{fiction, instead of lies}

Today Seren asked me if I was going to be entering the gates of Edit Hell again anytime soon, ’cause of the potential two-book nature of the deal S.A.M. is lookin’ at. And I said sighingly, “Yep.” And then I read Maureen Johnson’s blog and I had a good, long, hard snorting laugh. Now all the lost dishes (I am honestly missing two glasses in a set of eight. I know I am eating/drinking all over the house – but this is a tiny house and I have very few things. Where the heck are they!?!?!?), loads of laundry that sour before I put them in the dryer, and bills set down in one room and lost for a week and the keys in the bathroom makes perfect, perfect sense. Edit Head. The place your brain goes to escape Edit Hell. Which is what happens to you when you dream new endings for your book, walk, breathe and eat your manuscript, and find yourself on the floor, in a pool of moonlight, scribbling re-edits at 2:13 a.m.

Apropos of nothing, Silly Sibling phoned me this morning to inform me that she had blackmail photos of me being dragged onto the dance floor by a very strange woman at the reception. This does not cheer me. Four other people have told me the same thing…

OY!

It’s all so much harder than it seemed it was going to be!

I write a book, I achieve fame and fortune, I roll in banknotes, right?

Well, okay. I got over that particular delusion in college, but I thought that this would be a bit easier. It is, and it’s not.

First, the easy bits: I’ve learned that after a verbal contract, a written one can take 5-8 weeks to be produced. So, though I know I’ve sold my book… nada on the papier front, and that may be the case for a little while longer. Which is too bad, because I’m not feeling celebratory yet — I’m waiting on the paper. And then the book itself… okay, I’m just not feeling celebratory. Still don’t know why. Anyway. Second, I’ve learned that the money takes even longer than contracts to be dispersed. So much for my idea of getting new flooring put in before Thanksgiving! I can hope, but my agent said, “Hopefully before Christmas!” Oh.

We then move on to discuss Book Club Rights (like Scholastic) and that sort of thing, the gross percentage of his fee, etc. etc. And then we move into the hard stuff: My agent haggles with my editor, and he comes to a conclusion. And then the haggling between the two of us begins. Me: Shouldn’t electronic rights be mentioned as rights I keep? Him: They’re basically useless. Don’t worry about them. Me: Uh, but they’re, um, mine. And I want to keep them. Him: Well, nice thought, but kids novel’s don’t have those. Me: But tablet PC’s… Him: No agent I know has had an ebook deal. Me: Oh.

And then he tells me, reluctantly, crankily, that he’s already done at the bargaining table, that it’s bad form to go back with more details, and I should have mentioned all of my issues with e-rights before. Um… did I know I had issues, before I saw the list of rights I was keeping in the email he sent? Do I apologize now? I feel so stupid, so criminally, wormlike-ly, cravenly stupid, but as much as my stomach curdles, and my head drops low, I cannot back down. It’s MY story. It’s MY manuscript. It’s MY contract, and if I’m going to sign it…

We are all so culturally conditioned about money. Nice girls – especially nice girls – don’t talk about it. People who want to make sure they get every last cent are shrewish, long-nosed, querulous-voiced poverty-hagridden fishwives, haggling… unless they have a bad combover and a penchant for marrying twiggy big-eyed juvenile blondes. THEN they’re just Doofus Trump, and that’s okay. But for the rest of us, WHY is it so hard to bring oneself to insist on one’s rights, and initiate discussion about money?

I just want S.A.M. to take care of everything, he wants me to just trust him to “take care of everything” (even going so far as to tell me that I don’t have to be 100% savvy on contracts because that’s why I have an agent) but the truth is, anything I do here still comes full circle to bite ME in the bum if I don’t speak up. And it’s really, really, really hard for me to do, yet it’s equally important to do so.

Live and learn, I guess. And then learn some more.

Now that I think about it, I realize why I’m not celebratory. When I was the editor of my high school newspapers, I would get gloomy and weepy when we put the paper to bed. EVERY single time. Not the weekly rag that went out to the students, but the big one that went out to the parents and the alumni and the board and constituents quarterly. All that work, and then — nothing but ink smears — and starting all over again somehow was difficult for me. Fortunately I have umptehundred other writing projects on my plate, and thank GOD for the weekly torture affairs with Flickr — even though it’s a wild ride every time to finish something in time, it’s a little project that’s a stepping stone, keeping me moving forward with my writing every week, even when nothing else will gel. So, this is normal… Repeat: NORMAL.

I’d just forgotten what it was like to finish a major piece… it’s just post-production depression. Like postpartum, only fortunately without leaving me with something puling and writhing for the next eighteen years. (I’m kidding, of course. You know how I love babies. No, really. Really!)

My love affair with this CD is cross-posted elsewhere (I’ve been playing the hauntingly beautiful Sleep, My Child all morning), but in case you’re not a YA aficionado and missed me going on about it before, I’m going to talk about it again. I always talk about books and young adult literature as something that can bridge cultures and traditions and backgrounds experiences, and bring together teens in a commonality of experience. Literature that transcends political rhetoric and polarizing speeches, the good multicultural stuff, is also key. Music as well can be as fluid and versatile as literature, so today’s “check it out because it is heart-touching and energizing and hopeful and positive” site of the day is NPR, whose lovely pieces from Lullabies from the Axis of Evil will make you want to add this CD of Iranian, Iraqi and North Korean lullabies to your repertoire so you can do some peaceful meditative yoga stretches and deep thinking while it plays (if you have no babies to sing to sleep), high-mindedly choosing peace and goodness and commonality of experience in favor of sneeringly hysterical political statements from the Dubster and others of his Cabinet. The short stories and poetry found in the book by the same title are also deeply thoughtful and beautiful, and pull at me in a way that encourages me to forget the things I don’t have in common with others in the world, and concentrate on those things that I do. Oh – and the CD isn’t what’s new, it’s book… but the CD is new to me, too!

