Would You Buy This Book?

The first conference I attended required advance homework. Write the pitch - that one minute elevator schpeel that will turn a stranger into a buyer.

It is a tall order to convey the story and its commercial viability so quickly. In addition, one must list a number of relevant "comps," short for comparable books that will tell the agent-to-be where your book falls in the reader spectrum. It's not enough to mention a genre anymore. An agent wants to know whether you are writing the next Hunger Games or Game of Thrones, both fantasy but quite different from each other.

The gift of brevity often eludes me. I went through many edits, cuts, many reads out loud, until I condensed my pitch to the below. Which is way too long. In reality, I can only deliver all of it in a minute at a speed that defies comprehension. At a normal pace, I can barely finish paragraph one. Nervous in front of an agent, the pressure to hurry up and conclude starts around the third sentence.

Anyway, here it comes. My first try. The working title of the book by then was, FYI, "H.R. Confidential."

Would you buy this book? Do you think it's funny?

I got laughs when I presented it in front of the conference attendees. Do not answer my questions yet, though. Whether the above makes you interested in what has now been rechristened "Fringe Benefits" is immaterial, because, while true to the story, my pitch conveys (I think) a lighter mood than the writing, and it emphasizes the plot points that speak only to that mood. If you bought my book based on this, you'd be disappointed.

As to the comps, forget it. This was harder than the pitch. I couldn't come up with a single one. I think, or rather I fear that I have written a book in a style I do not read. I haven't read any of the Bridget Jones books and actually it's neither my desire not aspiration to have written anything comparable. But I couldn't come up with anything else. As to Fifty Shades, I hadn't read it either when I wrote my pitch. I have now, and, well, what can I say. One would do, or write, anything for a laugh. Fifty Shades of Open Enrollment is a cute joke. At least for those of us in HR.

Author events

I used to go to book readings. I stopped. With some exceptions, I felt most writers should hire an actor to read for them, or just skip the reading part and make the event a conversation. I still feel the same way. But I'm again lowering posterior to folding chair, hard cover in hand, eager to bask in the proximity of another writer's success. See if I learn anything.

Thus I attended readings by Donna Tartt, Sara Paretsky and Martin Cruz Smith. I'd call it a coincidence that three writers that particularly mark the passing of time for me had new books to read from so close to each other.

Donna Tartt - lovely, petite, funny, engaging - she read (well) from "The Goldfinch." That same night I read from my signed copy and continued to do so for a series of nights until I realized I didn't like it. Sorry. I read somewhere that an aspiring author should never give a bad review. But since chances that Miss Tartt would get between me and a publisher, would even care, are nil, I'll just say what I really think.

She has lived in a pedestal since she published "The Secret History" in 1992. I then fell for the noise in the press and rushed to buy the book with the special cover (why did this cover design matter so much, BTW?) The writing was great. The story did nothing for me. I gifted it to someone half way through. Not a mean gift. The book just got a better home. I missed her second one. And now I longed to read the third, with a particular wish to atone for my original dislike of "The Secret History," blaming myself for not getting it, and binge on her full oeuvre. Because, in spite of the lack of connection, I have still spent twenty years (the same twenty years during which I have written a total of zero books) envying her ability and her success.

But, again, except for the New York beginning of the boy and his mother, I failed to connect. Let's leave it there and call it a case of "to each his own." Not my own.

A little closer to my taste are the books of Sara Paretsky. Her first mystery about tough talking female detective V.I. Warshawski was published in 1982. I first heard of Ms. Paretsky and V.I. in the early nineties and felt that I, too, could write a mystery. I gave it a try, my first. I don't believe, though, that she would consider the line "I can crack peanuts with my vulva" an homage to her style. My boyfriend at the time definitely didn't think much of it and gave me a review not many writers have heard (one would hope) - "I wanted to throw your manuscript at the wall!"

Twenty or so years later the score is Sara Paretsky 18, me 0. And that's just the mysteries.

That same manuscript throwing boyfriend introduced me to the books of Martin Cruz Smith and I was hooked. I have loved Arkady Renko for as long as Mr. Smith has written about him. About ten years ago I had completed a finished draft for a mystery (no female genitalia involved), met Mr. Smith at a writers' conference, and he agreed to read my book and share his thoughts. I gave it to him in a moment of euphoria, convinced I had made my book the best it could be, expecting a reply with a back cover blurb. Instead, he recommended hard work and a full deep edit. I consoled myself from having disappointed my hero by thinking that at least I had not provoked a violent reaction this time. I called this progress.

Mr. Smith wrote his latest Arkady Renko mystery, "Tatiana," which I loved, while suffering from Parkinson's disease. I am (fingers crossed) perfectly healthy. The score, just to keep it going, is still 12 to 0.

But I am now determined and motivated to close a twenty year gap.

I first gave writing a try during a trip to Africa in 1993. The travel book exists, as gossip for friends and family.

Premise

In the beginning there is an author and a laptop. The job is personal, solitary, destined for universal acclaim, yet confidential. Some face the blank page with gusto. Some dread it. Add booze, or pimples, or failure to adjust, social disorders, and you have an image that has been cliche probably since a brooding Sumerian applied stylus to clay. A writer feels so alone.

Yet, one only has to attend any of the hundreds of writers' conferences, retreats, seminars, workshops, salons or night classes, which are sprouting besides the many creative writing undergraduate and graduate programs, to debunk the myth. Shakespeare and Cervantez, Hemingway and Mailer, Dickens, Joyce, Duras and Woolf retreated to their private rooms and wrote without the benefit of the innumerable how to's of today. How to start the book, how to craft a story arch and write meaningful characters, how to master the art of humor, or autobiography, or romance story telling; how to edit yourself, and, especially, how not to reach out to an agent until a professional gives your words another once over, for cash.

After toiling alone, romanticizing the sacrifice and identifying with long dead masters, a quick look up from the screen, or rather yet a quick look into the screen through the beauty of the internet, and the fantasy vanishes. You are just one in a million. With so many institutions, universities, local bookstores and published writers offering their guidance to you, so you too can publish a book and one day embrace creative writing teaching as your new day job; with easy access to self publishing, ebooks, blogging and social networking; anyone should be able to write, publish and live happily ever after. And then what? You are still one in a million.

That's where the stories of fantastic success get hold of you. What if you happen to be the lucky one, lottery winner, who wrote the right thing at the right time and everyone [the public, but most importantly Hollywood] is happy to pay for a piece of you? The successful writer of today aspires to be anything but alone.

I'll stop the second person here. I lost a job and took time off and wrote a book and for nine months kept my eyes on my navel, or my keyboard. I have tried and failed before. This time I typed "The End" and looked up with a sense of "Uhuh! I did it." But there was no one there to reply "Yes, you did! Yes, you did!" and offer me a million bucks for the movie rights.

As I entered a world I had pretended didn't exist, two paths of discovery were laid out for me. One, the road to publishing. I still know little about it and I can't say I smell a best seller. Two, the road to quality, revealing thus far how little I know about it and how hard it would be to craft anything that would sell at all.

I'll address both as I go along.