Because this needs further commentary

[I wrote this months ago, but only saved it as a draft until now...]

Hopefully you've read the previous post (click here), otherwise this might not make a whole lot of sense.

That's the excerpt you send out? Seriously? Brandy is not the main character. Trevor is not the main character. That fight has little to do with the story. If I read that excerpt, I would assume you are a poor man's Candace Bushnell. I would also assume the rest of the story to be about an engaged couple working through some issues—not a "tender, sensitive" tale of two sisters learning to say good-bye to their mother or learning to embrace their new lives as caretakers. In fact, it sounds like Angela is supposed to be a therapist, not a wedding coordinator.

When Brandy and Trevor appeared for their next regularly scheduled appointment with Angela, no one said a thing about the way their last visit to Angela’s office had ended.

And then we launch into dialogue...

“We’re ready,” Brandy said.

“Speak for yourself,” said Trevor.

“Is the carriage all set?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did they say who the driver will be?”

“I think the name they gave me was Marcia Somebody. Do you mind having a female driver?”

“She minds not having Jason show up at the church.”

“Stop it, Trevor.”

Wait. Who's talking?

“There she was, for everyone to see, with her nipples aimed like two happy astronauts—straight at the moon.”

Brandy roared with delight at that comment. “Two happy astronauts! That’s just so Trevor!”

Trevor likes weird analogies?

Trevor sat back in his chair, fixed his eyes on Brandy. “I’ll get even. You wait.”

“I told you, there’s nothing to get even for.”

“My pals are bringing in a stripper straight from D.C. And you know about the women there. I hear she can do more with two little grapes and a pair of high heels to make a man happy than twenty women in string bikinis.”

“She’s allowed to strip, but nothing else,” said Brandy.

“We’ll see.”

“Those are my rules. No touching.”

“What you don’t know, I don’t need to tell. Those are my rules.”

Brandy leaned toward him, almost chin to chin. “No touching her, Trevor.” 

I have to admit, this is a better fight than any other than appears in the book. Because it uses words. And they sound like real people. Not people I care to read more about, but still. I have to come back to "fights" another time.

“I can’t promise anything right now,” Trevor warned Brandy.

“Then consider us divorced.”

“We’re not even married!”

Brandy grabbed her purse from the floor, turned toward the office door. 

And . . . scene.

What? That's it? You have her just turn toward the door and I'm supposed to call you up and ask for the rest of the book? Sorry. Not even for the $5 digital version.

The End is Nigh

Sadly, you plan to come to visit and take back your copy of The Worst Novel Ever. I haven't made the time to relocate my list of things to say about your novel on this blog, but even if I did have it right here next to me right now there isn't much reason anymore to explain to you what all my notes mean. You've moved on. You are looking for other ways to make money off your writing. Before I lose this copy, though, let me at least explain what all these pink Post-It tabs mean (if I can remember).

Tab 1: I have no idea what this one is marking. It's on a page where Angela's narrator voice is bitching about a card she found wherein Miss Nevada congratulates Angela's husband on his marriage but also regrets not being his wife. This sounds good. It isn't. The flames of rage that Angela supposedly feels are only lukewarm to the reader.

Tab 2: "Angela practically choked on her own saliva." For real? That sentence just about sums up how ridiculous the scene is. Angela is still narrating. She has moved in with Bev and invited her son Josh to dinner at the house. Bev's daughter pushes Josh to tell his mom what's on his mind. He says, "She's talking about . . . how we're so fucked up."Angela then "practically" chokes on "her own saliva" because she is so shocked to hear her son use the "f-word." Supposing that this were satire, the next two paragraphs would be perfect.

"Well . . . well . . .," Angela said, unable to keep the needle moving across her brain.

When the doorbell interrupted in jolly fashion a minute later, Madison leaped to her feet, hurrying to see who might be there. Angela, meanwhile, silently fondled her silverware, turning over her knife, her spoon, her fork, then starting with the knife again. She could hear Bev speaking to Josh, but she didn't pay attention to their conversation. For all she knew, they were discussing how Josh really should have run away from home long ago, before he reached this point where he found it so necessary to speak the kind of words Angela had always hoped she would never hear from him.

Absolutely brilliant if this were about a woman who learns what's really important in life—or at least demonstrates it to the readers. But this is not that story.

Tab 3: The first page of the chapter "Love Potions" is flagged. All of a sudden this novel about a woman who irrationally decides to abandon her son and husband takes a bizarre turn into romantic comedy territory when Angela interferes with Bev's love potion ceremony. Again, for real? The woman who is the full-time care giver for her ailing mother has time to brew up crazy potions that really work? It feels even more like Mama, the vegetable, must be pushing 100 and Bev has been doing this for decades rather than days. Then the potion actually works and "Tree Man" starts to throw himself at Angela. And I want to vomit.

Tab 4: Angela recounts her wedding day in the narrator's stream of consciousness. Apparently she finds the energy to deal with all the insanity of brides because she wishes she had had some guidance back when she was getting married. But it all comes off as the novelist recounting her own simple wedding and looking down her nose at people who place too much importance on picking out flowers and purchasing a veil. After three pages of this trip down memory lane, I wonder why Angela wants to be a wedding coordinator when she obviously hates weddings so much.


Tab 5: This seems to be the first of many tabs flagging the extreme violence in this novel. In this particular case, Angela debates how to stop Brandy and Trevor, her "nearly-weds," from killing each other and demolishing her office furniture shortly before the two have passionate make-up sex in front of her. At this point, we're on page 182—about a third of the way through the story—and the way the violence is written sounds out of place, out of character, and rather alarming. But it's really nothing compared to what's coming farther down the road.

Tab 6: A hundred pages later, we're now at the end of the scene you posted online to entice readers to purchase your novel. Is it a scene about Bev and Angela and Mama and Angela's husband and his possible mistress and Josh, the son we all forget about? No. It's not about any of those people—the family in this family drama. No, this is the scene where Brandy and Trevor fight about Brandy's behavior at her bachelorette party.  It's one of the few scenes in which those two characters appear. See previously published posts for more explanation on why I would flag this.

Tab 7: Bev retaliated, swung at Angela, socked her in the jaw.

"Stop it, Bev! Stop being a whore!"

Page 360. The violence and bizarre factor have escalated to new heights. We are reading this from Angela's point of view, which means we will have to read it again from Bev's point of view. The sisters have already gotten into a crazy, brawling fist fight after picking berries one morning somewhere between pages 182 and 360. And we had to read about it twice. And both times it felt strange. These are white women in a supposedly upscale suburban neighborhood. And they're punching each other? Like full-on no-hesitation punching each other in the face. The writing doesn't hide how physical their fights are, but it also doesn't revel in the pain or blood or aftermath of trading punches. So, I don't get it. You want to tell us exactly where these punches land, but it's also like it never happened. Never mind that I thought white women of the suburbs leave each other patronizing and passive-aggressive notes. They make snide remarks. One "forgets" to meet the other for coffee. Shit like that. What are these women doing socking each other in the jaw?

Angela and Bev start their own fight club to try to get their unwelcome aunt to feel so uncomfortable she has to leave the house and abandon the ailing sister she's come to check on. After this particular fight, the aunt packs her bags, calls a cab, and leaves. Angela hugs Bev, and they go on with life like nothing happened. Angela doesn't even need to ice her face. Bev goes on a date.

There is one little nugget in there that gives us some hope that you, the writer, are not completely out of touch with how these sisters might actually behave in the real world: For the longest time Bev stood there staring at Angela, looking like she had plenty on her mind. But then she shrugs her shoulders, tells Angela, "Thank you," and runs off to get ready for her date. And the readers who have made it this far into the book are scratching their heads, wondering if they will have to endure this all a second time from Bev's point of view.

Tab 8: I flagged the first page of the chapter "Pool Party." I clearly remember you being so impressed with the idea of this scorned women sneaking back into her own house to find that her husband has laid out her nightgown on her side of the bed. He sleeps with her nightgown and we are all supposed to be enchanted. I didn't get it back when you originally described it to me, and you said that was because I was too young. As an adult, I think it works even less in the context of the book. But it works for Angela. She is at peace. She drifts off to sleep, spending the whole night in the house where she no longer lives.

