Michael Andre McPherson

Beyond the Slushpile

Tag archive: writing

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The Fogel Speaks Again

Guest Post by Melanie Fogel

Here’s the thing:

I’m a great believer in writing from the inside out. What that means is that, although good story is more important than good writing, writing is the only means you have of conveying the story.

So at some point, you stop writing story and take a hard look at the way you’ve used the words. You aim for the lightning rather than the lightning bug (I assume you know Twain’s quote on the subject). But if you haven’t got the story firmly anchored in your head–the character, the setting, the meaning of the climax–then you can’t come up with the lightning words.

In one of the great climactic scenes in Caryl Férey’s Zulu, he uses the word “totem” to talk about the stillness of the protagonist. He could have used “statue,” or “carved figure,” or “rock,” but believe me, “totem” is killer lightning. It took everything that happened in the novel prior to this point to make “totem” so striking (pun intended).  And you gasp, not only at the brilliant writing, but at the significance of the sentence to the story.

Honestly, I could teach an entire writing course based on that novel.

Mike’s Note: This article will find a permanent home under “The Fogel Speaks.”

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Monday I Will Open The Box

There’s a box with a manuscript in it sitting on my desk.  It’s the manuscript where each neatly printed page has been marred by The Fogel’s harsh scrawls.  In a sense, I have already opened it, because The Fogel sent me her notes on Chapter one by e-mail, and her comments strike like a hammer, over and over again.

My day job has been busy over the last few weeks, which is good because I needed time to decide what to do about the novel, one that has taken up so much of my life.

Go to my website, www.michaelmcpherson.ca and you’ll see my smiling face and the photos I took of the men I traveled with in Afghanistan.  Back then Reagan was president and the mujahideen were still described in the press as “freedom fighters.”

How things have changed.  I watched on TV as the twin towers went down, and as word came out that the terrorists were trained in Afghanistan and called themselves mujahideen, I knew the media would never again refer to them as freedom fighters.

Yet that is how I still feel about the men I traveled with, and I wonder how many of them are alive today.  They were generous to me.  I trusted them with my life.  They had hopes and fears, children and wives and grooming advice.  The commander said I should shave my wispy beard because I couldn’t grow a proper beard.  He was clean shaven himself.  We’re not talking Taliban fanatics here, at least not back then.

I can’t let them go.  I want the world to see them as human beings.  I want the world to understand what the Soviets did to that country.  It was the one thing I promised myself I could do for them, although the commander’s son would have preferred that I’d bought him new boots.  I missed the opportunity to do that, and it haunts me.

So Monday I have some time off from my day job, and I will open that box.  I will endure all of The Fogel’s comments.  I will rethink plot and story, characters and events.  I will struggle and rewrite.  Somehow, I will finish what I started.

It’s the least I can do.

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Am I a Productive Member of Society?

The first thing I learned working on the TV show Nikita is that machine guns are loud.  Even when they’re firing blanks, they’re really, really loud.  I know that sounds obvious, but it’s amazing when an actor standing only a corpse-length away points an AK-47 just over your head and empties a 30-round clip.  Your clothes vibrate against your body with the shock-waves from the concussions.  Your heart feels like it’s skipping beats.

Oddly, while working on that show I felt like a productive member of society, making my strange contribution.  After all I got up with the alarm, worked like crazy for 14 or 15 hours, way to much of it running to set and back with mags of film or carrying diddy bags that weighted about a hundred pounds.

Yet, when I took time off between seasons to write, I often wondered if I was a productive member of society.  Perhaps it was because no one gave me a pay at the end of the week to prove that my presence was valued.

But one day after work on Nikita I met some friends for a Friday night drink.  I regaled them with tales of how stressful our work on the show had been that day–three cameras in a gravel pit with not enough crew.  Explosions and machine guns.  I had to involuntarily upgrade to focus puller for one of the cameras and got caught on film when the operator abruptly panned the camera left to follow a departing truck.  The A.D.s had failed to warn me the truck would pull away.

The expression on my face in the rushes ended up being the source great amusement on the camera truck over the next week.

When I finished my tale a friend put down her wine glass and mentioned off hand that her day had been a bit hectic too.  I knew she worked at a shelter for battered women, so I asked what had happened.

Her manner was understated, but her words told a different story–a story of a woman repeatedly beaten and raped, of escorting her to court to testify, of a screaming ex-husband threatening his ex and my friend with brutal murder.  Tears and fright and a police escort out of the courtroom.  My friend picked up her wine glass for a sip after this shocking story and I put down my beer.

The shelter was run by the Salvation Army.  My friend was paid minimum wage, and I was pulling in a couple of grand a week.  It made no sense.  She was a productive member of society, contributing to the overall good.  I was making the filler between car commercials.

The second thing I learned on Nikita is that receiving a pay check at the end of the week didn’t necessarily mean that I was a productive member of society, contributing to the overall good.

My stories won’t save the world, but maybe somewhere someone will use them to fill a few hours and go somewhere better.

