In 2011 I posted the publishing story of my friend, author L. R. Giles. Well, I've had the pleasure of "meeting" author Lori Goldstein this year, and I have to say, her journey to the Big Six publishing contract is just as entertaining (and heart-wrenching) as Lamar's. I trust you'll enjoy it as much as I did.
Without further ado, I give you over to Lori's capable hands...
The Importance of Having an (Honest) Cheerleader
GUEST POST by author, Lori Goldstein
Behind every successful writer is a pom-pom wielding cheerleader.
As time goes on, if you’re lucky, you may look over your shoulder and realize
you’ve gathered an entire high-ponytailed squad. But in the beginning, there is
just one.
For me, the cheerleader doing the high kicks on the sidelines was
my husband. Without him, this journey to publication would have ended years
ago. In fact, without him, this journey would have never begun.
The year was 2008. I was working as a freelance copyeditor. My
journalism degree had led me to a career in the world of words. Newspapers,
trade journals, corporate communications, by 2008, I’d written, edited, and
designed for these and more. I switched jobs a few times in my early career,
constantly searching for the one that would allow my love of and excitement for
the written word to be felt in the actual work I was doing. I came up empty. It
wasn’t them, it was me. (Well, maybe sometimes it was them. I’m looking at you
IT metrics newsletter.)
Working as a freelancer allowed me to take on a wider variety of
projects. They weren’t all glamorous, but at least I was doing different things
(like editing a knitting for dogs book, I mean, how many can claim that on
their résumé?) and meeting new people (including some Okies after editing the
energy policy proposal for the state of Oklahoma, don’t ask, still unsure how
that came about).
But in terms of career fulfillment, I was running on fumes. The
work was steady enough, I was in charge of my own schedule, and I had more free
time to do other things I enjoyed. In truth, the search was over. I had
resigned myself to work not being something that would ever contribute to my
personal happiness. I figured lots of people live that way. After all, isn’t
that where the “a job’s a job” comes from?
Thankfully, my husband was not so ready to give up the hunt. We
were both avid readers. Nothing made us happier than a week on the beach with a
stack of books weighing down our luggage (the same is true today, save for the
switch to fully loaded Kindles...one must save one’s back as one gets older).
One day, my husband came home from work, having told a coworker
yet another amusing (for them, not me) tale of what it’s like to be short. At 4
feet, 10 inches, I am not built for this world. Scratch that. The world is not
built for me. Don’t believe me? Try having to sit on a pillow to see over the
steering wheel or getting whiplash as your belt buckle snags on the kitchen
drawer pull every time you wash dishes. Welcome to my world. Annoying to me,
but apparently, funny to everyone else.
“People have no idea what it’s like,” my husband said. “You
should write about it.”
If this were a movie, there’d be a light bulb flashing above my
head followed by a montage of me sitting on a pillow at a desk with a trash can
as a footrest, banging away at a keyboard, printing out the final page of a
short book (pun intended), walking through a fancy lobby proudly sporting a pair
of kids’ ballet flats adorned with sparkly hearts, exiting an ornate elevator
to sign my name on a generous publishing contract.
But it’s not a movie, and it’s also five years later, so we all
know that didn’t happen. But what did happen is I wrote a book.
Though a writing folder on my computer contained several first
chapters of a variety of stories, I never pursued any of them further. I was a
journalist, not a creative writer. I could tell a news story, I could write a
snappy feature article, but a story straight from my imagination? That wasn’t
me. But this, writing about being short, nothing could be more squarely in my
wheelhouse.
And it was nonfiction. It was like writing a really long article.
No problem.
Hey now, stop that. I hear you laughing. I hear you calling me
naïve. And I was. I thought this, writing about me, would be easy. And the
truth is, most days it was. But easy doesn’t mean good.
During my freelancing lulls, over the course of the next year, I
wrote my book about being short. By the middle of 2009, I had approximately
50,000 words. I thought it had some funny moments. I thought the writing was
solid. It was ready for my first reader. And you know who that was by now,
don’t you?
I can’t imagine being in my poor husband’s shoes, having to read
something I spent a year on, something he encouraged, and having to be honest
about it. The pressure. The desire to just smile and say “it’s fantastic” must
have been strong. And that’s what a cheerleader would’ve done. But I didn’t need
just a cheerleader. I needed an honest cheerleader. And he was. It must’ve been
one of the hardest things he’s had to do, but he did it. He told me there were
parts he thought were hilarious (and I heard his guffaws while reading so I
believed him), but he also told me he thought it needed work.
