More excited than me

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My book popped up on Amazon.com last week, available for preorder. I have a Google alert set up for my name, and last Tuesday, it alerted me to the novel’s appearance on the site. Since then it’s been popping up on sites like the Borders and Random House website.

Very exciting.

I told my mother-in-law about the news and she wrote:

WOW WOW

I will order it - I will be the FIRST!

Less than an hour later, she wrote:

I ordered it - I'm the first one and now I can't wait for it to come!

YAY YAY

Will you sign it when it comes?

Yes, I know that you will….

I'm so excited!

It’s almost as if she has co-opted my excitement. No matter the event, it's almost impossible to match this woman's enthusiasm.  This is the same woman who sent me this gem a couple weeks ago:

Behind every successful man is a surprised mother-in-law.

A few months ago I went into New York to record an interview with my editor that will be used in the promotion of the book (see the photo below). I decided to invite my mother-in-law along, giving us the chance to spend the day together. Never having parents who gushed over me or my accomplishments (as far as I can tell, my mother died never knowing that I was a state champion pole vaulter), it’s always amusing to watch my mother-in-law talk about my accomplishments to others. Wherever we go, she is constantly introducing me as “Her son-in-law, the author,” and that day in New York was no exception. When she first met my editor, Melissa, she pointed at me and said, “Isn’t he brilliant?”

How does one respond to a question like that?

I’ve heard about sons and daughters who are embarrassed by their parents for making a big deal out of their children’s successes and accomplishments, but I’ve always thought them to be foolish, unappreciative and narrow minded, unaware of their good fortune.

I must admit that I understand this embarrassment a little better now, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Recording studio

Finding the right literary agent

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Brian, via email, asks:

Can you tell me how the writer-agent relationship works? How did you go about finding an agent?

First, please keep in mind that I can only speak about the relationship that I have with my agent, Taryn Fagerness. Being new to the publishing world, I don’t know if our relationship is typical of most writers and agents, so please be prepared to accept this with a grain of salt.

In the spring of 2006, I finished Something Missing, and with my school year coming to a close, I made it my goal to find an agent before the end of my summer vacation.

I began online, researching the process by which writers find agents, and initially, I was discouraged. Based upon my findings, it seemed as if many writers got their start by knowing someone in the industry. A professor recommends a talented young writer to an agent. A magazine or newspaper editor sets up a meeting between a staff writer/fledgling novelist and an agent who once worked at the magazine as well.

I had no such contacts. I was living in Connecticut, writing on my dining table, with no friends or colleagues in the literary world. I knew that finding an agent wasn’t going to be easy.

And so I began. I spent the entire month of July reading through The Writer’s Market, circling the names of prospective agents, researching their agencies online, and writing and sending query letters. Almost one hundred in all.

My goal was to target my search to those agents who were most likely to like my manuscript, and this plan paid off enormously. What I have learned is that any old agent won’t do. You must find an agent who loves your work at least as much as you do, if not more. I have been asked for the name of my agent by would-be writers more than once in hopes that a name might be enough to for them to find an agent, but each time, I have refused.

I refuse for a couple of reasons. First, and foremost, I wouldn’t want Taryn to hate me. Passing on her name to others simply wouldn’t be very nice, nor do I think it would be professional. But I also believe that the name of a literary agent is meaningless. Taryn is the right agent for me, but she is not necessarily the right agent for everyone. Or even for most. And I think she would agree.

At their core, literary agents are people who like books. But like all people, they each have particular preferences and tastes. Taryn loved my manuscript, and as a result, she decided to work with me, much the same way an actor might choose a movie or a musician might choose a song. She had to love the material to make it work.

I sometimes think Taryn loves my book more than I do. This is a very good thing.

So when choosing agents to whom I would send my query letters, I targeted those whose taste best matched my work. The Writer’s Market, as well as the agency websites, can be enormously helpful in this regard.

Taryn works for the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, which, according to Writer’s Market, accepted unsolicited submissions at that time. After identifying this agency as a possibility, I went online to read about each individual agent. There were several from which to choose.

I started by eliminating the agency’s founder, Sandra Dijkstra. I thought that since I was new to the publishing world, I might have a better chance and be better served by someone less established. Sandra Dijkstra’s biography is impressive. Too impressive, I thought, for a little guy like me.

