Butterflies and Book Deals

Seamus is on his way to being famous...(and also practicing his "I want to be alone" pose).

The title is a bit of a cheat. Twice, actually. I don't have a book deal yet--but as I mentioned I have "officially" signed with a super fantastic literary agent who will be representing my memoir and taking it out to publishers. And I promised details, which I will now share. (Programming note: if you are one of the blog readers who is a writer yourself, you are already familiar with this process and you may just want to skip down to the end...and then leave your comments telling me where I got it all wrong.) When I've told some of my family and friends my news I've been met with cheers and...confusion, especially when they ask when they can buy the book and I have to explain, well, uh, it will have to find a publisher first.  Understandable confusion since most non-writer folks don't really know about literary agents and just think "book deal."

Here's the deal--to get a book published with a publishing house of repute (whether little, medium or big), these days one must have a literary agent. You cannot simple call up Random House and tell them you've got the next bestseller--you're the next Jonathan Franzen Clancy Irving King Rowling.  Nor can you mail them your novel and then sit waiting for the money to pour in. (Please watch this funny clip and know it's all true). No, you need a literary agent. The literary agent can get to editors at the publishing houses and get them to consider buying your book. No agent, no book deal, pretty much. So it's a first--and major--step, after of course you've done the required writing work.

Literary agents get 100s (maybe more) of requests --known as "query letters"-- every month from aspiring authors pimping their writings. With a novel a writer must finish the book (or, um, in the case of my earlier novel, finish it repeatedly, and then again and then start again) before seeking a literary agent. With non-fiction, it's a slightly different route. With non-fiction the writer puts together a book proposal, which Chris has described as a "business plan for a book" and that's pretty accurate. A memoir is non-fiction so it falls in the latter category, except with some agents who still want a finished manuscript and a book proposal. I've been working on the actual memoir all year. I started working on the proposal in August (remember that North Carolina trip--yep, all book proposal) and finished it in mid-September, including sample chapters and an outline of the full memoir.

Then I spent several weeks researching agents. If you are ever in this position, let me highly recommend a site called QueryTracker.net. This site not only let me research the agents and find out all sorts of valuable information (who represents what kind of books, what other authors an agent represents, how to contact them, how long they usually take to respond, if they respond...) but also let me track the status of the various queries. That might not sound all that complicated, but it is--considering that a writer doesn't get to just send 2 or 3 queries and wham! there's the agent begging for the book. It takes many, many queries. 100s sometimes (there are 1000s of agents--some better than others of course). Then, with my list of 250 possible agents selected and ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being a dream agent and 10 being a good agent that was a fit with this type of memoir), I turned to writing the query letter.

Again, harder than you think.  A query letter is one page that describes the book, sells it with a "hook," and also explains why you are the best if not the only person to write this particular book. Phew. This stuff is work, people.

Finally, on September 29th, I began the process of sending out the query letters (and sometimes the proposal itself, or sample pages, depending on each agent's preferences) to a select number of agents (not all 250--that would be crazy!!). I got a good response almost immediately! The "good response" was 11 agents asking to see the full proposal. Trust me, that's a good response. I sent the proposals as the requests came and then returned to writing the memoir (okay, well, first launched into a "what was I thinking? I can't do this! I can't write! panic which all writers are familiar with).

By November 16th (trust me, that's speedy!) I had offers of representation (yes, plural!!) and got to begin the happy task of "checking references"--which is a fancy way of saying I called and spoke with some of the authors represented by the agents who'd offered to represent me. As a lifelong reading geek, that was beyond thrilling. Then, last Wednesday I signed with a category 1 dream agent--Sarah Jane Freymann of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency. I'm thrilled. I've loved my conversations with her and her thoughts on shaping the memoir. This weekend I've written 11 new pages and am highly motivated to write more and more and more. (I'm sure this is a honeymoon stage; I'd like to enjoy it anyway.)

The plan at this point is that she will get back to me with her notes on the proposal and how to make it as marketable as possible. I'll spend December revising the proposal and after the first of the year she'll be taking it out to the editors looking for that magical book deal. Which means, there won't be news of a book deal until February or March--and that's if I'm really, really lucky (or really, really good ;-)  ).  In the meantime, I'm just going to bask in this little glow right now and keep my head down working on the  actual writing. Not a bad way to spend the holidays.

Seamus has of course demanded his own agent. He's not sure I'll fight for enough toast residuals in his contract so he'll need his own representation. We're in negotiations now.You can see the hardline position he's taken in the photo.

Oh, and the butterflies in the title? Well, I could cheat and tell you it was in reference to the butterflies in my stomach when the agents called, but I'm not really a butterfly kinda gal. No, it was a bald faced cheat--because the blog post with the most hits, consistently, in the history of the blog was the one titled Butterflies and Blogs, and, um...I wanted a lot of hits again as I brag about getting an agent. Believe me, when the book gets published the blog posts will all be "Butterflies, Unicorns and Free Sex."

Butterflies and Blogs

Twice today the image of butterflies came up. So it seems the butterfly is the image of the day.