And we talked about what I might be able to do with it. One idea
was to turn it into fiction. Maybe a romantic comedy type thing where a short
chick meets an NBA-sized dude and the hijinks ensue. But as I’ve said, I didn’t
consider myself a creative writer.
By this point, it was the fall of 2009 and the economy was in the
toilet. Being flushed down with it were most of my freelancing clients.
Companies were scaling back, and my services were the first to go.
At first, I panicked. Was I going to return to an office job? And
lose my freedom? Were there even jobs to be had?
But then, my cheerleader suited up and raised a pom-pom. My
husband encouraged me to think of this not as a problem but as a solution. I
would now have more time to write. To do a job I thought I might actually like
—I was not ready to say (hope for) love.
I owe my publishing career to my husband, my cheerleader, and to
this moment. This moment in the fall of 2009 is when I decided to write.
While I loved much of my nonfiction book about being short,
something made me open the writing folder on my computer. One nugget of a
story, based on the true experience of a college friend, leapt out at me. The
original date on that file, which had a mere five pages of material, was 2005.
It was now 2009, and it was time to go back to it.
My only preparation was reading Stephen King’s On Writing. As I kid, I read every
Stephen King book in print. Surely this would be enough to transition me into
the world of fiction.
Yes, now you can laugh. A lot. I am.
I didn’t then. I didn’t laugh a year later in the fall of 2010
when my husband read my first draft, which came in at a whopping 150,000 words
(the Stephen King effect!), and told me, in a much more serious tone than with
my short book, that this was good but not great. He said, despite the year I
spent on it, that it still needed a lot of work.
Did his honesty hurt? Yes. Both of us. But it also helped.
Because he followed that comment up by flinging both pom-poms in the air and
insisting this manuscript was worthy of the work. There was something there. Of
that, he was sure.
I was less sure. But his cheering, and his willingness to discuss
changes and read every revision, wouldn’t let me give up. Wouldn’t let me give
up for the next two years, the two years it took me to rewrite this manuscript.
Writing is hard. Writing is work. Writing takes discipline.
Writing takes the ability to learn from your past mistakes. Writing takes
opening yourself up to critiques, allowing yourself to revel in the good and
forcing yourself to not only accept, but to change, the bad.
During those two years of rewriting I experienced every emotion.
Frustration. Self-doubt. Anger. Sadness. Joy. Yes, joy too. Because despite
this being the hardest thing I had ever done, it was also the most rewarding.
And fun. I loved it.
I devoured every craft book in my local library. I read
everything I could online about querying and getting an agent and landing a
book deal. And all the while I cut, edited, wrote, and rewrote my manuscript.
I learned to write by rewriting that book. I learned to trust my
cheerleader by writing that book. My cheerleader who wouldn’t let me give up.
My cheerleader who waited by the phone, more scared than I was, to hear what
the first person outside of him thought of my writing.
In the winter of 2012, this manuscript was in the best shape it
had ever been in. I loved it. My cheerleader loved it. But no one else had read
it. Few people even knew I was writing it. I was afraid to tell friends and
family because what if it wasn’t as good as we both thought? Even if it was, I
knew the odds of getting an agent let alone a publishing deal were long. It was
hard enough setting myself up for disappointment. I didn’t need to do it with
an audience.
But I knew I needed an outside opinion.
I signed up to have two agents read my first three chapters at a
conference run by Grub Street in Boston in May 2012. In advance of that, in
February 2012, I submitted my pages to a Grub Street manuscript consultant. She
was to give me feedback I could incorporate before those agents would receive
my work.
My heart pounded as I walked in the door that day. Sophie Powell,
author of a lovely novel called The
Mushroom Man, set my heart racing even faster by becoming my second
cheerleader.
She loved my writing. In her captivating British accent, she read
sentences, my sentences, aloud,
saying how “brilliant” they were. Mind you, this is a commercial, mainstream
story about a twenty-nine-year-old man-boy struggling to find love and
happiness and (sound familiar?) satisfaction in his work. I was not trying to
write the next great literary novel. But Sophie made me feel like I had.
Her enthusiasm and her words, “I cannot imagine this not selling”
followed by “send this to my agent” made my entire body tingle.
I still remember the pride and excitement I felt when I ran out
the door after that meeting and called my husband. A complete stranger, a complete stranger in the publishing
industry, had validated what we both hoped. I just might be a writer.
Of course, again, this isn’t a movie. It’s the real world. And
the reality is, the publishing industry is hard. My book might have been the
best book ever written and still not find its way out of my writing folder and
into the hands of readers. But that day, I thought I was on my way. I mean, it
had taken me three years to get there. Three difficult years. I thought maybe,
just maybe, success was around the corner.
It wasn’t.
