Kimberly Emerson

A couple of years ago, when I finished writing my first novel (really more of a novella, but I didn’t know that at the time), I looked into getting it published.  In my reading, the one piece of nearly unanimous advice was, “Go to writers’ conferences.”  What for? I thought.  I already wrote the book.  I don’t need a conference to tell me how to write.  Being the glutton for rule-following that I am, I went to a writers’ conference anyway.  I discovered a website for one that was held not too far away, and at a cost that I could very nearly afford.  (Not completely.  Conferences worthy of attendance are generally pricey affairs.)  I attended the first one in 2007.  

When you write, you spend a lot of time on your own.  The characters in your head may seem real sometimes, but  they are still part of your own psyche.  Getting together with other people to talk about writing is kind of counter-intuitive.  My attitude when I walked into the conference’s hotel back in 2007 could best be described as one of mildly hopeful martyrdom.  I had reserved a cabin in the woods for a week after I left the conference.  Get through the weekend, I told myself.  You can enjoy your solitude after you serve your time here.  Frankly, I expected to be alone a lot during this seminar, too, but in more of a fifth-grade-outcast kind of way.   I am not a person to whom people flock in great numbers.  Give me time, I will make my way, but two days is not a lot of time.  I didn’t hope for much.

At that first conference, I was pleasantly surprised to find, well, a whole lot of people like me.  Kind of quiet people, with a lot of imagination.  (This is really, really obvious in retrospect.  Try not to judge my naïvete too harshly.)  There were lectures to attend, and if you’d paid ahead of time, you could have twenty pages of your writing analyzed by a published author, an editor or an agent.  I liked the lectures and my one analysis was positive, but my favorite part of the weekend was something called “Read and Critique.”  Everyone in the room would in turn read the first three pages of their manuscript, and the rest of the group would offer their thoughts.  It took a while to get up my nerve, but after I had listened to a few other people read, I thought, “My writing is as good as any of theirs,” and put my name on the list to read.  It turns out a lot of people had nerve, because the list was long.  I had to wait through the rest of that Read and Critique session and stay into the next one in order to get my chance.  When I read the first three pages of Perfectly Acceptable Woman, however, it was worth it.  People laughed – in the right places.  People empathized with Charlotte, my main character.  In reaction to my first few sentences, where I describe the Perfectly Acceptable Dress, the women in the room smiled and nodded.  One of them even said, “I not only know the kind of dress you’re talking about, I own one.”

All of that happened two years ago.  This summer I went to my third conference.  I had signed up for three critiques this time, two with agents and one  with an editor.  I anticipated more Read and Critique sessions.  I waited for the praise to roll in.

…Right up until I attended my first critique session. 

I signed up for an analysis of the first twenty pages of my novella, Six Years Later.  My selected critic was an editor for a small publishing company, someone who liked stories that hinged on characters, rather than twists and turns in the plot.  We sat down, she smiled at me, and I smiled at her.  That was the last time I smiled for the fifteen minutes of the interview, and for quite a while thereafter.  To say that she didn’t like my story is the understatement of the year.  She hated it.  She detailed all the reasons that she hated it, assuring me that I didn’t have to write any of them down because she had done me the favor of writing down all the reasons for her vehement dislike of my work.  The only positive thing she said to me in the entire session was to express admiration for the fact that I had, in the face of this monstrosity, had the sheer nerve to go ahead and write something else.

Walking out of this interview I encountered a woman named Sharmyn – one of those people with a perpetual smile.  She asked how it went, and I told her.  She offered me a sympathetic smile and said, “That just means she’s not the one for you.”  I wished desperately that I could be that offhand, but the problem was, not all of the editor’s comments were wrong.  Though it cost me dearly, I  had to admit to myself that some of her comments were right on the money.  That story does start slow, which was one of the reasons why I’d never read a sample of it in the Read-and-Critique sessions.  There probably is a lot of fluff.  And the synopsis that I gave her was complete and total garbage.  (Synopsis writing is an art unto itself, one that I have not even begun to master.) 

I trudged off to a lecture, deciding it was a better use of my time than licking my wounds.  I probably was the worst author in the entire world, yes, but I had still paid a lot of money for this conference, so I had to try to put it to some use.  I ended up sitting in on a talk by a mystery author.  It was a good talk, so I bought her book.  I couldn’t write, but I could still read.

My next one-on-one session, which I now completely dreaded, was after lunch.  I ate an over-priced lunch in the hotel’s buffet, and dragged myself off to meet the agent who would explain to me all the horrible things about Perfectly Acceptable Woman.  I tried to have a thicker skin this time.  (You can’t practice that, by the way.) 