The next day Angela becomes a prisoner in this old house of hers, trying not to let the neighbors know she is there and then trying not to let them know she no longer lives there. All the adults from the neighborhood end up in her pool, getting trashed and having a gay old time. One particularly obnoxious character repeatedly snaps plucks her thong bathing suit from between her cheeks. Mostly she is obnoxious because it is so apparent that you wanted us to hate her for being a disgusting bimbo. But I don't really hate her. I hate reading this chapter. I hate that you wrote such a painfully long and ill-conceived chapter.

Tab 9: The last flag is a full-size Post-It. The rest were thin strips I'd cut, but this chapter, "White Trash House," was by far the worst. If Aunt Betty packed her bags and went home on page 360, why am I reading about her again for the first time on page 431. Shoot me. I hate this character. We had plenty of conflict without her, but you're going to make us all read more terribly scripted fights incited by her presence. Meanwhile, we're 60 pages from the end of the entire book and the real problems aren't anywhere near a resolution. You insist on telling this story from two perspectives? Fine. Then at least try to solve some of Angela's problems from the beginning of the book.

Oh my god. I can't even skim this chapter to accurately describe why it is the worst of the worst. But, basically, I have to relive everything that already made me puke earlier in the book. They scream, they fight, they live in some alternate reality. They are completely trashy and don't work to resolve their problems (except to scream and punch each other in the face). Personally, I can't see why Emmett should mend his marriage to Angela or why Mama shouldn't just shrivel up and die from embarrassment. Who would want to know these women?

So, there you go. That's what those Post-It's mean. Soon you'll have your copy back, but it might be another 10 years before you decide to revisit it as a possible money-making venture. By that time I might have located my notes and finished my thesis on why this is the worst novel ever.

All That Violence

Okay, I can't get it out of my head now. I need to write this post about violence that I don't think I ever got around to writing before...

In my previous post, I came to the realization that all this violence is so out of place because these are supposed to be well-to-do white suburban women. They shouldn't be throwing punches. Ever. But that's not really the shocking part. The disturbing part about reading "Bev retaliated, swung at Angela, socked her in the jaw" is how you couldn't write a fight that felt heated, so you resorted to violence. None of the people in any of the fights that take place seem to have any conviction. They are just spewing catchy phrases until someone throws something.

Even though you write the whole story from two perspectives, it's as though you didn't want to look at the screaming matches from each character's point of view. (With the exception of Brandy and Trevor's screaming match. Maybe that's why you use that as your sample? Because it's the only spicy scene where the characters are committed?) In all these fights, we never learn anything and the story doesn't progress. In fact, the sense that we're not going anywhere is exacerbated by the punching and kicking. These people must be so angry (and yet so out of touch with their feelings), so why aren't they DOING something to improve their situations?

I guess, mostly, I'm just disappointed that you took the time to choreograph the fights in your head, playing it over and over in your mind just how the fight would look so you could describe where the punches landed, but you couldn't put yourself emotionally into any the shoes of any of these characters. Did I mention the source material is your own life?

What to Do, What to Do

You know I can't resist trying to help you, but you don't want my honest help. I could put forth my best effort to draft a good synopsis for you, but you will toss it aside and say it's no good. Why? Because you didn't write it. Because you only want me to tell you that what you wrote is the best thing I've ever read and you are a fucking genius. But I can't tell you that.

What I want to tell you is that you need to rewrite this novel. This novel, that novel, the screenplay, all of it. It all needs to be seriously rewritten because no one come up with one draft and have it be perfect. No one. And, as I'm sadly learning, especially not you.

The main problem with you writing a comedy is that you are not funny. In that last chapter I read of Susie Essman's book, I learned two things: 1) I'm not wrong in thinking that the main character of the second worst novel ever lacks the passion we want to feel and the details we want to hear when describing why she wants to be a writer and 2) you're just not innately funny. I think I'm four chapters into Essman's book, and she describes how she started out memorizing comedy albums as a small child. Reading it, I was like, Wow, this is what that stupid paragraph in your novel wishes it were. They are two pages you should read and think about and take to heart when rewriting... Oh. You don't rewrite. Not seriously.

If I could, I would send you the first couple paragraphs of a synopsis—to justify the work I did rereading the second worst novel ever for a third time and to get the ball rolling for you. Then I would explain that this story starts to really blow after page 50. Why? There is so much action for the first 25 pages. It is a good fish-out-of-water story with lots of conflict between the main character, Gretta, and the higher-ups at the corporation where she works. The problems mount and... Gretta quits to become a full time screenwriter. Okay, so now our Man v. Man story has just become a Man v. Himself story. And that's fine and all, I guess, because Gretta is supposed to be on a spiritual journey, but there just isn't a lot of conflict in 300 pages of some write bellyaching that her phone hasn't rung in a month. We don't see her do anything. We're reading her diary entries and all she does is obsess about how this agent or that producer is ignoring her. People she's never even talked to! She says she mails out query letters, but there's never a scene where she's struggling with the wording, a scene where she has to wait in line at the post office, a scene where she scours the writer's market for new agents to approach. She doesn't DO anything for 300 pages. She doesn't even write. I mean, sure, we're reading her diary and after I think 200 pages she mentions that she's decided to start a new script, but we really never see her do any work. She's just bellyaching for 300 pages about petty problems.

Where is the humor? Gretta is trying to harness the power of positive thinking to attract millions of dollars and unparalleled fame into her life. Gretta is based on the most negative person ever. Not Eeyore, but definitely not Pollyanna. When Gretta, who is egotistical and judgmental, says her in-laws are vile, we should get to see what that interaction is really like. If her in-laws are based on your in-laws, then the way the scenes would play out is that the in-laws, who are equal parts amused and concerned, would question the sanity of quitting a well-paying job to sell a screenplay. They would innocently ask, "And you're sure this will work?" And Gretta would start foaming at the mouth, working herself into a tizzy about how this is the greatest screenplay ever and so-and-so is going to kill to be a part of it. And the in-laws would laugh. And Gretta would get upset that no one is taking her seriously and cheering her on. As you write it, we don't see any of the actual interactions. Gretta recounts asking her husband why he told his family anything about her writing. Yawn. There is nothing interesting in that conversation. And we don't believe Gretta that her in-laws are vile. And no one can question why, if she were able to succeed in attracting anything in the world, would she choose to be rich rather than cure cancer or save the environment?

The second worst novel ever should be at least a satire about how idiotic The Secret phenomenon was. But it's not even a humorous account of your life.

I have no idea how to tell you that...

Tooting My Own Horn

"I think it's incredibly unclear in your synopsis that this is the story of woman who really, really wants to be a make millions of dollars as a writer, so she quits her job, burns through her 401k, compares her work to everything already in theaters, irrationally hates her parents and in-laws, hates children, is wildly envious of everyone else with whom she crosses paths, tries to convert everybody she meets into a positive thinker, suddenly decides she wants to have a baby, and sells her screenplay to a big-time director who knows someone who works with her at TGI Fridays."

My posts can be long. If you never read anything on this blog, read the above sentence. For how little thought I put into these posts, I've impressed myself with the accuracy of summarizing the second worst novel ever (and consequently the author's life).

Oh wait. You know what I missed? That our "everyone be happy" lady is super negative.

Turns Out I Was Wrong

So, my synopsis was a terrible synopsis. It was the classic "writer mistakenly attempts to draft the text for the back cover that only a real copy writer handle as opposed to writing the requested synopsis." But at least my piece had heart. I was right about that part. Your synopsis, dear author, lacks emotion. Whoever is reading the unsolicited materials you send will want to feel attached to your characters. If I am reading your synopsis (or your query letter or your... novel) I want to CARE about your characters. I don't care that this is supposedly your first novel. (A statement which by the way makes me judge every word after more harshly.)

Anyway, I only now know for sure that my synopsis was not a synopsis because you emailed me again. (Subject line: MORE SYNOPSIS STUFF)

Hi

I'm still confused.  Do you think I should use the synopsis you wrote instead of using my own new one?  Are you saying my new synopsis isn't good enough yet?  I really need to know.

Today I got a rejection letter for my other novel. This is the only agent that actually asked to read my other novel.  I was very disappointed they said they don't want to represent it.  I had high hopes.