I sent my query to Sophie’s agent. She didn’t request my book.
The agents at the conference in May, while having extremely complimentary
things to say about my writing, thought the beginning needed to be faster. They
didn’t offer for me to revise and resubmit.
I won’t lie here. This was devastating. I am not an overly
optimistic person, and still I had convinced myself that this was the start of
something. I had even given in and told a few close friends what I had been up
to. Which turned out to be a good thing. I needed the cheerleaders they became.
Because they read my manuscript and gave me such positive feedback that I put
on my big-girl pants and started revising — again. I took the notes from the
agents and reworked my start. After running it by Sophie, who gave me an even
bigger thumbs up, I was ready to start querying in July 2012.
Taking the advice I had read, I decided I’d write something new
while querying. I switched genres, moving from adult to young adult because an
idea for a book had been kicking around in my head for a while. I’ve always
been a fan of young adult everything — novels, TV shows, movies, they’re my
favorite source of entertainment. So why not write in this genre I love that is
experiencing quite the resurgence right now?
Pantsing my adult manuscript had led to three years of work. It
was an experience I was not about to repeat.
So before I wrote a word of my new idea, I took a Grub Street
novel planning course with author James Scott in July 2012. Though I had read
much on this topic over the years, none of it resonated with me. But James
Scott’s class did. I must’ve eaten a dozen flies that week with the way my
mouth constantly hung wide open. Everything he said clicked. Every trick, every
technique, every piece of advice he gave seemed designed specifically for me. I
got it. I finally got it. I finally got the elements of the novel. And how to
plan them.
So energized was I that I took one last crack at my adult
manuscript. I adjusted a few things to better match what I had learned in the
course. In September 2012, I began querying. At the same time I started
planning my young adult novel. I spent the rest of that month developing a
detailed outline and beat sheet, to the tune of fifty pages.
While I queried my adult manuscript in the fall of 2012, I wrote
my young adult novel, tentatively titled Becoming
Jinn. The first draft took me two months. Two months. Planning made all the
difference. Needless to say, I am a convert for life.
Unfortunately, the queries I sent out for my adult manuscript
didn’t result in many requests. And the rejections on the full didn’t provide
much feedback. Save for one agent. The agent who is now my agent: Lucy Carson
of The Friedrich Agency.
Though she passed on my adult manuscript, she said the magic
words, “you are a talented writer.” They were the perfect words at the perfect
time. The rejections were starting to take their toll on me. But the positive
things Lucy said about my writing style and my storytelling ability fueled my
desire to finish Becoming Jinn.
And my husband, my cheerleader, pointed to those words as
evidence of why I needed to keep going. Maybe my adult manuscript was a tough
sell in the world of commercial mainstream fiction, but Becoming Jinn had a great hook. It just might be the thing to get
me noticed.
After revising for a month, including incorporating feedback from
published authors whose critiques I had bid on and won through charity
auctions, Becoming Jinn was ready to
be queried. Before I got the chance, in January 2013, I entered my first page
into a contest and won. The prize was a full manuscript review by an agent. I
hadn’t even sent out a single query yet, and here I was with a request for a
full.
Considering how querying my adult manuscript had gone, I wasn’t
optimistic that querying Becoming Jinn
would go much better. But still, what if the contest agent liked my manuscript?
Did I want other agents to have a shot? Did I want one particular agent to have a shot? I sent out a handful of
queries including one to that particular agent: Lucy.
In less than a week, Lucy had read Becoming Jinn and offered representation. I was in shock. My road,
which began in 2008 with a nonfiction book about being short, was ending with
representation by an agent for a book about genies. Five years later, I was
finally on my way.
Based on Lucy’s insightful feedback, I revised Becoming Jinn during the winter and
early spring of 2013. We went on submission in May 2013, and in less than two
weeks, I had an offer for Becoming Jinn and
its unwritten sequel from Feiwel and Friends, an imprint of Macmillan.
I actually did get the chance to step out of an ornate elevator
into the Flatiron Building in New York City when I met
my editor for the first time in July. It was then that it hit me. I’m going to
be a published author. After all my struggling, I have a career I love. One
that is professionally and personally fulfilling. And I have my first (honest)
cheerleader and all the ones who joined the squad after to thank for it.
Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but thankfully, the journey
is not.
Lori Goldstein's book, the tentatively titled Becoming
Jinn is scheduled to be released in Spring 2015. You can see a sneak peek
and follow the rest of this publishing journey at www.lorigoldsteinbooks.com
and chat with me about books and more on Twitter at @loriagoldstein.You can connect with her on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/LoriGoldstein.
Your Turn: Questions for Lori? Comments? Where are you in your author journey?