Although before I get all snooty about Nikita: when I was at a youth hostel in Romania a few years later (1998), I walked into a room full of Romanians glued to a tiny television set.  They were watching an episode of Nikita where the climax took place in a gravel pit–lots of explosions and machine guns.  For an hour they were transported away from the economic disaster that was post-Soviet Romania.

Who am I to judge?

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I Challenge Alice Munro

People don’t tend to read short stories anymore, perhaps because literary short stories are so mind-numbly dull.  Yeah, I said it:  mind-numbly dull!  They wander with little plot and they’re excruciatingly introspective.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether they’ve ended or the printers have misplaced a page.

While science fiction and mystery shorts are tightly plotted and dynamic, their magazine and anthology sales have also slumped in the last decade.  My theory is that young adults are not venturing into short stories, not just because of video games, but because they remember all the yawn-inducing shorts they were forced to read in high school.  The whole short story format has been tainted by literature.

Now I don’t deny that Alice Munro’s Floating Bridge is a master work, clearly deeper in thought and displaying greater literary skill than anything I’ve ever written.

But here’s a challenge: after a long day of work put two readers on opposite ends of a couch.  Give one of the them Floating Bridge to read and give the other my short coming-of-age story Railroaded.  Now let’s sit back and see who squirms in their seat, fighting to keep awake and read to the end to prove they’re literate.  Who reads with interest?  Now I’m not talking about two people who’ve worked a cushy eight hours and had a nice dinner.  I’m talking about film industry hours–people who’ve just worked 16 grueling hours in harsh weather.  That’s the real test.

In fact, maybe I’ll carry out this experiment.  I’ve got a lot of friends still in the film industry.  Hey Alice!  You up for it?

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My Dirty Little Secret

I wrote a vampire novel.  There’s nothing like it to let your creativity flow.  You’re unencumbered by reality and free to concentrate on characters.  Unlike any other kind of fiction, the vampire novel immediately brings up all of the fundamental moral problems that face mortal humans.

What would you do to live forever?  Would you become a serial killer?

How will you face the end of your life: fighting or surrendering?

Do you believe in heaven and hell, reincarnation, a greater universe than what we see?  Are you secular, agnostic or atheist?  What would you do if incontrovertible proof of an alternate reality walked up and said, “I vant to suck your blood.”  Preferably stated with a Romanian accent.

Oh yeah, and since Bram Stoker, vampires have always been about sex.  What’s not to like?

But a writer with a vampire novel is invariably branded as a loser chasing a tired cliché–unless they get the wild success of Stephen King, Anne Rice or Stephenie Meyer.  Each of these writers produced wildly different flavors for that same soup–all tasty and all unique.

So what’s a writer to do with a vampire novel?

I’ve been warned by many pros over the years that your first novel is your brand, and forever after you must write in that field.  One agent compared it to a retail store: if you arrive one day for coffee and donuts but the next day the store is a sit-down gourmet restaurant–well the coffee crowd won’t be coming back, and the gourmet crowd probably won’t ever go because they thought it was a donut shop.

So my dilemma?  I’ve got my literary novel, In a Country Burning, about a lost young man caught up in Afghanistan’s war against Soviet occupation.  I even traveled with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1988 to research it–truly putting my life on the line for this novel.

But it’s my first, and despite endless rewrites, tweaks and effort, The Fogel has slammed it, stating that I need to look at the fundamental plot.  Not just an edit but a sit down and do-this-all-over from scratch deal.

But my vampire novel has a strong plot and unique story.  It’s tight, probably because I wrote it for fun–probably because I didn’t risk my life for it.

So do I send it to The Fogel?  Do I break all conventions and open up my store with a vampire novel and hope that the literary crowd will read In a Country Burning, my true passion, when it finally comes together?

Will my brand be forever tainted?

Or am I the brand.  This blog is about breaking all the traditional publishing rules.

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Marathon Publishing

Writing–and I mean from the first moment fingers touch keys to the day someone buys something you wrote–is like running a marathon.  I can say this because I ran one yesterday, so unlike journalists who report about marathon bargaining sessions or marathon fund raising, I actually know what running 42.2 kilometers feels like.

Writing the novel is the easy part, the first half of the marathon, when you’re still excited from the start line and hoping for a quick and painless race to the end, to crossing that finish line, to getting published.  But once it’s written, you’re only half-way.

Editing is like 21k to 30k, when you realize that this is going to hurt, that you won’t get to the end without a fight.  You begin to consider dropping out, or at least slowing to a walk.  A lot of writers give up at this point.

Publishing is the wall at 32k.  Your body begs to stop.  Your mind starts to play tricks on you, like a cartoon devil on your shoulder whispering, “Just a little walk.  Just stop for a little walk and then you can make up the time.”  You’ll send to an agent next month.  You’ll search for a publisher after one more draft.

But luckily the cartoon angel on the other shoulder whispers, “Keep going.  Don’t give up.  Keep those legs moving.  Keep striving to get published, to get a reader to buy your book.