Getting published ain't easy.  Don't let anyone tell you it is.

Tell me what to do,

[Author]

First, gee, after all the success you've had in the past 30 years, I tell everyone I meet, "Being a writer is Eeeeeee-Z!"

Second, omg google "what makes a good synopsis." Don't use quotes. Don't use a question mark. You'll find countless resources. In my three minutes of research, the first site I found referenced a romance writer who then linked to "successful" synopses. Amazing link. I only read half of the first sample and then skipped to the end—but that's how good it was. Too steamy for a quick email session with my infant son two feet away. Go here: charlottedillon.com

Third, enough with the drama. First you're screaming in your subject line and then you're all "Tell me what to do." I'm giving you an opinion (a watered down, sugar-coated opinion) about your synopsis, not instructions for how to administer CPR to someone dying on the kitchen floor.

So now what? Read the advice. Take your time. Do it well. And maybe (seriously) you should rewrite your novel. (Or find a new hobby.)

A Brief Summary or General Survey of Something

The other day you sent me an unsolicited synopsis. Two actually. Feeling very much in the "Ugh, I seriously have to read this" frame of mind that I'm sure most normal people have when they go to work and attack the slush pile, I feel I gave your old synopsis and your new synopsis a fair read.

The old synopsis starts, "In her first novel," just like the back cover of your other "first" novel. Then it went on for like 89,000 words and I wanted to cry. It was so boring. And strange. You outline what happens to the main character without ever really mentioning any secondary characters or subplots. I had a vague and jumbled picture of the action in my head—and I've read this entire manuscript twice. Luckily, you tossed out that version (except that you emailed it to me) and wrote a new synopsis.

NEWEST SYNOPSIS

[Second Worst Novel Ever] portrays a year in the life of Greta Nueby. Greta is a woman who believes in positive thinking. She writes out a list of resolutions for the new year, including her desire to drink less. She also intends to become a successful screenwriter.

Each chapter of the book represents another month in the life of Greta and is told in both long and short snippets. She wants to be rich, lose weight, and make her husband happy. She quits her job after encountering many problems with her managers and follows the advice of her guru, Lydia. Lydia is convinced Greta can become successful if only she will do things like create a treasure map, meditate, do some visual imaging and other assorted tricks.

Greta’s pals, Andrew and Samantha, are supporting characters. They have their own problems. Andrew is a gay man who can’t find love. Samantha is determined to get her boyfriend to propose to her. Their problems reflect Greta’s own lack of success.

Greta manages to obtain a producer who promises to turn her screenplay into a movie. It looks like success is on the way. After a long summer of no good news and many troubling diary entries, the producer dumps Greta. Now Greta is forced to find another producer and she begins to lose faith in positive thinking.

She faces numerous money problems and plays various games with her credit. Her marriage isn’t going so well. She begins to feel like failure is all she is capable of. Eventually she meets a director who wants to buy her script. Her story ends happily, though she knows positive thinking isn’t for everyone.

I didn't like this one much better. (Apparently I found it more exciting. Or at least that's what I say in the email to you.) I found it less boring and something akin to a school assignment. Again, I didn't feel like you really grasped the story—and this is YOUR story. Shouldn't there be more energy? Don't you want me to be salivating, wondering where those first 50 pages are? I should at least be able to tell that this is a comedy, right?

So, I took the liberty of rewriting your synopsis:

[Second Worst Novel Ever] portrays a year in the life of Greta Neuby, a writer who just wants to be happy. Though she’s never been much of a New Age disciple, Greta uses the advice she gleans from her hairdresser and quits her well-paying corporate job to begin a comical journey of following her True Intention.

While her husband is less than thrilled that Greta will now be thinking positive thoughts full-time to "attract" money, Greta couldn’t be happier. At first. As the months go by and the money begins to run low, Greta finds it harder and harder to believe she can become the successful screenwriter she’s always wanted to be.

When Greta can’t find support at home or in Hollywood, she tries to turn her nay-saying best friends, Samantha and Andrew, into believers. Greta is infectious with her tales of mini-successes and wild antics. Soon everyone is buying expensive new cars and taking chances in romance. But how long can it last?

As Greta begins to run out of tricks to pull with her credit to keep her marriage afloat, she also begins to run out of faith. Does the Universe really want her to be a writer?

I was pretty sure you wouldn't be crazy about the "Does the Universe really want her to be a writer" part because Greta is supposed to be you (minus the whole helpful daughter), but that wasn't your problem.

Hi

The ending you wrote doesn't really tell the ending of the story.  From what I understand, it's important to tell the agent what the ending is.  Here is my new ending, with a slight change.

She faces numerous money problems and plays various games with her credit. Her marriage isn’t going so well. She begins to feel like failure is all she is capable of. Eventually she meets a director who wants to buy her script. Her story ends happily, though she knows positive thinking is positively impossible for all but those with childlike dreams.

Tell me what you think...

Oh, no. You don't think "positive thinking is positively impossible" is really witty, do you? And what are you trying to say about your main character? (Do you have "childlike dreams"?) Who cares if the ending is disclosed—none of what you wrote accurately explains this novel. I think it's incredibly unclear in your synopsis that this is the story of woman who really, really wants to be a make millions of dollars as a writer, so she quits her job, burns through her 401k, compares her work to everything already in theaters, irrationally hates her parents and in-laws, hates children, is wildly envious of everyone else with whom she crosses paths, tries to convert everybody she meets into a positive thinker, suddenly decides she wants to have a baby, and sells her screenplay to a big-time director who knows someone who works with her at TGI Fridays.

You still don't realize I've read this manuscript twice, do you. Yeah, twice. When you first started writing this book, my best friend said there was no way you could do it. And it was true. But the first time I read your "memoir," I was too busy trying to match up reality with your account of reality. The second time, not only was it more obvious to me where you had pulled punches or completely missed your mark, but it was also plain that my friend was right: You can't see what's funny about the whole story. Greta is unlikable and nasty, narcissistic and defensive. While we see that she is an unreliable narrator, you don't. The joke suffers. The most miserable woman in the world is trying to be a ray of positive light. She's going to harness the power of spiritual enlightenment to get rich quick.

It pains me that you are giving this to your writers' group to edit. Seriously? You really want to sell this right now, but you're going to hand it out five pages at a time to a bunch of people who have a common hobby? Maybe I'm all wrong, but these are the same people who have you working on a synopsis. And your synopsis sucks. I guess I should be happy you're going to have anyone at all read it before you give up and send it press on Lulu.

Oh My God, Just Give It Up Already

Hello, Author. We need to talk. Seriously. You've sent me the two versions of your synopsis for the latest book you are trying to inflict on the world. And they are terrible. (Yes, I will come back and post separately about the horror of a long, boring synopsis later.) But that's not the real problem. Your biggest problem is that you want an agent, but you've never been published.

For countless years now you've toiled away on screenplays and novels, never giving a care to getting another poem or short story published. You couldn't blog to save your life (or sell your other novel). You haven't even written a letter to the editor in two decades. When was the last time you were published? (Not counting Lulu.) Agents and editors want to work with writers who've been published, just as writers want to work with agents and editors who've actually published books. You could have the greatest synopsis in the world, but these people want nothing to do with you because you have no record of playing nice with others.

So what do you now? It's really kind of late to start working on building up credentials, don't you think? There must be something else you could do with all this money you waste on postage. Surely there's another hobby that interests you?

Publicity (and Sales)

Dear Reader,

I was completely heart broken the other day. The author decided she needed to delete the blogs she had created. They were genius and I had not yet made copies of them. How was I ever going to be able to share them with you? Luckily, after some digging, I found a link to a copy someone else had made. Yeah, it's so good *multiple* strangers took notice. I haven't been here in a long time, but, oh boy, what a post we have today...

The author's plan in self-publishing was to sell so many copies on Lulu that Simon & Schuster would take notice and decide they must buy the rights. Like the author's home phone would ring one day and on the other end someone would say, "This is Mr. Schuster. My good friend Oprah just lent me her copy of your novel. We MUST publish it. How does a bagillion dollars sound?"

