Like a Madwoman

Bear with me, people. I've got a November 6 deadline to meet. Which means that I am currently revising. . . (see above)

More posts around Nov. 7. I swear.

Get Smart

Every time I call my dad this week, he asks, "Are you any smarter today?"

A funny way of putting it, I guess, when he's basically just asking for the latest news on my book.

I always say, "Yes, I'm smarter."

Boy, am I ever smarter.

Things I learned about the publishing process so far, things I will tell myself if I am lucky enough to ever have this happen again:

On celebrating the sale of your book: Consider your health, please, for the love of God, please think about your poor body and what will happen if you march yourself over to Barnes and Noble and order a huge Pumpkin Spice latte. The combination of adrenaline over your amazing news and the gigantic dose of caffeine will have you shaking like a leaf within twenty minutes. Eyes like roadmaps of Georgia within an hour or two. Finding previously undiscovered patterns in the plaster on your ceiling at three o'clock in the morning.

Then, when you continue your celebration the next night by enjoying a heavy Italian dinner and two glasses of chianti plus a glass of champagne at the end of the evening, you will suffer. You will remember that you don't drink. That you typically go straight from fine to sick. You will feel like crap when you are supposed to be feeling great.

Just say no, dear.

On the passage of time: Time moves differently for you and the publisher. When a publishing house says that they want to publish your book fast, this does not mean fast in your time, but fast in publishing time. As in Winter 2011. Which seems like a long way off. Take back what you said in the previous post about your book being on the shelf in a year. But, you will quickly learn, fast in publishing time also means FAST. As in "you need to have a polished draft to your lovely editor for the first round of editorial revisions by November the 6th, 2009." As in "final draft due January 11." As in "quick, we need your ideas for the book's cover in the next twenty minutes so we can present them in a meeting."

Roll with it, C.

On your priorities: Remember that you have a family. People who count on you to think about them once in a while. If you forget this and spend a week floating on Cloud 9, your head in your book all day, talking about nothing but your book, your book, your freaking book and how exciting and terrifying and crazy your all-important book is, they will inevitably revolt. Your husband will get that glazed look in his eyes whenever you open your mouth. Your kid will resort to jamming play dough into his ears.

It's a pretty steep learning curve.

WHOOHOO!

Turns out I didn't have to wait very long today. K called me around 8:30 a.m. "I have great news!" she said. I sat down. Then she told me that HarperCollins wants to sign me for a 3-book deal on my series. She talked about some of the details that she was still working on with the contract, explained that it might be a month or so before it is all finalized, but "there are no deal breakers," she said, so it's really a done deal. She advised me to have a glass of champagne tonight.

Then she asked me if I was still there. For once, I was completely speechless.

"Yes," I stammered. "But you'll have to send me some of what you just said in an email, because there's no way I'm going to remember it all ten minutes from now."

She laughed and said she would. Did I mention that I heart K?

Since then I've been in a bit of a daze. I took my son to the park. I called my friends and family. I received about a hundred congrats in different forms on Facebook. I still couldn't quite make myself believe it was all true until, during my son's nap, I went to Barnes and Noble for a celebratory Pumpkin Spice latte. I stood in the middle of the store, breathed in the smell of coffee and new books, and promptly started to cry.

At that moment it hit me that I have changed careers in the past 24 hours. Before: adjunct professor in creative writing and SAHM. Now: Novelist. From now on, I am actually going to be paid to write. Better still, I am going to be an Author. A year from now, my book will be on the shelf in that Barnes and Noble.

It's no wonder I started sniffling.

Then I bought a copy of Mark Levine's Negotiating A Book Contract and read it from cover to cover. Good stuff.

I don't know a lot of the details yet, like when the book will be published or what's going to happen next. But it is, without a doubt, one of the best days of my life.

Big Day

So today's the day (supposedly) that the decision gets made. I'm trying to keep cool, go about business as usual. But during my workout this morning my heartrate was unusually high, and there's a quivery excitement in the pit of my stomach, followed by moments of intense dreaminess (oh, to publish my book! For money! For a career, finally, in writing!), trepidation (oh, the disappointment if it's rejected! The pain!) and resignation (I realize that the whole thing, at this point, is completely out of my control).

And so the hours creep by. . .

A Week to Wait

K informed me last night that the editorial board will meet NEXT Friday (I think that this Friday is when F submitted the manuscript to them). So I have an entire week to hold my breath.