I love autumn… the smell of woodsmoke as you drive through a foggy evening, the unremitting wind and virtual desertion of the bike trails, the early sundown, the brilliant big silver coin moon, the urge to fix soups and knit huge projects (or else get a cat — anything to have something furry and warm on the lap), and invent new squash pies… I love the bread baking — yesterday, we had a barley loaf with a few caraway seeds and some cumin, surprisingly, that turned out to be out of this world. It’s the best time of the year, and usually I start planning spa days and pondering which location in the state has the best hot tub. However, with my hives/eczema/whatever-this-rashy-crap-is spreading all over me — now onto both sides of my face — I’m not sure I should be taking the waters, unless they come with benadryl and calomine afterwards. I’d like to say that this is the result of great excitement from the world of publishing, or even major aggravation from overexposure to Silly Sibling, but I’m afraid it’s just the more pedestrian concerns of a new (glycerine!?) soap. Since there’s no drama in that, I’ll just say it’s because I need a vacation.

You may well wonder, after all the fuss last week, what the newest buzz is on the Writing Thingie. Well, I wonder too. I haven’t heard from S.A.M. since that Fateful Phone Call, which he followed up by a congratulatory email the next day… He hasn’t heard from our editor, and the offer is still immaterial.

After all of this, it would be quite embarassing if it turned out that the publishing company was only kidding. However, publishing notoriously does not have a sense of humor… so, I’ve sold the book, it’s just a matter of waiting until everyone’s ducks are in a row for the signing to take place, and the money to flow.

Other people are already planning their Halloween outfits, but I’ve skipped right on to Thanksgiving. I want to rent a beach house somewhere and build big fires and read — somewhere other than at home. That sounds like a good use of money, no? Meanwhile, I have floor samples coming. Yes. That was the first thing I did, upon finding out that I sold a book. I ordered floor samples, and had dreams about the carpet being torn out. (Freud could discuss the psychology of this, but we will refrain.) Suffice it to say that I’ve already spent that advance money six times, in my mind…

It’s funny – it’s considered quel gauche for writers to talk about money — as if we only suffer this way for our art… Hm! Yet, another YA blogger/author this week was in shock that his first novel (for a two-book contract) produced a bidding war that went way up there into the stratosphere. He was ecstatic and then had a friend remind him how excited he felt at the first offer for the first amount. “Remember that,” he was advised. It’s always good to have perspective, especially about the money… there are quite a few people I haven’t mentioned the sale to, because they’re just silly enough to believe that I am now rich. Hah! A couple of people have even been half-asking me about my advance. Which I can’t help but this is a bit… much! I’m not prepared to discuss with anyone any dollar amounts, thank you, but my agent swears it’s “decent,” so I’m prepared to take his word for it, stop talking about it, and get back to work. Eventually. Once I get the flooring samples…

It has been a Twilight Zone couple of days. First? Yesterday I went to a specialist because my optometrist, bless him, thought there was something “a bit funny” with my optic nerve. The specialist, an ophthalmologist thinks I’m losing vision. Um, depressed? Perhaps! And could the examination have taken ANY LONGER!? I got there for a 4 pm appointment, and we didn’t get home to dinner until 7:15. AND I was practically blinded from all the lights flashing in my eyes. On the up side, though, who else has a color photograph of the backs of their eyeballs like me?

So, today. More tests, an hour wait, a lost chart, etc. etc. etc. Home from another grueling session of Waiting on Doctors (TM) and found the message from S.A.M. that I expected, in the voice he uses when he’s suppressing giddiness. He is so excited that we have finally sold my novel to Knopf. Well, heck, I’m excited too, somewhere in there. Of course, it’s my sister’s ridiculous shindig this weekend, so I can’t feel happy until somewhere around Sunday at 2 a.m. This should be Monday around, oh, say, 9 GMT, and I expect the world will shift, people will ask each other, “Did you hear that?” and people in my neighborhood will think someone just let all the air out of the tires of every car in a sixteen block radius. It will be me, sighing … trying to release my stress and center or something genteel and yoga-esque.

The funny thing is that S.A.M. is so nosy. “Why are you at the doctor?” he wanted to know. “Hope it isn’t something out of the routine.”

Oh, yes. Did I mention that, failing to find me at home, he actually dug out my mobile number? And called me in the middle of a doctor visit? At 6 p.m. Eastern time, after office hours? He really wanted to tell me this, folks. And then we made small talk about various ailments… turns out he has what I may have, and his partner has it, too. We’re all going blind from glaucoma. Cheers!

So, blessings on all of you who have thought positive thoughts my way… keep them coming! For me, writing is the easy bit. Talking about things — the book, why I write, doing all of the PR — that’s the hard part.

I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime… wait for the cheering to start on Monday-ish.