A woman with chic blonde asymmetrical hair, probably a couple of years younger than myself, smiled at me when I introduced myself.  I prepared for the worst, but this time, it didn’t show.  Elyse actually liked the twenty pages I’d sent her.  Sadly, she said it really wasn’t her thing, but she could absolutely see it on the shelf.  This time there was no page of notes for me.  She said she thought it was good the way it was.  Probably too much religion in it for her, because she suggested I look into Christian publishers.   “Keep shopping it,” she told me.  “This book has a home somewhere.”

The last critique session was even better.  Laura, an independent editor, had a few suggestions, but couldn’t stop telling me how much she loved it.  “I had one punctuation correction, but that was it,” she told me.  “That was not true of any of the other eight submissions that I read.”  She liked my style, and if anything, told me to let my character be a little punchier.  (More sarcastic?  Moi?  Oh yeah, we can do that.)  She did, however (with a great big smile, I might add) inform me that my synopsis was crap.  No, she didn’t smile because she’s sadistic.  She smiled because she felt that fixing the synopsis was a much smaller task than fixing my whole book.  “The synopsis makes me think that the story is convoluted,” she said, “which based on your writing, I imagine it’s actually not.  You’re too good.”  She encouraged me to come to the Read and Critique session that she was moderating that evening.  (I did, and was surprised to find that she did all the reading.  It was nice, however, to notice that people still laughed when she read it.)

Dazed, I wondered what the difference was.  I’d written both things.  I tried my best to be brutally honest in the telling of both tales.  Why did one work and the other need so much help? 

The next day I decided to be brave and read the first pages of my new story, No Accounting for Destiny.  Quickly reading through it, I realized that the perfect section to read was five pages, and I was only allowed to read three.  Blue pencil in hand, I ruthlessly hacked my way through the pages, finding that I could cut out almost two of them without really losing anything.  I might put some of it back later, but for now it would read fine without those parts.

In the session, my story went over well.  People laughed in the right places, and were slightly moved by the ending.  The pacing was good – so good that I’ll probably leave the first three pages the way I read them.  Some of the cut parts might move to a later position, but a lot of it will just go bye-bye.

Patting myself on the back for this success, I realized that that was the difference between the reactions to my material.  Six Years Later was written first.  I still don’t think it sucks as badly as the editor told me.  (I later found out her most recent publication features cross-dressing quadraplegics.  Yes, my characters are probably going to seem a little tame next to that.  So would Stephen King’s, and he’s managed to find a few people to read his stuff anyway.)  But as I said, she wasn’t completely wrong.  Perfectly Acceptable Woman probably still wouldn’t have been her thing, but it has a tighter first chapter.  I think the third one starts even better.  Hopefully, this means I am learning as I go.

All this got me to thinking about my search for direction.  Here’s the thing – I’m not sure a road is the best metaphor.  I’m starting to think life is more of a garden.   There are different sections for marriage, children, parents, siblings, friends, career, health and all the rest of the stuff that makes us who we are.  We’re generally blessed with lush vegetation in some of the areas, and all of us have at least one that is completely barren.  (Even those people who seem to have everything – if you looked closely, I’ll bet the greenery from one section is carefully brushed over a dead patch in another.)  God is the great gardener that helps us tend the land of our lives.  I’ll admit, God and I have had some really unpleasant conversations lately.  The marriage section of my garden is as dead as it ever was.  Every relationship I’ve had that has brought a teensy bit of ground cover has eventually turned brown and decayed.  The career section has some sturdy trees but no real fruit.  But here’s the really amazing thing of the garden metaphor – in a garden, even the stuff that dies actually helps the land.  The Biblical method of farming calls for leaving the ground fallow every seven years, and allowing the vegetation to become part of the soil.  That means every time I try, even if I don’t succeed, the things that I learn make my chances for success in the future a little better.  According to the Bible, the first fruits go to God.  All the failures I’ve had, I just have to look at them as first fruits, and try again.  Funny thing about first fruits – they’re not actually the best, most of the time.  We grew grapes in our backyard when I was a kid.  The first ones show up in July, and they’re barely edible.  The really good stuff doesn’t mature till September.  The vines learn how to produce better stuff – just like me with my writing.

Whether it’s a garden, a relationship, or a book, maybe the first one is just for God.  If I figure that way, I get out of my starvation mentality.  I don’t have to cling to the first thing, just because it’s available.  I can trust that there will be more. 

God takes the first and saves the good stuff for us.

Thanks for taking the ride with me this summer, folks.  Life has calmed down a bit right now, but don’t worry, I’m sure there will be more adventures to come!