I settled on Taryn after reading that in her bio that “In a fiction project, Taryn is drawn to highly original concepts and voices; she likes an element of the unexpected.” While I wasn’t sure how to characterize my book or writing style yet, I thought that my main character, Martin, and the means by which he engaged in his profession (thievery of an unusual sort) was an original concept. And while I’m not sure if I would describe the novel as a suspense story, it certainly contains elements of the unexpected throughout.

I was also intrigued by the word quirky. Taryn’s bio indicates that she is drawn to quirky nonfiction topics, and while my novel is fiction, it had been described by some of my early readers as amusing and quirky, and the elements of nonfiction that it contains might meet this description as well.

So I wrote to Taryn, and about eighty other agents, and once my query letter was out, I waited. Two weeks later the responses began rolling in.

Of the eighty or so letters that I sent out, about seventy of the agents responded to me, usually in a form letter or postcard, but some with personal letters as well. In all, I received ten responses that contained some kind of personal remark, whether it was a hand written addendum to a form letter or a two page letter directly specifically to me. Sixty-seven of those responses were rejections of one sort or another, sometimes with offers to resubmit once the manuscript had undergone revisions, but most were flat-out rejection nos. Three agents, including Taryn, showed genuine interest in the manuscript, and it was during this courting process that Taryn wrote to me and later called.

I knew immediately that Taryn was the right fit for me. And on the last day of a difficult summer vacation (a long story), Taryn called, informing me that she and her agency would like to represent me.

I couldn’t have been happier. She was enthusiastic, honest, full of ideas for revision, and most importantly, she got me. Understood me as a writer. Appreciated my work. I spent three years at Trinity College in a Creative Writing program and many more hours in writing classes and workshops at various colleges, museums, and other locales, and no one has been more effective at helping me edit and revise than Taryn has, despite the fact that we have yet to meet face to face.

And this surprised me as well. After selling to book to Doubleday, I was contacted by my editor, Melissa Danaczko, who has also been nothing but the best for me and the book. Her first message to me, which I still have on my answering machine, informed me that she anticipated a “light edit” of the manuscript. Light edit, I can assure you, only because of the months of work that Taryn and I spent in getting it ready for sale. I never realized how important an agent can be in the revision process. I was under the impression that an agent simply takes your book and attempts to sell it to a publisher as is.

Thankfully this has not been the case.

For more than five months after signing on with Taryn, she and I worked on editing and revising the manuscript together in order to prepare it for sale. This began with long conversations over the phone regarding her thoughts on the book, followed by dozens of emails back and forth as the process continued. Even today, as I begin to get close to finishing my second book, Taryn is with me, reading the first draft and making many excellent suggestions.

I know the search for an agent isn’t easy, and for many, the process can take considerably longer than it did for me, but I urge you to continue your search and seek out the right person for the job.

Someone who will be a fan of your work.

It can truly make all the difference in the world.

Inappropriate language

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This evening, I attempted to open an Amazon Connect account, which would allow me to link this blog to the Amazon page where SOMETHING MISSING will be sold. It sounds like a great program. Not only will it link to the blog, but it will list my last three posts right on the Amazon page.

Step 2 of the registration process asks me to choose a name. Naturally, I typed my own name, Matthew Dicks, into the field.

After clicking Continue, I received this message:

ERROR: Your name cannot include inappropriate language.

I called Amazon to resolve the problem, and Kevin, the customer service representative, danced around the issue a bit before saying, “It may be your last name that’s causing the problem sir, as sophomoric as that may sound.”

You think, Kevin?

Long ago, I accepted the reality of my last name, and on the bright side, it certainly toughened me up. But when it costs me time and energy, as it has here, it’s still damn frustrating.

Amusing, too.

Character first

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Penelope Pudding (a genius pseudonym) writes:

Do your books evolve as you write them, or do you know how they will end in advance?

Interesting question. As you probably know, every author is different. Perhaps the story behind my Something Missing will answer this for you.

The idea for Something Missing began on a November evening in 2004. My wife and I were having dinner with close friends, Charles and Justine. During the course of the meal, Justine told us that she had lost an earring earlier that day and was hoping to find it when they returned home. I asked Justine how she knew that the earring had been misplaced. “Perhaps some clever thief came to your house and stole just one earring, so that you wouldn’t suspect theft.” This idea lodged itself in my mind throughout the evening, and when I arrived home later that night, I jotted down the idea on my ever-growing list of possible story ideas.

