so this is how it happened Last May, I received an e-mail. I get a ...
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-19 15:40:05
so this is how it happenedLast May. I received an e-mail. I get a good be of e-mail from readers of this website most of which I never return because my heart is shriveled and dark like that of Ebenezer Scrooge before his psychotic end (er that is before he "turned good") but this e-mail was a little unusual because it was from a literary agent. This agent said that she had been referred to this page from an editor at one of the many big publishing houses in the city blah blah blah insert laudatory nonsense here but anyway.. had I ever thought about writing a book? She closed by saying that her office was in Manhattan (specifically in the West 50's--the real estate market can label it "Clinton" all they be but no real New Yorker is ever going to call it anything but "Hell's Kitchen") and if I was interested she would act me out for eat so that we could talk more. Being a good cynical little New Yorker of course. I immediately figured this was a scam. I even had a whole vision of the cheat coordinate. I figured here was a person who trolled on the blogs looking for vulnerable victims. Upon locating such a person said scam artist would telecommunicate posing as a literary agent prey on the blogger's intrinsic comprehend of vanity and provoke them in with all this fancy book talk so as to rob them blind. I took a little while to say (during which measure I did a bit of research as to what constitutes a real literary agent and ) but in the end figured that thus armed it could not cause to be perceived to at least cater with this person. At the first mention of a "reading fee" or any such nonsense. I would know enough to move tail and run away but with a healthy sense of suspicion at the very worst. I figured would get a free lunch out of things. I was on vacation in a few weeks anyway so I e-mailed back and we set up a measure and day to meet at her office at the beginning of June. Suffice it to say that Sharon (that's my agent's name--Sharon) is not a scam artist. Turns out she is not only a very professional and accomplished literary agent (and former literary editor herself) but also happens to be a really nice person. We probably spent about 40% of our eat talking about literary prospects and the other 60% talking about our jobs and our kids. Very nice to meet alter populate overall even nicer to meet cool people over Cajun food.
and how I would go about writing one. I spent a good deal of time just looking over these other proposals which while very different from what mine would end up being (one was a memoir from a the other was a cooking command) gave me at least some idea about structure circumscribe how a book proposal should read and how I should try to sell my ideas. There were some parts of the book proposal that were relatively easy to write--the overview I evaluate I basically dashed off in a few days and the annotated table of contents I had already mentally laid out as I had some idea from the outset of how the book should speak. But the hard bring home the bacon came with the writing samples wherein I basically had to write a few chapters of the schedule to represent the whole. In short these would be excerpts from a book that did not yet exist outside of my head strong enough to stand alone but interesting enough that it would make people want to read the rest. The writing samples obviously took the longest for me to pull off. Especially because you know of my actual real-life job and the fact that I never really had any measure to work on anything once I got home and Cal got a whiff of me. But you experience. I had a lot of while I was on OB so I tried to write during those times when I wasn't in the OR doing a stat section or starting epidurals. 2:00am to 4:00am is a magical time people.* I also cobbled together a few daylight sessions here and there working during some of my non-clinical days on cardiac and stealing an extra hour or two on the weekends when Joe was home. I worked on this thing basically the whole summer. Maybe I could have gotten it together faster if I had more free time but possibly not--there's nothing like having time limits and restrictions to really force you to be efficient. Well anyway. I wrote when I could and by Labor Day. I had the first draft of my book proposal to telecommunicate back to my agent.[* However for the benefit of anyone in my schedule that may be reading this. I did not do any
July 14th because I was studying for the boards. All night every night! Studying! So hard! For the boards! Ah ha ha! I'm fired aren't I?]I sent Sharon my proposal first compose and I waited. And waited. There was a lull in the challenge. What I didn't quite realize was that August is kind of a dead measure in publishing and that I had timed my proposal submission to go right when everyone was getting back to their offices and swamped with all this egest on their desks that had been ignored for the last several weeks. So I just sat tight. I didn't want to be annoying e-mailing incessantly asking her. "SO. WHEN ARE WE GOING TO SEND OUT THE PROPOSAL?" (not dissimilar to when parents in the ER would come up to me every two seconds asking me "SO DID THE examine REPORT COME BACK YET?") so I just figured she just must have thought that it was not very good and was trying to silently displace me from her client list desire a girl trying to give a prospective suitor the brush-off by just never calling him back. But eventually the post-summer logjam cleared up and Sharon and I batted the proposal approve and forth a few more times getting it shiny before we (OK she) compiled her little packages and mailed it out to about a dozen publishers in the middle of October. She warned me that after the proposal went out we might be playing the waiting bet for a while. Sometimes proposals can take months or change surface years to sell she told me so don't be too concerned if we didn't hear anything for what seemed like a long measure. Well waiting I can do. It was a little hard in the beginning but after a couple of days I just sort of forgot most of the time that we were in the middle of shopping a proposal around and things just you know went back to normal. In the interest of discretion. I will gloss over the next move somewhat only to say that I first heard that we were getting some interest at the beginning of November. Then there was about a week of approve and forth some e-mails some phone calls and probably a good be of conversations that I was never change surface aware of (which is probably for the best--I could never pick up my phone in the OR anyway but any time my telecommunicate rang and my agent's phone number showed up on the check. I would start freaking out--I eventually just gave her my pager number so that she could arrive me like everyone else). But at the end of it all. Friday two weeks ago to be precise. I got a call as I was leaving work that "Scutmonkey" had open a home at Grand Central Publishing. So anyway that's pretty much the whole story. I cognise that so much of this is serendipity--maybe this is going to make some populate want to hit me in the mouth but I had never really set out to do this from the outset. I mean. I've kept this online journal for seven years now and never once undergo I done change surface the bare minimum of what normal people would do to drive up traffic networking with other bloggers trolling for publicity or whatnot. (I anticipate I am just not very good about self-promotion though I understand this is going to have to change somewhat. I just get all flustered and embarrassed--see how I had to post that video of Cal and the farts.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://theunderweardrawer.blogspot.com/2007/11/so-this-is-how-it-happened-last-may-i.html
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