Lulu promised world-wide sales (that is how the Information Super Highway works—globally), but this wasn't moving enough copies of the book. In fact, there were no sales whatsoever over the summer. I tried to explain to the author that she needed to create her own fan base. She needed to promote herself. The cheapest way to do that would be to go online and find chat rooms and message boards and befriend people and make some sales. I mean, the topics of her book are divorce and caring for elderly parents. How many forums must there be for those two groups?

She didn't understand, though. First she "played the email game" and then she hijacked her son's Tumblr account. Then she went back to whining to relatives in person.

As it turns out, all this started days before she was supposed to become a grandmother. For those on the up and up, yeah, I was about to give birth for the first time any day and these are the emails she sent me ABOUT HER BOOK SALES...

-- 9/5/09

Hi

I wanted to tell you how I've been trying to sell my book.  What I've been doing is sending out e-mails to addresses I make up on my own.  At first I was just attaching words from the Thesaurus to one of five e-mail companies.  I created over 5,0000 of these messages.  I didn't sell any books.

(I know what you're thinking: It's obvious she spent many years working in legitimate marketing departments.)

I decided to change my plan.  Now I'm sending the e-mails to addresses that begin with a woman/girl's name.  I figure that might mean I'll reach a real female audience. 

I have no idea where my first e-mails went.  I began to wonder, since the addresses were all so strange.  I mean I was sending to places like "artisticgirl@yahoo.com."  Who can say where that e-mail went?

I actually got responses to four of my first e-mails.  Two women sent back an automatic response inviting me to join their sex club.  One woman wrote back and asked me to take her off my list.  The fourth one was the strangest.  Someone wrote back to me and sent me this message:

   没有您的信息,我的生活将乏味；没有您的支持,我的生命缺乏灿烂。谢谢您!

          联系电话

Of course, I don't know Chinese, so I have no idea what this message says.  I assume she also asked me to take her off my list.

So, I've been having fun.  I'm hoping the women's names will get me some buyers.  I don't know how else I can sell this book.

Talk to you soon,

[author]

You can imagine my response here. Something about WHY ARE YOU SPAMMING PEOPLE?

-- 9/6/09

Hi

I have a special web site set up for my e-mail game.  It's not my [real] account.

Why would the site stop working?

One thing I didn't tell you about my e-mail adventure is that when I sent those messages to 5,0000 people or so, I used a subject line that said, "Oprah Winfrey refused to help me."  Then in the letter, I explained that Oprah wouldn't read my book.  When I decided to start with the woman's names instead of thesaurus words, I changed the subject line.  I thought the people who like Oprah might be offended by my subject line. I also thought a lot of people might think that note was a scam.  My new subject line is "Message about love and marriage."  Do you think that's any better?  Do you have any suggestions for a subject line?

I hope you're feeling great.

love,

[author]

Did Oprah have any idea how many unsolicited, unpublished manuscripts she and Harpo would receive after she created a book club? The author knows Oprah isn't a publisher, but she decided to send Oprah and her producers separate copies of the manuscript. Only the producers responded with a form letter stating that they do not look at such material. Needless to say, the author took this personally.

-- 9/8/09

Hi

I've come up with a new idea. First though I think I should say I think you're right.  When people see a note from a stranger, they probably just delete it.  My subject line may do no good at all.

My new idea is to add an excerpt from my novel to my letter.  A guy who came to our writing group and tried to tell us how to land an agent suggested an excerpt is a great way to sell a book.  It lets people get an idea of what kind of story you're writing.

The email then launches into the excerpt. There is no closing. You, dear reader, will get to see the excerpt later in this post. For now, though, I will say I had to write the author to warn her that the use of "nipple" and other such words probably landed all of her brilliant marketing straight in spam and trash folders. I again suggested she create a blog and work on developing an internet personality for herself. Two days later I give birth.

-- 9/17/09

Hi

Thanks for sending the baby pictures.  I hope you'll keep them coming.  He looks adorable.  What a cutey!  I like the one where he's scrunching up his nose.

I'm writing to tell you my woes with the e-mail business.  I signed up on Tumblr like you suggested.  I don't think it will do me any good. Even though several people signed up to follow me after I signed up to follow a couple hundred, only one wrote to me to say he was interested in my book.  So I don't think I will make many sales through Tumblr.

Having no help from Tumblr made me decide to go back to my own e-mail address business.  I sent myself a note with the excerpt you saw to see if Yahoo dumped it into my spam folder.  When I checked my spam folder because it didn't show up in my ordinary mailbox, I was astounded.  I discovered that Yahoo has been sending a ton of "mail failure" letters to my spam box. I have received thousands of rejections in the spam box.  So this means thousands of my e-mails never went to the destinations I typed.

I figure I may be lucky if 20 of the 300 e-mails I send out with each round make it to a real person.  Nevertheless, I plan to keep trying the name game with the e-mails.  That's because when I went to my Lulu site, it said I had over a thousand hits on my book site.  Those people must have come from the e-mails I'm sending out.

I don't know if I've sold any books.  I don't want to look for another month or so.

I am having all kinds of problems with Yahoo.  It gets upset with me for sending out so many e-mails.  It sends me a message that forces me to type in a code before it will tell me if it sent my e-mails.  This slows things down in a big way. 

Sometimes Yahoo does other things, too.  It's very temperamental.  Today it refused to accept the code when I typed it in.  It kept giving me the same error message over and over again, while it demanded I type in a new code.  Obviously, I couldn't send out any e-mails this afternoon.

I've decided to stay away from Yahoo and the e-mail game for the next 36 hours.  I'm going to give Yahoo a chance to cool down and miss me.

Nothing else is new.

love,

[author]

This is getting good, right?

-- 10/2/09

Hi

I am totally bummed out. When I went to check my book on Lulu, it said I had over a thousand  hits.  I figured that meant over a thousand people looked at my book.  I was expecting a lot of them to buy it.

Today I went to check my revenue. I  haven't sold any books since a couple family members bought them last month.  I have only sold a total of 4 books. 

This is bad news.  It appears I am not selling any copies by sending out my e-mails each day. I was sure I was selling something more.  I'm so bummed.

Nothing else new.

love,

[author]

So by this point we give up trying to talk to each other about selling the book. She is determined to use the Girl Scouts' door-to-door method as a model rather than Dooce or other bloggers who sell books. I think she's completely forgotten about her blogs because if she has decided to no longer care about her novel, then obviously all of her blogs have also disappeared.

When I pointed out what I thought was a hilarious testimonial page for a screenwriting teacher, the author suddenly became very concerned about her abandoned blogs. The screenwriting teacher's site quotes the author's very sarcastic feedback about how brilliant he is, but she cannot remember ever taking this man's class. Therefore he must have stolen the comment. What to do, what to do. She began searching for all her blogs.


Now, here for your pleasure is the amazing copy from the author's blogs (all of them because they all used the same text). Behold and wonder how she is not a part of Oprah's Book Club selections...


(I swear to God I didn't change a word of this.)

Hello everyone,

I am a writer. As a writer, I just published my first book on the Lulu publishing site. The title of my book is [title of my book in all caps].

Now I’m a writer who is trying to figure out how to sell my book. I’m afraid Lulu won’t be much help with this. They say they market it worldwide, but I’m not sure how they do that. Readers can download a copy this writer made at Lulu for only $5. If you want to have me e-mail you the first chapter, you can reach me at [email address]@yahoo.com

I am a writer who can give you the synopsis of the book here:

In this first novel, [author] tells a tender, sensitive tale about a dysfunctional family facing a variety of problems. The biggest problem involves the main characters, sisters Angela and Bev. They are taking care of their elderly, bedridden mother. Angela wants Mama moved to a nursing center. Bev wants her to stay at home where she can care for Mama and pursue a passion for positive thinking. The sisters fight about this problem all the time. Set in the posh town of La Greer Park, Angela works as a wedding coordinator. She has problems with her own marriage, since she suspects her husband has cheated and this is what makes her move in with Mama and Bev. Add to this relationships with teenaged children that don’t always please Angela. It’s a novel that will be relished by anyone taking care of an elderly parent, as well as anyone facing divorce. It’s a timely novel with many twists and turns that force a person to think long and hard about the value of marriage and family. This story is told with a unique voice that will be remembered well after the final page is reached. It’s a story that will teach a valuable lesson about love and what we all need to know to be successful at it.