Fast forward three months later to February of 2005. My wife and I are in Boca Raton, Florida to spend a week with her grandmother. After a day without Internet access or cable television service and a dearth of decent reading material, I found myself in a desperate search of something to keep me busy. With my idea of a thief who steals items that go unnoticed still rolling around in my mind, I decided to give the story a try. I wasn’t sure if it would be a short story or something longer, but by the time the trip was done, the first three chapters of the novel were complete and I was well on my way.

When I began the book, I had no idea where the story might take me. I’ve since learned to embrace the unknown and allow the story to come to me. Stephen King calls this “unearthing the fossil,” though I wouldn’t hear this expression until the book was nearly finished. A few years ago this would have sounded like nonsense to me, but now I believe it. There were many moments in the writing of Something Missing that I literally did not know what would happen next until I wrote it. In fact, as I closed in on the end of the book, I still didn’t know what my main character’s ultimate fate would be. I was writing the chapter in which much of the plot would be resolved when my wife called.

“I can’t talk. I’m about to find out what happens to Martin.”

“Really,” she said. “What happens?”

“I don’t know! I’m still writing it!”

If you are reading this chapter someday, remember that I experienced it just like you are: one word at a time.

Though many authors know exactly where their stories will ultimately go, I do not, and I’ve learned to trust this instinct. I start with character. I find a person who interests me, and then, in a vomit-provoking, disgustingly spiritual, earthy-crunchy way, I assume that the plot is already written in the character’s fate.

Once I’ve found the character, his or her fate is sealed. I just have to unearth it.

This philosophy seems to be working well in the book I am writing now as well. My main character, Milo, actually began his existence as a funeral home director, but after wrestling with him for three chapters, I finally put that book aside and planted Milo into the story in which he belonged. A story that’s still revealing itself to me.

Weird, huh?

But it’s true. I’d been trying to start a novel for more than five years before beginning Something Missing, but each time, I thought that I needed to plan the story from beginning to end before starting to write. While many writers work this way, I have found that I am better off beginning with a glimmer of an idea and discovering the rest along the way. I leave the story to fate, and things have seemed to work out so far.

I like to tell this story because I worry that too many writers sit around, waiting for their one great idea to emerge, when that idea might already exist, waiting to be unearthed.

So if you’re waiting for the next great novel idea to reveal itself to you, why not pick up a pen and starting writing while you wait?

Unexpected

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An acquaintance of mine met with her divorce attorney today to begin the sad proceedings that will bring her marriage to an end.  Included in the informational packet that she received was an article entitled Two Divorces Too Many, which was written by me. 

About five years ago, I published the article as an OP-Ed in the Hartford Courant, and it was picked up by the Washington Post-LA Times wire service and published in newspapers and magazines around the country.  You can still find it online today, in many newspaper archives and on the websites of some parenting and family magazines. 

The piece really got around. 

So much so, in fact, that this attorney has apparently made it part of the material that he distributes to clients.  And by a stroke of luck, I found out.

Luck, I say, because one never knows how his or her words will be used once they are sent out in the world.  Believe me.  I know this first hand. 

So to discover that a divorce attorney is distributing my piece in hopes that it might provide his clients with some perspective on a difficult situation warms my heart.   

So it begins...

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Greetings! Welcome to my little corner of the world.

My name is Matthew Dicks. I am a writer.

In the spring of 2008, under the guidance of my remarkable agent, Taryn Fagerness, I sold my first novel, Something Missing, to Broadway Books, an imprint of Doubleday, and thus made one of my childhood dreams come true.

Slated for publication in July of 2009, I thought that a blog like this would be a good opportunity to connect with readers and writers, in order to discuss the writing process, the publishing process, my experience in the world of literary agents and editors, and answer any questions that people may have about the book, my life as a reader and a writer, my latest projects, and anything else that my come to mind.

I’m currently working on my second novel as well as finishing the final editing and proofreading of Something Missing. In addition to fiction, I write poetry, essays and opinion pieces and have published in major newspapers and journals throughout the United States.

If you have a question or would like me to write on a specific topic, please feel free to email me or leave a comment in any of the coming posts.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts, my experiences, and my ideas with you!