Another Small Step in the Right Direction

Here's the news for the week: the editor at the publishing house, F, likes my book. She will be submitting it to the editorial board (the people who really make the decision) sometime in the next few days, and hopefully they will decide to buy it. She had a list of suggestions for changes and questions she wanted me to answer about the book and the series as a whole, but overall she liked the voice, the story, and the writing in general.

So for the past few days I've been working hard, steady, and with great energy. And K has been working tirelessly as the intermediary between me and the editor, passing F's notes along to me and my revisions back to F. K says that even if this publisher decides not to buy the book, she thinks that she'll be able to find a place for it somewhere. So, no matter what happens, right now I am brimming with hope and possibility.

It's a very exciting time.

The New Scoop

Okay, so I realize that I haven't posted in a while. But I have a good reason. I was busy. Really, really ridiculously busy, working on my novel. But for today, I can make time. Because today was a monumental day in the life of this humble writer.

Today my agent submitted my book to a publishing house. Which one, I probably shouldn't divulge just now, but suffice it to say, it's one of the Big Ones.

How this came about is a bit of a complicated story.

When last we left our heroine, she had just heard from her agent and was feeling a tad discouraged by all the work she had ahead of her, all those chapters to revise and pages to comb over. She knew—okay, it’s weird talking about myself in third person—I knew, when I sent the novel to my agent, that I still had some major revisions ahead of me. I was just hoping to do those revisions with a publisher. Silly, idealistic me.

So when K gave me a page-long list of revisions she wanted me to work on before she submitted the novel to a publishing house, I was disappointed, and thought maybe I’d given the draft to K too soon. I looked over the novel again and it looked lumpy and malformed. How could I ever have thought it wonderful? I stuck out my lip for about two days, then stretched my fingers and started again at Chapter 1.

I worked on Chapter 1 for about a week, and by the end of the week, I was excited again. I could feel the story shaping up. Even in that short time, I felt I knew my characters so much better than before. It was great progress. But it took a whole week. And I had 19 chapters to go.

This brings me to Wednesday morning, September 9th. When there was a very big email from K.

Here’s what it said in a nutshell: K has a friend who is a YA editor at the big- publishing-house-which-will-remain-nameless. K was chatting with this friend when she just happened to mention my novel. Her friend confessed that the publishing house was “desperately” searching for a YA novel on the exact subject of my book. K elaborated on my story, which seemed wholly different than the other manuscripts that were currently under consideration at the publishing house. Her friend said she was dying to read it! K said that I was currently revising the manuscript, and it could be a while before it was ready, but would the editor consider taking a look at the first few chapters and a thorough outline? Her friend said yes, she would.

What do you think? asked K in the email.

What do I think? I think I’d better get my butt to work on the next few chapters and a thorough outline! And so I set off, fingers blazing.

K didn’t impose any real timeline on me, but she also emphasized that the publishing house was currently looking at other novels on my subject, so it would be a good idea to get my manuscript in there FAST. To say that it was a stressful week is a laughable understatement. I won’t get into the details, because they aren’t pretty. It involves major overhauls of Chapter 1, a sudden death in the family which took me to Oregon for five days, and me chewing my fingernails to the quick out of sheer nerves.

But I finished. I polished up Chapters 1-3 and sent them to K on Saturday around midnight. Then I fell into a fitful, exhausted sleep. I talked to K yesterday, and she liked what I’d done, and she emailed me this morning to report that she’d submitted the manuscript to her friend. She said it would be a week or two before they made a decision about whether to buy my book.

Crazy. Oh brave new world, this land of the publishing house.

So you can see now why I didn’t have time to write on the blog.

I’m a little hesitant to write now, truth be told, in that way that women wait until after the first trimester to tell people they’re expecting. I’m expecting, although I don’t know exactly what it is I’m gestating. The idea that the publishing house could actually BUY MY BOOK sends a blast of excitement straight to the pit of my stomach.

But there is also the very real possibility that they will choose another manuscript. If that happens, K assures me that she’ll just take my book someplace else. Which is wonderful. Did I mention that agents are better than peanut butter? When I wrote that, I had no idea just how awesome my agent was. She’s given me such amazing, shrewd suggestions without once coming off in a negative or pushy way, read hundreds of pages multiple times, sometimes overnight, suffered my incessant phone calls and panicky questions with grace and humor, and simply encouraged and reassured me at every turn. I heart K!

And who knows, by this time next week she may have sold my book. Stay tuned.