Promoting your novel is like the last three kilometers going uphill.  You’ve got nothing left, and it’s the most important part.  What’s the point of writing if hardly anyone reads your work?  What’s the point of running a marathon if you give up with the finish line in sight?

There is, however, one big difference between writing and marathons.  Marathons have a finish line.  Always.  You know success is there if you just keep going.

With writing there is no guarantee that you’ll reach a place where your sales are so good that it’s like having someone put a medal over your head and help you off to the refreshments tent with a pat on the back.

So when I think about it: running a marathon is a lot easier than writing and publishing.

But hopefully publishing doesn’t leave your muscles so stiff and sore.

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What the Agents Said

My novel, In a Country Burning, has been pitched to eleven literary agents since 1999–six times by snail mail or e-mail, and five times face to face, eyeball to eyeball.

Of the traditional approach (query letter to an agent I’ve never met) I received one e-mail rejection in less than 20 minutes, which makes me wonder if it was on an auto-responder.  The snail mail rejections took longer, although a few times I marveled at the efficiency of Canada Post, the U.S. Postal Service or the Royal Mail, depending on the destination.  It was like a boomerang coming back way faster than anticipated, forcing me to metaphorically duck for cover.

I was initially flattered by Simon Trewin’s response from PFD in London, although I can’t help thinking of the agency’s name as an abbreviation of Personal Floatation Device. He’s since opened his own shop, which was probably a good idea.

He described my writing as “fluent” but declined because he “didn’t connect with the premise.”   Okay, well that’s nice of him to say about the writing anyway.  I’m fluent.  Except I later read on a website that he has passed on other novels with that same rejection letter.  It’s a form letter.  Did he even read the sample pages?

That’s the problem with mail and e-mail.  An author could believe their novel had been given careful consideration when actually he/she had been rejected by the receptionist before morning coffee.

That’s why I prefer to pitch face-to-face.  They may never read the sample chapters, but at least I know they have a sense of the premise before they boot me out the door.  Now I’m not advocating pounding on agents’ doors.  I met most of them by appointment at conferences in carefully orchestrated pitch sessions.  They knew I was coming and were prepared to listen.

So here’s what they said:

Dominick Abel listened patiently and then said that this simply was not his type of thing.  That’ll teach me to pitch a novel about war and religion and guilt to an agent at a mystery convention.

Beverly Slopen I pitched by accident.  About three months after 9/11 I went down to her condo in Toronto to drop off the first 30 pages and query letter.  I thought I’d be told to leave it with the concierge, which is why I had no qualms about bringing my one-year-old son along for the trip in his stroller.  I was a stay-at-home dad at the time and figured the walk would allow him to get his morning nap.

I didn’t know that she had just returned from the Frankfurt Book Fair and was eagerly awaiting a package.  She told the concierge to send me right up.  She met me at the elevator.

Awkward.  She was reaching for the envelope, saw my son and froze.  “Oh, this is yours,” she said, as if she’d accidentally grabbed my half-eaten Big Mac.  She didn’t wipe her hands off on her trousers after she handed it back, although it looked like she considered it.  She politely allowed me a two minute pitch, and that was about all my restless son was going to allow too.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I wouldn’t have any idea where to place it.  Everyone’s doing a novel about Afghanistan now.  Tom Clancy’s doing a novel about Afghanistan.”

Ms. Slopen let me down gently, the way you pass a crazy homeless person who is begging for change and raving about the coming apocalypse.

This is why I don’t recommend sandbagging agents at their offices.  It puts them on the defensive.  I sent her an e-mail apologizing for the intrusion, and she surprised me by responding, urging me to send the novel to other agents.  She’s a class act.

Jack Scovil was interested in my mystery novel (which I’ve shelved for now) but never responded even though he had invited me to submit.  He wasn’t at all interested in a novel set in Afghanistan.

Verna Dreisbach said she’d look at three sample chapters if I cut 30,000 words off the novel.  I spent three torturous months slicing it down, but she still rejected it.  What did I expect from an ex-cop who says on her website that she’s the editor of Why We Ride: Women Writers and the Horses in their Lives? My novel is just not going to excite her.

Stacia Decker of the Donald Mass agency wins the prize for asking the most intelligent questions about the novel.  After careful deliberation during the interview, she invited me to submit the first ten pages.  But she also set me up for the rejection that followed two months later.  She asked me how many agents I’d pitched this novel to, and when I said ten she shook her head.  “You’ve hardly dipped your toe in the water then.”

Which brings me back to publishing online.  An agency takes 15% of the meager royalties a publisher will pay to most first time novelists.  They’re great at vetting contracts with publishers, but what if a writer decides to go without a publisher?  No agent required.  I know that going without a publisher or an agent (the 20th century model) is controversial.  A couple of writers and my editor have already encouraged me not to give up on traditional publishing, but we’re in a new world with e-publishing.  Maybe I’ll have to eat my words.  That’s what’s fun about publishing right now.  No one really knows where it’s going.