn it into a novel? do I want to?
Why, why, why, can't it stay an interconnected story collection? Is my agent giving me the brushoff?
Does she really not like the book and this is her way of saying buh-bye? How long is it going to take me to turn it into a novel? What kind of work is this going to be? What kind of a project? How am I going to do this AND get married to Ted, AND move to San Diego? Should I just toss it all?
I finally met with my agent, Sally, on Wed. June 29 to discuss.
First, a bit about Sally: she used to work for a bigger agency, but decided to go out on her own and start her own agency (with one or two other people, I believe). I met her when she approached me after a reading of mine. This was about 4 years ago. I had only about 6 stories then, and the collection wasn't connected (except that it was about folks in S. California in the mid-80s). We clicked instantly, she has some family in San Diego (where I'm from) and so we talked about places we love there. She also had some really nice things to say about the story I read and asked me about the rest of them. She gave me her card and asked me to send the stories I have whenever I was ready. I was also being courted by another agent at the time (a bigger agent, from a bigger agency) but I didn't feel as strongly about the agent and she seemed to have a different idea of what the collection should be.
I talked with Sally over the phone a few more times and finally decided I wanted to work with her. She seemed so genuinely enthusiastic about my work and shared the same vision for it as me.
Flash forward a few years and Sally is still with me (or I'm with her, I suppose) and she has always been nothing but patient, generous, supportive, encouraging, and always providing great feedback and advice.
Since I had had a week before meeting her to let things stew in my confused little brain, I was ready to talk about the 'new' plan for the book. I went to the agency and we sat down in their very sheeshee boardroom (there are other agents on the same floor) with all of their books on the shelves--many I recognized and respected.
So, Sally laid it out for me. She loves the writing, she believes in the writing, and she loves the voice but that's just it--THE VOICE. she feels that the voice (with a few exceptions) is the same throughout and the stories are really about ONE boy--Joel (the main character in my story "Japanese For Blurred Image") So why not make this a novel about HIM. (again she mentioned "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time"--which I told her I'm reading).
I also told her that she was probably right. That this really is, or could be the same boy, except for a few stories. Joel was already in six of the eleven stories anyway, so why not just try to tell his story?
But we discussed further that maybe it should only be about a year in his life (well, that was my thoughts anyway). And I don't want it to necessarily be a 'coming out' story or anything. I mean, yes, Joel's gay, but the book's not really about his coming out to anyone. It's more a picture of him and his family and the mid-80s, a young boy growing up gay on the cusp of the age of AIDS/HIV.
Some of you may remember what the 80s were like? This was before Will & Grace, before Elton and Melissa E came out of the closet, before kd lang, before there was Gay Chic, or bi-chic or what ever chic it was that somehow happened in the early to mid-90s where kd lang and Cindy Crawford could pose on a mainstream magazine together.
Who did young gay kids have to look up to? Wayland Flowers? Boy George--was he even saying he was gay?
I also wanted to write about growing up on the fringes and in the shadow of a major city/influence like Los Angeles and Hollywood (which has always been an influence on my life and writing).
So we decided that's what I'm going to do. Make this a book about Joel, a mid-80s, arty, film-loving blonde kid from San Diego and the year that changes his life. Something like that.
And right now I'm really big on plans, deadlines, goals (what with a wedding and a move to San Diego on the very near horizon, I have to be). So my immediate goal is to take the 6 stories that Joel appears in and turn it into 100 pages of a draft of the novel by early August. Easy, right?
Yeah. Right. It's not that easy. It's a helluva lot of fun and work but it's not easy. I do appreciate the support and encouragement I've gotten from other inspiring writers like Aaron, Lola, Felicia, my bf Ted, and D. Travers Scott (thanks dts-- you're right when you say "I think they [novels] have some kind of pretentious stigma when in actuality they are a very comfy, loose form to work in"). I have found it quite comforting (amidst all the stress) to be able to take my time with things now. What I mean is, I don't have to neatly wrap things up at the close of each chapter (like I struggled at the end of a story). I'm enjoying filling out these characters--Joel, his mom, his dad, his grandmother, his sister (a new character--she wasn't originally in his stories, but another character I wrote about had a sister and now she's become Joel's sister). I'm enjoying letting the plot roll over into the next chapter and I'm excited about the new directions that the book is going.
I promised my agent I would send her a rough draft of what I've come up with in early August and I'm going to stick to that. Even if it's just 75 pages (though so far I've 're-written' almost 30 pages and I've been working on it less than a week).
So, yes, I've got a lot on my plate; no, it's not easy and I'm a bit stressed, but you know what? Before I left my meeting with the agent she said to me that she believed in this book and in my abilities and she was just as excited about it now as she was when she first heard me read at Columbia. And that, my friends, is what it's all about. I'm very lucky to have her as my agent.
Naturally, I'll keep y'all posted.
*And now, from BookAngst blog-- here is fab author Lauren Baratz Logsted's experience with not one, but 5 agents (in her own words she was "on the fast track to becoming the Elizabeth Taylor of novelists"). Read it all Here
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