I can also give you an excerpt here:

When Brandy and Trevor appeared for their next regularly scheduled appointment with Angela, no one said a thing about the way their last visit to Angela’s office had ended. Instead, Angela greeted them with a more cheerful reminder that their big day happened to be less than two weeks away.

“We’re ready,” Brandy said.

“Speak for yourself,” said Trevor.

“Is the carriage all set?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did they say who the driver will be?”

“I think the name they gave me was Marcia Somebody. Do you mind having a female driver?”

“She minds not having Jason show up at the church.”

“Stop it, Trevor.”

“Why? It’s true. Tell her about your bachelor party.”

“It wasn’t a bachelor party.”

“What would you call it?”

“I’m a girl. Remember? It’s called a bachelorette party.”

“Whatever. The point is I’ll have to get even now. Okay?”

“There’s nothing to get even for.”

“My ass.” He sat forward, braced his hands against the edge of Angela’s desk. “Did you happen to hear what Brandy and her little friends did at this party?”

Angela shook her head, almost too afraid to ask what might have happened. She’d actually seen two weddings bite the dust due to the shenanigans at such supposedly innocent gatherings.

It wasn’t easy explaining to two hundred wedding guests that you’d decided you couldn’t marry a man who enjoyed licking lime Jello off the flesh of a naked woman he’d known less than an hour. Not easy at all. Especially when those guests included your own great-grandparents and two aunts who were the oldest nuns in the city of Milwaukee.

“Brandy and the girls got royally soaked.”

“Like you’ve never been drunk,” Brandy said, as she examined the new paint job on her nails.

“Yeah. Brandy and all her little girlfriends went for a ride. Down Main Street.”

“I wasn’t driving though. We had a designated driver. And all she drank was one glass of wine.”

“They took off their shirts.”

Angela glanced at Brandy, saw her bite her lip to keep her evil little smile from spreading across her perfectly powdered puss.

According to Trevor’s miserable story, which he first heard from his cousin, who happened to be one of the bridesmaids who attended the gathering, taking their shirts off did not mean these girls were riding through town in their Victoria’s Secret’s finest. It meant they were fully exposed. Naked to the night air, arms spread wide, available for inspection.

“There she was, for everyone to see, with her nipples aimed like two happy astronauts—straight at the moon.”

Brandy roared with delight at that comment. “Two happy astronauts! That’s just so Trevor!”

Trevor continued. “And she’s sitting up in this big old convertible, yelling to one and all,‘I’m getting married. Take a look while you can!’”

“I was only kidding,” Brandy said. “Just having some fun. And it only lasted a couple moments, then we put our shirts back on.”

“Yeah. But you took yours off again real soon.”

“Not for very long.”

“Long enough to give Jason the wrong idea.”

Angela gasped. This seemed to get worse by the moment. She’d never heard of a bride inching the envelope quite so far.

“He looked, but he didn’t touch,” Brandy told Trevor.

Trevor sat back in his chair, fixed his eyes on Brandy. “I’ll get even. You wait.”

“I told you, there’s nothing to get even for.”

“My pals are bringing in a stripper straight from D.C. And you know about the women there. I hear she can do more with two little grapes and a pair of high heels to make a man happy than twenty women in string bikinis.”

“She’s allowed to strip, but nothing else,” said Brandy.

“We’ll see.”

“Those are my rules. No touching.”

“What you don’t know, I don’t need to tell. Those are my rules.”

Brandy leaned toward him, almost chin to chin. “No touching her, Trevor.”

“If I’m drunk, I can’t be held responsible.”

“No touching!” Brandy repeated, jabbing two fingers into his chest.

Trevor grabbed her hand, squeezed her fingers till they turned red. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

She yanked her hand free of his, got to her feet, smoothed down the wrinkled, white mini skirt that had become twisted about her thighs. “If you can’t promise no touching, we’re through.”

“Now, Brandy,” Angela tried to interject, but Brandy wasn’t listening.

“I can’t promise anything right now,” Trevor warned Brandy.

“Then consider us divorced.”

“We’re not even married!”

Brandy grabbed her purse from the floor, turned toward the office door.

I am a writer who hopes you like it and might want to buy a copy. I would appreciate any advice on how to sell it.

writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer writer

Wedding Coordinators and Other Employment Opportunities

You can all breathe a sigh of relief. I found my copy of the novel. Meanwhile, though, I could have been writing about how I started watching shows like Whose Wedding is it Anyway? and Wedded to Perfection to try to learn just how much the author missed as it's pretty obvious she has no idea what Angela should be doing as a wedding coordinator. The author is not a wedding coordinator and did not befriend any wedding coordinators. However, as I type this, I'm realizing she missed the mark with the unemployed sister, too—and the author has been unemployed.

That's not very fair to Bev. She's not unemployed. She's supposed to be taking care of Mama. That's her full time job. Who pays her to do that is very unclear. There are mentions of asking the church for help and how little money they have, but the book doesn't say anything about how the utility bills get paid, the hospital bills, the mortgage... Money simply isn't a concern. But even if I could tell you how the groceries get paid for, I have no idea when those groceries are purchased. It's really unclear how the house isn't falling apart. Bev has plenty of time to make love potions and read tarot cards. She's never faced with a stack of dirty dishes or a floor that needs to be swept or a school project that needs her attention. The weight of the world is not on her shoulders. Bev can go hang out in the garden and take a break from massaging Mama's feet or brushing her hair. Feeding Mama seems to be the only real thing on her to-do list and it always gets done without a problem. It never strikes her just how immensely sad and frustrating it is that she's spooning mash into her mother's limp mouth. She feeds Mama, she brushes her hair, she changes a diaper, she moves on. Her mother's dirty diapers never send her over the edge. She never lashes out at someone who hasn't provoked her because really she's upset that her mother is in diapers and can't talk to her anymore.

Enough about Bev and her lack of problems, though. This was supposed to be an entry about wedding coordinators. I went to Tumblr to start a new blog where I would spend 20 minutes every day writing a novel about a wedding coordinator whose mother has a stroke. But even before I started to do "research," I felt this was just too impossible. The coordinator would be faced at some point with having to give up her clients in order to help her mother.

Angela is supposed to be highly in demand. However, she never seems to be attending to any brides. Her phone never rings. She never has anything she needs to be doing—no linens to look at, no florists to visit, no cakes to taste test. The story is set during the summer. Wedding season. And yet there is nothing to do. I don't think Angela has to love her job—it might be more interesting if she flat out hated brides—but give us something. She's supposed to be planning the most important day in somebody's life and she approaches it like she's ordering takeout because she just doesn't feel like cooking.

All those episodes only made me want to forget about this story (and its potential counterpart on Tumblr) even more. There is more drama in watching these yahoos on TV pick a color for the napkins than there is in the almost 500 pages I read in this novel. Reconciling the woes of a bride who wants to be just plain tacky on her wedding day with the magnitude of a mother who is now in a vegetative state is too much to be a carefree writing exercise. If I were Angela, I would tell the bride to go frack herself, but that's probably because I'd just be angry I couldn't tend to such trivial things as decor on top of trying to heal my mother. And there you have it. A novel. Man versus himself. What happens when Angela is pushed that far? The wedding TV shows and this novel will never tell us.

Oops

Somehow we've misplaced our copy of the novel, which makes it hard for me to directly quote it. That also makes it hard for me to write any posts about it. Hence, there again has been a huge lapse in updates about this novel.

Meanwhile, the author claims she is going to bring the manuscript to her writer's group. This summer. Maybe the end of August. It's always helpful to start looking for feedback after you've published.

The Dog

The other day it occurred to me that there was possibly a worse minor character than Chita. There was a dog. There was. And then there wasn't.

Emmett, the possibly-cheating husband, runs out of the house, all excited by the presence of Angela, the terrible possibly-main character. He needs her to take the dog (a basset hound? named Claxton?) to the vet. Angela seems to care about the dog as much as she cares about her son. (Hint: Not very much.) She invites the son to dinner. Angela never takes the dog to the vet.

I had thought the dog up and disappeared from the story completely after Emmett makes his request, but, no, there's a mention of the dog being on the fishing trip with the guys when Angela sneaks home later in the book. I know. This is either an amazingly thick plot or a ridiculously awful story.