First, this morning I returned to radiation after my 3-day hiatus from "The Machine." This is kind of a big week for me--it's my last full week of treatment and after Tuesday I will be down to just the five "boob boosts" which are the quick, targeted radiation to just the incision spot. And do you know how those darling radiation therapists wanted to celebrate with me? Yeah, they wanted to draw on my boob. Like I'm some sort of third grad art project! That's just weird, dontcha think? It's not weird to them. They claim it's required. And get this--I can't wash it off!! So, with the doctor's consent and involvement, they've now marked me with indelible ink circling the target area (Sharpie does not do this justice--and believe me, if it wouldn't get my blog shut down and fined by the morality police, I would be showing you a photo of this). Then, I'm pretty sure just to mock me, they put five little stickers on me--and two of them are butterflies. Oh, and I can't wash these off until radiation is over--8 days from now. Okay, I'm sure these butterflies serve a medical purpose but right now, they are two little creatures clinging to my abused breast and smiling up at me through a permanent felt-tip marker circle. You can't imagine how weird this looks. Hundreds of years from now scientist are going to be describing the weird pagan rituals our culture put breast cancer patients through and 12 year-old medical students who jet-packed to the hospitals will be laughing at this. Probably while looking at a photo of my breast that someone found on a fossil known as a blog on a laptop (which will seem gigantic and slow to them). Who knew that cancer treatment involved felt tip markers and butterfly stickers??? Raise your hand if you knew this!! (Okay, put it down--you're alone at your computer and you're a radiation therapist, Jana!!)

Because I was getting additional body art this morning, I was running late. I actually didn't get out of the radiation place until almost 10 and I had a 10a.m. meeting across town. I raced to it but still arrived late. I run enough meetings myself to know how annoying it is to have to start over or break stride for the tardy participant, so believe me, I was all ready with The Cancer excuse. None needed. They didn't even skip a beat. But the meeting was the beginning of the strategic planning sessions for the Riverside Humane Society Pet Adoption Center. And here's where butterflies came up again. No, not as pets, silly. There was an analogy drawn that our pet adoption center was just ready to come out of its cocoon and blossom into a butterfly (and it is! We have a gorgeous new facility where all the animals stay until a forever home is found for them, and no healthy animal is ever euthanized--which is the way it should be!! But I digress...). The analogy stuck for awhile. And there it was--butterflies right in front of me (okay, and um, lower...maybe lower than they should be) twice in just over an hour. Anybody know what a butterfly symbolizes? (And just a thought here, but if it's eternal damnation, death, or you know, disease, please don't share that information. Think about it, 'kay?)

Later in the day I found myself doing that thing that I'm not supposed to do---checking out other cancer blogs. I'm not even sure how I found myself down that particular rabbit hole, but it had something to do with when a cancer blog appropriately ends. And, um, duh...sometimes they end because the person has died. Why was I not thinking about that???? I wasn't. Because I don't go there. I don't think like that and I haven't been told I need to think like that, but nonetheless every once in awhile I get slapped upside the head with that reality. People die from cancer. I have cancer. Wow. So much for my cancer lite theory! And I realized that perhaps I'm being presumptuous (but let's just call it positive thinking) that my odyssey is coming to an end. Certainly there is the possibility of recurrence, and there are definitely follow up appointments and mammograms and ultrasounds and scans and all that sort of stuff that happens when one has been unceremoniously and rudely attacked by that bitch Cancer. Still, I think getting this far and the fact that there are no signs of the cancer at this point is worth celebrating.

Besides, my radiation therapists and I briefly discussed the power of positive thinking in these situations (they deal with lots of cancer patients of course). I didn't really get when people said that to me in the beginning of all this--how much attitude matters. I just figured there were two choices and I didn't like the other one, so a "good" attitude would have to do (and isn't it funny how a "bad" attitude--of the F**k Cancer variety--can be a good attitude? Discuss amongst yourselves.) I see now though that it's really true. I don't know what lies ahead of me any more or any less than you do, really. Sure, I've got this 15% recurrence statistic hanging over me, but I've also got an 85% chance it doesn't come back. And I do know what I can handle now (more than I thought), and I do know that I didn't allow cancer to rob me of these last seven months of enjoying life with my friends and family or any of the things that are important to me (and yeah, my career is important to me, that's why I kept working...oh, and I like to eat). And it could have done that if I had let it, if I had focused on all that could have gone wrong or all that still might. So I understand what they mean by having the right attitude. It doesn't change my chances, and it doesn't change the future, but I think it made the last seven months easier for me and the people around me.

Wow. That was almost melancholy. Or perky. And I hate both those things!! Note to self: stay away from cancer blogs!! (Oh, wait...that doesn't apply to you, dearest reader).

Tomorrow is my final "full" radiation. Chris is going to go in with me. He's been to every stage of this cancer odyssey with me every step of the way, but I've been going to radiation each morning by myself (it's on my way to work), so it's definitely time for him to come in and meet all these people I keep telling him about and experience the radiation part of this. So in all likelihood, there will be photos soon. Maybe even photos of The Machine! Definitely we'll get some blue gown photos. But I'm not sure if I'll be blogging tomorrow evening--we have the final party planning committee (where we practice partying to make sure it will go well on July 19th1), and my friend GARY BERG is in town, so that's always a party. Hmm...there could be lots of photos for the next blog.