Chita is by far a more offensive character. In the Chita vs. Claxton smackdown, Chita wins.

The Break in Posts

Dear Reader, I'm sorry there was such a delay between posts. Shortly after I posted my thoughts on Chita, the Gungan in-home nurse, the author told me that she planned to no longer work on selling this novel. In one phone call she's telling me about how she's sending excerpts to publishers (because who needs an agent when there are publishers like Lulu?) and then in the next she's saying that she's done with this story all together.

I was so disappointed. Done? I just finished reading this stupid thing. I just started a blog about it. And now you're calling it quits. You're not even calling it quits because you became aware of how stupid your novel is. You're tapping out because you've only sold five copies in as many months. "It's been on Lulu for a while now" was your logic. Really?

So what are you new plans? To start hocking the second worst novel ever. (Until next week when you tell me that you're going back to creating the world's most mediocre screenplay.)

What are my plans? To start reviewing everything I read. And continue explaining why this—the first piece of trash, the one you actually spent money to publish, the one that is printed and bound by a third party and available for purchase—is the worst novel ever. Even if you never understand that point.

Old Notes

I took to transcribing our phone calls some time ago. You want me to call you no more than twice a month, and these calls last a maximum of ten minutes, so it's really not that much work to get a pad of Post-Its and jot down your half of the conversation. It's caused me to say less and less because I'm busy writing,  but you don't really seem to care. You only want soundbites of "what's new."

The other day you wrote me an email to tell me not to call this Sunday (today) because it is Oscar Sunday and you don't want me to interrupt. I went looking for last year's reaction to the ceremony. I mean, I would swear that for the past eight years you've done nothing but complain about how boring the show is. But I couldn't find notes about the Oscars. I found complaints about the Golden Globes and freelance clients and your "stupid" writers' group. But nothing about the Oscars. I would imagine that your renewed interest in the ceremony has something to do with a renewed interest in screenwriting.

As it turns out, I found a set of notes from a night about a year ago when there was no episode of Brothers and Sisters, when ABC "made" you "suffer" through an extra hour of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. ("What do they care? They don't care.") It had to be at least a year ago, before you'd discovered the wonders of Lulu.com. You told me you were "working" on the novel, but you were "not finding much to change."

You were "not finding much to change."

Perhaps this was a different novel? Oh no. This was The Worst Novel Ever that you were "working" on. Because there was not much to change, you were mostly looking for excerpts to send to agents. You had decided that the scene where "they make LOVE" was the way to go. You said this as though it were the most scandalous way of describing raunchy sex. Make LUHV.

In case I didn't know exactly which scene you were talking about—the scene you had been so impressed with when you wrote it in what? 1992? Long before you were aware of Candace Bushnell and the way a certain Samantha would influence how a generation of women viewed sex and sexuality—a scene you described briefly as "the bride and groom have a fight and then make love in the wedding coordinator's office. That's a good one." Oh my god. As I was typing this, I put "on the wedding coordinator's desk." But even that is too graphic for you. No, no. They make luuhv in a room. They don't fuck on someone's desk. Oh my god. Dear readers, you can only imagine how brilliant of a scene this must be. But [author] was still completely impressed with her handiwork more than ten years later.

Chita, or One Minor Character, One Major Problem

"Mrs. Hauser, I want two weeks pay like always."
The voice belonged to Chita, the home care nurse who'd been watching over Angela's mother the past month. Mama had suffered a massive stroke that spring, and Chita became Doctor Robert's first choice for a nurse. Why she suddenly felt a need to discuss her weekly pay escaped Angela. She gave Chita a check every other Friday for two week's work.
"Of course I'll pay you for two weeks," Angela said. "Why wouldn't I?"
"I'm gone. You don't know this?"
"Gone? What do you mean?"
"You don't be talking to your sister?"
"Not today. No."
"She goned me."
"She what?"
"She goned me. You know. She makes me go."
"You mean, she fired you?"
"What?"
"She took away your job?"
"Yes. I tell you this. She goned me."
Angela could hardly believe she might be hearing correctly. ...

Where on Earth is Chita supposed to be from? I was so distracted by the choice of names that I never noticed until right now that we do know when Mama had her stroke: "that spring." Really?! The woman had her stroke just a few weeks ago? Because they don't act like it at all. With her "long white hair," I would have assumed she had the stroke five years ago. Angela wants to smother her with a pillow after only a few weeks? Bev fires Chita after only a few weeks? These are some crazy impatient women... But back to the ill-conceived Chita.

Is she a Gungan? She cannot possibly be Hispanic. She seems to have a mish-mash of "not Middle America" dialects. Which makes me think that, like Jar Jar Binks, she is a poorly conceived, more-horrifying-than-funny minor character who would cause anyone in her right mind to shut the book and throw it in the trash.

Jar Jar Binks, the goofy character from Episode I of the Star Wars saga, at least comes back to justify the need for him to be so stupid in Episode II. The idiocy of Chita never remotely serves a purpose. Bev could have just as easily fired a home nurse who spoke intelligently. The author could have learned what a "Spanish accent running full throttle" really sounds like. But, mainly, there are other ways to get Angela to show up on Bev's doorstep.

The above excerpt is almost her entire time in the novel—a short blip in a long story—but Chita's appearance is the kind of pothole that will rip off a wheel or a speed bump that will gut your car. The one person who really sounds moronic is the writer.

Gardening

My husband has begun reading the novel. We're not sure if he'll finish. Having started the novel, he felt he could finally come to the blog. And now the blog has gotten it into his head that there is nothing redeeming about the novel. I assured him there is no payoff. He's read 40 pages. That's enough for me. When we all sign the front inside cover of a copy as a memorial to time lost on this novel, he can sign his name.

So there we were yesterday, him reading the blog and me trying to enjoy doing nothing, when it popped into my head: Gardening. Why are BOTH of these women gardening in the story?

You might think this is a trivial complaint, but this is a trivial blog. Bev lives in her mother's house. That is her garden. What is Angela doing meddling with the landscape? Shouldn't this be something they fight about?

There are a myriad of reasons why a woman getting a divorce would be out spending gobs of money at the garden center and toiling away in the backyard, but these reasons do not surface. Again, it's thoughtless writing. You needed Angela to leave the house, so she goes the nursery. But we never see Angela planting the flowers she purchases. We actually don't even see her at the nursery. We just know she spends the entire day there and a young man tries to help her carry the load to her car based on what she says later.

We see Bev in the garden. Is she working out all the frustrations of her life, trying to do something productive or beautiful to counter all the dirty adult diapers and lack of response from Mama? No. Bev just happens to be gardening.

Could it be that both characters are gardening because you were gardening while you wrote this novel? And both characters are you?

That was my husband's first thoughts on the novel. "They're all pieces of her personality. Angela, Bev and Carolyn—they're all [the author]."

"Who's Carolyn?"

My husband seemed dumbfounded by this question. He's 40 pages into the story. He's just read about Carolyn, a.k.a. Miss Nevada. I assure him he will forget her name and the title of the book in another 50 pages.

So you only write what you know, which means that your characters aren't very good caregivers or wedding coordinators or mistresses or teenagers because you are none of those things. You go shopping at nurseries and buy plants, though. So now your characters do, too. Exciting...

We've figured out what the payoff should be: All of the characters are one person. They are all Mama. She is actually in a nursing home already and dreams the whole thing. She has no daughters, no grandchildren. She is just babbling in the corner to that portrait of Jesus. The end. Ta-daaa...

The Front Cover

May 19, 2009

Hi

I'm just writing to let you know I found the actual cover image the people at Lulu created.  I'm attaching it to this note so you can see it.  I think it is very simple but poetic.  I think it works well for the story.  I am happy with it.  I let them know I'm happy, but I asked them to move my name to the bottom of the page and write, "A novel by [author]."   I hope they will do this.  But the cover problem is solved.  Let me know what you think of it.

I was also happy with the back cover.  They printed my synopsis for the novel.  Excellent.

That's all the news.

love,

[author]

First off, for the sake of people everywhere who might be wondering, "Should I pay Lulu to design my book cover?" the answer is NO. If you are a writer, you should not design your cover. (Sure, you might be talented or have a great idea, but my past experience as a Jane-of-all-trades has taught me that doing too many things for one project waters down the final result. You should not be the writer, editor, and designer for the same book unless you plan to give yourself the full amount of time each of those jobs requires.) And while I'd like to think that a publishing company knows better than anyone what is going to sell, this publishing company does not. After all, they will publish ANYTHING. They publish on demand. Do you need a cover designed for your book? Contact me. My 5-month-old son can grasp objects and push buttons. He could design a better cover for less than $80.

May 5, 2009

Today I tried to get my book published on the Lulu publishing site. I'm not sure if I succeeded. They asked me to download the file for my book and I did that. Then they wanted me to download a copy of the book jacket.  I did that, too.  A moment later I was paying $80 to have them custom design my jacket. They say this will help the book sell better than if they use the jacket I came up with.  After that I was tossed to a page that showed my order and I don't know if that means they plan to publish my book or not. There were no other pages after this.  I have no idea what is happening. I guess I won't know for another couple weeks or more. I hope they e-mail me to let me know what is going on.

So obviously, you, the author, have a lot of problems. I didn't even know where to start. We had already talked on the phone about this. You told me about self-publishing websites like they were the new. Next you'll tell me there's this great new site for social networking...

I can see nothing has changed since the phone call. You still have no idea what you are doing. One downloads from and uploads to a website. Are you downloading a template or are you uploading your manuscript and design?

What will an $80 custom-designed book jacket get you? Are they going to read the manuscript? How many rounds of revisions do you get? What sort of input do you have? A library of royalty-free images does not make for a winning design.

You're hoping they will email you to let you know what is going on... They have your credit card number. They're done with you. On to all the other unemployed fools hoping to make a buck peddling their crap on the Lulu marketplace.

On the phone, I would ask you why you didn't contact me about designing the book cover. My husband would be offended you hadn't thought of him—he's been designing even longer than me. But you've known me almost 30 years. Why didn't you think to contact me? "I didn't want to be imposing," you'd say. There's a way to not be imposing and still get a great cover.

All these months later, I now realize you didn't think to ask me to design the cover because you knew I would say I needed to read the manuscript. And then I would know what crap this novel is. Then I'd tell you not to publish it. And then what would you do? So instead you paid Lulu to design the book cover. Then you paid them almost another $300 so you would have the privilege of speaking to someone at the compnay over email.

Oh, wait, wait, wait. The above paragraph implies that you are aware you're dealing with a self-publishing company. You are not. You are under the impression that Lulu is the name of your magical agent who has finally signed you to a big time deal. You can't ask people you know to design the cover because that's not the way this business works. You can't tell your agent you have someone in mind. You just trust your agent and your publisher's judgment. Lulu will take care of you. Lulu promised to promote your book on Amazon. Obviously, Lulu is already lining up those interviews and book signings.

I tried to be nice when I responded to your "I don't know what's going on!" email in May. I wrote:

Lulu only publishes your book when someone has paid for a copy of it. If you paid them to design the cover, approve the design, and upload the rest of the content (who's laying out all the pages inside?), they will publish it after an order is placed.

You did not respond.

A few days after sending you the crappy snapshots I took to serve as your author's photo, you send me the email that starts this entry. You've attached a docx file. I try a dozen different programs, but nothing on this computer will open it. I send it to other people. All we can get is a tiny preview. I'm dying to know if the yellowish-green strip across the top says "PROOF" or if that's really part of the design. I write back...

Hi,

My computer doesn't know what to do with a docx file, so all I can see is the tiny preview. But I'm happy to hear you're pleased with the results of their design.

Love,

[me]

Every few weeks, I search Lulu and Google for your book. I have to see this cover. One day it finally shows up on Lulu:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/offing-miss-nevada/7056098

Really? You paid money for that? Is this close to what you originally designed on their site or wildly different? Because I'm pretty sure any monkey could have typed your name and the title into default settings, made a random selection from the color wheel, and called it a design. What is that? And you paid them! Why can't they put "A Novel by [author]" wherever it is you want them to put it? Isn't this supposed to be custom-designed?

(Listen up, search engines...) You paid Lulu. For a custom cover design. Why isn't your name where you say you want your name to be? No one should ever pay Lulu for a cover design. Ever. If you, the random person who stumbled upon this blog, need a cover designed, contact my husband. If you need an editor, contact me. If you need your cover to look like poop, I have a baby with dirty diapers. I'm serious about all three of those offers. http://madelinestrum.com/contact

Emailing the Author

Is it cowardly to publicly post what I can't tell you to your face? I don't think so. I would love to tell you all of this. To be there to have a drink and let you cry on my shoulder that writing does not come as easily to you as you would like.

But you do not listen. All my life you stressed how important it is to be a good listener, but that's only because you know you are a terrible listener. Maybe if you had been listening earlier in life, you would not be at this point—stubbornly trying to hock the first draft of your first novel.

So here I am, publicly stating what is really very private. Unfair? Perhaps. But I'd like to know I'm not crazy. And the only chance for that is to come here and release all the thoughts taking up real estate in  my head.

To try to be more fair to you, I emailed you after my last post.

Hi,

In the past, you've never welcomed any of my suggestion with great enthusiasm, but I still feel compelled to throw in my two cents on this idea of cutting 10,000 words. I think you could easily cut 250 pages. Pick one sister to be the main character and delete everything from the other sister's point of view.

I'm not sure which aunt of mine told you that the story was too long, but I'm sure she would support the notion that reading everything a second time didn't add much to the story overall.

Yeah, cut half the material and you'll actually end up with twice the story.

Later.

Love,

[me] 

You wrote back after a few days.

Hi

I got both your messages.  I'm not sure what you mean when you say there were complaints in the past.  Complaints from whom?  I didn't get any.

You may be right about the cutting the novel by cutting one sister's story. I'll have to give that a try, but I think it would really spoil the story.  I think cutting it down to 89,000 words is good enough.

Nothing else new.  Stay in touch.

love,

[author]

Ummmmm... Huh?

Hi,

> I'm not sure what you mean when you say there were
> complaints in the past. Complaints from whom?  I didn't get any.

Huh? Now I have no idea what you're referring to.

> You may be right about the cutting the novel by cutting one
> sister's story.

I'm not saying you cut a sister's story. Just pick one to be the narrator's perspective. Then you'll have a whole 200-250 pages to really dig into the problems these characters face.

Later,
[me]

It's been four days. You have not responded. Not even to ask me if I heard about the freak earthquake in your town. You must really not want to hear anymore about suggested changes to your novel. Which is unfortunate. Because I'll just keep publishing them here.

Cutting 10,000 Words

Last night I called to talk to you. Earlier in the week I emailed to ask what I should do with the book now that I've finished reading your novel. But in the phone call, you asked if I had started reading it yet.

You sounded excited. Like here might be one person who was going to tell you she loved it. All week, I had been expecting you to sound annoyed.

So, I said I finished it. You said you must not have gotten that email.

"Did you enjoy the part with preparing for the wedding?"

I haven't discussed that part on this site yet, but you were referring to the subplot of a wedding that Angela is planning for a couple who fights whenever they are in her office. Enjoy? "Not really," I said.

"You're not giving me much hope here for reaching a younger audience," you said.

Ignoring how you didn't asked why I didn't enjoy that part (or the rest of the novel), I instead reminded you that I'm not really the "younger" audience anymore. I'm almost the same age as your main characters and hitting the tail end of the 18-35 demographic. But you don't want to think you're "Mama" now and not "Angela" or "Bev," so you blew off my comment.

"I'm working on cutting 10,000 words," you said. "I'm hoping this gives me a better chance with agents. Your aunt said it was too long. That there's too much dialogue. It reads like a screenplay. And that Bev doesn't sound tired enough."

You rambled. I couldn't even ask which aunt you were talking about. When you stopped to take a breath, I went with the more important question: "What are you sending to agents? The description from the back?"

"A blurb from the back, yeah. My synopsis."

I groaned. Audibly.

"Anything else new?" you asked. You were done talking about your novel. It's obviously not meant for me because I am neither going through a divorce or caring for an elderly parent. Otherwise I would relish it, as the back of your book says.

So now what? Do I let it go? Do I tell you that you really have no hope with the novel in the condition it's currently in? That you're wasting all your time and money? That if you just add the word "tired" a dozen times, it will make Bev only more unlikeable?

Cutting 10,000 words is not the solution. Starting over, picking one main character, and actually dealing with the problems is the way to go.

The Title

I've never liked the title. Doh! If I put it here, you could search and find this blog. And then your bubble might be burst. Argh. How am I supposed to write about how much I dislike this title...?

I've read other stories and seen movies where I completely forget about the title. But this... The title implies that a beauty queen is going to be murdered. That back of the book says nothing about this beauty queen. Or a pageant. Or a murder. What's going on here?

The first main character nicknames her husband's crush "Miss Nevada." No one within the novel gets the joke. (Yeah, seriously.) Once or twice every hundred pages there's a reference to Miss Nevada and we wonder, Who?

This is the title character. Angela wants to kill her—but not really. She's not really plotting her murder because then she would be DOING something. But there it is in the title, regardless. "Offing." Like this is 494 pages of plotting to kill "Miss Nevada," a woman who is not a beauty queen and has no deep ties to the state of Nevada.

"Offing" is such a strange word. How many people actually would look at that title and think this is a story about killing someone? Would most people look at that title and think, What?

I've finished your novel and can assure everyone it has little to do with Miss Nevada or offing her. Angela seethes over the presence of this woman in her life, but 99 percent of the novel is spent following Angela and Bev through a series of ridiculous situations that have nothing to do with their mother's long-term care or Angela's failing marriage.

Like everything else, the title needs work. It rolls around awkwardly on my tongue and sounds a lot like "awful."

Describing the Book (The Back Cover)

I realize by now that if someone were to stumble across this blog, she might think that "Problem 1" and so on is a reference to what I think is wrong with your novel. But really, I'm only trying to address the problems you outline in your own description on the back of the book. *sigh* The back of the book is its own calamity.

In this first novel, [author] tells a tender, sensitive tale about a dysfunctional family facing a variety of problems. The biggest problem involves the main characters, sisters Angela and Bev. They are taking care of their elderly, bedridden mother. Angela wants Mama moved to a nursing center. Bev wants her to stay at home where she can care for Mama and pursue a passion for positive thinking. The sisters fight about this problem all the time. Set in the posh town of La Greer Park, Angela works as a wedding coordinator. She has problems with her own marriage, since she suspects her husband has cheated and this is what makes her move in with Mama and Bev. Add to this relationships with teenaged children that don't always please Angela. It's a novel that will be relished by anyone taking care of an elderly parent, as well as anyone facing divorce. It's a timely novel with many twists and turns that force a person to think long and hard about the value of marriage and family. This story is told with a unique voice that will be remembered well after the final page is reached. It's a story that will teach a valuable lesson about love and what we all need to know to be successful at it.

Um... What's this book about?

Is this the description you've been sending to agents? And we're supposed to be surprised you had to self-publish?


Okay, okay. I said I wanted to be able to help someone else avoid the same pitfalls if possible. So, here we go... The first sentence is ridiculous. Not only because you use "tender, sensitive tale" like this is a parody of a back cover, but also because you seem to have so little grasp on what this story is about that you simply say they are "facing a variety of problems."


The next sentence—"The biggest problem involves the main characters..."—sounds like it was taken from a third grade book report.


At this point, it should be clear that the entire description needs to be rewritten. You are trying to sell this book. Rather than tell us you are a masterful writer, write a real summary in that unique voice you claim to have. If you want sentences that rave about who will relish this story and how memorable your writing is, then find a reviewer.


Oh my god. Does it actually say "many twists and turns"? That's false advertising.


Before you posted this description online, before I received my copy, I knew this book was going to be outdated. It annoys me to no end that you claim this is a "timely" novel.


"It's a timely novel with many twists and turns that force a person to think long and hard about the value of marriage and family."


I don't want to think long and hard about a novel I'm reading for entertainment purposes. I know you filed this under literature, but have I mentioned it reads like an un-funny comedy? Your characters face real problems that they choose to not deal with. THEY don't even think long and hard about the values of marriage and family. You need to go back to the drawing board with this story before you can sell it.


For the sake of trying to be helpful, I think the description (and I'm blogging, so this should be a terrible rewrite, too) should read more like...

As a wedding coordinator, Angela refuses to guarantee happily-ever-afters. She will get you the wedding day of your dreams, but the rest is out of her hands. When she discovers a letter from her husband's high school crush alluding to their secret reunion, though, Angela has to figure out how to make that happily-ever-after happen for herself.

Bev wants to be happy. But as the stresses mount from being a single mom to her teenage daughter and a full time caregiver to her vegetative mother, she needs more than positive thoughts to see her through the day.

It seems neither Angela nor Bev will get what she wants when Angela moves in. The sisters fight about everything. Whether Mama should be in a nursing home, how Angela should handle her marital problems, and how to deal with their teenage children. Can they resolve their differences before...

Yeah. That's about as far as I can get. Your story is lacking past the set up. Hence, this blog.

Problem 4: The Teens

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree... Your mother is a weak character? So are you, kids.

Based on this novel, I can see now why you eliminated children from your memoir. These teens are super boring. The same way I get the feeling you don't particularly care for either Angela or Bev, your lack of interest in the teens is discernible.

Josh has the pleasure of being introduced to us through a throw away comment by Angela when her phone rings. "Before she could back out of the driveway, however, her cell phone rang. No doubt this would be her sullen son begging for a ride home from the monster mall." Feel the love. Are we surprised when she abandons him? Not really. Are we surprised when he says that he feels invisible and thinks his family is fucked up? Not really. The only surprise there is how much that scene lacks emotion. (But then, not really.)

Angela invites Josh to come over for dinner once a week. This is only after she decides that maybe she shouldn't completely punish him for any crimes his father may or may not have committed. (Did I mention I don't like Angela?) So in the course of the novel we see Josh three or four times? And he leaves no impact. He's supposed to be a phantom, but that doesn't mean he really has to be so forgettable. Or that Angela should alternate between forgetting about him and simply crossing her fingers that one day they'll have a good relationship.

To juxtapose Josh, you introduce Madison. In our first encounter with her, she's watching her mom read tarot cards at the kitchen table. What is supposed to be for Angela's sake, we get her explanation of what's happening. We see she has long blond hair and sits on her knees and says "Mommy's reading for me now" like she's 3 instead of 16. I don't like her but it's actually Angela I like a WHOLE lot less when I read the following description of Madison: "She could be a precious, though somewhat vocal child. When she wanted something, she wanted it. Yet, when it came time to make someone happy, she could soften faster than a Hershey bar left in the sun if it meant she'd come out ahead."

The first sentence confused me. The second sentence sounded generic. And by now I'm set up to not trust any further judgments in this statement. In this scene, Bev is pissed at Angela and doesn't want to hear them talking, so she's asked Madison to be quiet. Madison complies. And now I'm not supposed to like Madison?

From there, Madison becomes a catalyst. We look forward to her presence because we know SOMETHING will happen. But she still only ranks as Tolerable. Like Josh, she isn't written believably as a teenager because she isn't written believably as a person. You told me you picked the name Madison because you were hoping that with such a popular name (and by now all those baby girls who were named Madison back in 1990-whatever are even older than this character) readers would really identify with and feel for your Madison. (moment of reflection) Seriously?

Madison could have been a source for funny, hormonal teen angst bitchiness. But she's not. She's insubordinate. She hurls lame insults. Her mother claims she's her biggest help, but we only see Madison heat up a dish for Mama once. Madison acts like she's superior even though she reads as a complete moron. However, besides sparking events in the house, Madison gives us more insight into who Bev is in the "What kind of person ends up with a child like this" kind of way. Oh, and because we see everything twice, we get more insight into who Angela is, too, based on Angela's descriptions and reactions to everything.

Could the story go without these characters? I wouldn't want it to. I think a story about two sisters trapped n a house with their ailing mother is more fun when you add one more generation to the mix. However, these characters add nothing good. They give us no reason to like the main characters any better. They don't add real drama or humor to the plot. In order to fix this problem, though, you don't need to work on the teens, you need to work on the narration.