Tag Archives: new job

Feeling A Little Query

Posted: May 13, 2016 at 11:18 am

 

People have been saying to me, “It’s been THREE years! When are you going to finish your book?” When they say “book” they do the air-quote thing with their fingers to emphasize it’s not a REAL book because they’re not holding a copy in their hands. Or they have no faith that I’m capable of writing a real book.

To these people I say, “My book is done, so please quit bugging me.” What I actually think is much ruder than that, but you get the idea.  I finished Draft #9 about a month ago, gave it a title page, put in the chapter numbers, ended it with “La Fin” and printed all 278 pages. I’m tempted to write one more draft, but I’d also like to stay married, so that’s it for now.

With a  completed manuscript burning a hole in my laptop, my options are:

(1) Upload my book to Amazon and make it available for 99 cents on-line tomorrow. This has the advantage of instant gratification (people can immediately give me money and enjoy my book). The disadvantage is that these people immediately giving me money and enjoying my book are mostly related to me or have learned how to snowboard from me (owing me a favour). It is very difficult to stand out from the MILLIONS of on-line books offered each year. There are exceptions….The Martian and Fifty Shades of Grey both started as on-line books. Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough to write the first one and I’m too good a writer to write the second.

(2) Send my book to publishers and tell them it’s the next Eat, Pray, Love.   Every writer thinks they’ve written the next Eat, Pray, Love, will sell 10 million copies and will be played in the movie by Julia Roberts (or in my case, Brad Pitt, obviously). Those writers are wrong, because there hasn’t been a phenomenon like Eat, Pray, Love since, well, Eat, Pray, Love. Complicating this dream, unsolicited manuscripts are relegated to a publisher’s slush pile where they languish until all the vowels slide off the pages, rendering the book only slightly less comprehensible.

(3) Hire a printer to print and bind 1000 copies of my book so I can sell them in parking lots out of the trunk of my car. Not exactly the dream I had when I gave up a successful legal career to become a writer.

(4) Crawl into a cave and never show my book to anyone. Not a serious option, because then I would fail in my goal of making enough money on my book to pay for all the coffee I consumed in Delany’s Coffee Shop while writing the book. I know, that’s ironic, or a circular argument, or something that makes the last three years look pitiful.

(5) Query my brains out. To have any chance of attracting a traditional publisher and having my book on the shelves of a bookstore not in my hometown, I’ll need a literary agent. And to get a literary agent I have to “query” 500 of them. A query is a one-page letter, possibly with a book excerpt attached, that is so enticing and mind-blowing that the agent begs me to immediately send the completed manuscript. Remember, literary agents receive thousands of query letters every year, and take on two or three new clients. Consequently, my query letter has to be the best 300 words I’ve ever written, as good as anything in my book. If the agent decides I can write a book as well as I can write a query letter, he or she will offer to represent me…which is no guarantee of success with any publisher with more than two employees.

As you may have guessed, I’m opting for Number 5. I’ll let you know how it goes. I may end up buying a car with a bigger trunk.

Meet the Author

Posted: October 15, 2015 at 7:09 am

 

I brimmed with confidence, 25 pages of heartfelt memoir burning a hole in my laptop. I felt like a writer, and Carol and I were about to see another writer, award-winning literary superstar “Famous Author,” speak in the only English bookstore in Aix-en-Provence. He was in nearby Marseille at a writing conference and finally accepted the bookstore manager’s latest invitation. I read all of Famous Author’s books and felt I knew him because Carol went to school with him in Toronto. I always joked Famous Author was Carol’s high school boyfriend, but in truth he was the outcast loner with a mohawk in the leather jacket. Barely acquaintances. We walked into a packed house at Book In Bar, mostly older ex-patriots and English-speaking tourists in Rockport shoes. In the largest of Book In Bar’s three small rooms, bookcases covered every wall, floor to ceiling, surrounding a desk set up for Famous Author. About 30 standing people crowded behind 30 mismatched wooden chairs facing Famous Author’s pulpit. I spied my French conversation partner Céline sitting in the second row, her hands defiantly saving the only two empty chairs for us. This detail assured me that except for Céline, everyone in the room was English – there was no “saving” seats In French culture. Céline saving seats? My pupil was becoming more English while I struggled to become French. But a seat was a seat, so Carol and I elbowed our way over.
“Céline, what are you doing?” I said as we sat on either side of her. “Where did you learn that?”
“I can’t believe it worked. You English people are so polite!” said Céline, leaning over to kiss us each in turn.
“I’m so happy you came to this, Céline. I’ve been wanting to tell you I took your advice, and I…..” The bookstore manager stood before the crowd and asked for quiet.
“I would like to welcome our special guest,” said the manager. She outlined Famous Author’s string of literary accomplishments, including winning Canada’s most prestigious prize for fiction for his last published book. He was nominated for this and that, had won that and this, taught creative writing at two universities, had all the literary chops I lacked. In her introduction, the manager didn’t mention Famous Author was also very handsome, but the swooning ladies in the front row could attest to that.
I had seen many authors speak in bookstores, and Famous Author was more engaging and open than most. Listening to him, I thought what I always thought from the bookstore audience: I could do a talk like this. I want to do a talk like this. I would just love to do a talk like this.
As I dreamt of a beautiful future where I was a published author and strangers and lonely women came to musty bookstores to hear my bon mots, Famous Author started talking about his book in progress.
“So I was coming off the surprising success of my last novel and I spent about two years writing my latest. Wow, I worked harder on this book than anything else I had written before. Which was weird because the outside pressure was kind of off; I knew it would get published. That’s a luxury. Anyway, I thought it was in good shape when I gave the manuscript to my editor, the guy at the publishing company who edited the last one. He had it for a long time, weeks, but I thought it was just because he was incredibly busy. But I was devastated when he met me in a restaurant to tell me the structure of the whole book was wrong. And it was in the wrong voice. It should have been told from a different character’s perspective. He basically trashed the whole thing.”
Those in the audience stared in surprise, some in shock. I could only listen in complete dejection.
“I couldn’t just tweak it here and there,” said Famous Author. “What was needed was just too massive and complicated. So I started the whole thing over, and I’m almost finished the rewrite. I think it’s much better now. I guess we’ll see.”
At that moment I stopped listening. What I’d heard was enough to launch me on another downward spiral of depression. Famous Author had his degrees and experience and awards and accolades, and I received my creative writing degree from the University of YouTube. If this “auteur” could screw up so badly, what chance did I have of writing something coherent? It was hopeless. I clutched and unclutched my fists and fought the impulse to run from the room.
Céline leaned over and in a whisper close to my ear said, “What’s wrong, dear Bill? Are you okay?” I ignored her, staring straight ahead, unseeing.
Carol reached across Céline’s lap and found my hand to give it a sympathetic squeeze. The warmth of her touch calmed me slightly. She didn’t have to ask me what the problem was. She knew that my confidence, like Elvis, had left the building.

My Mid-Life Crisis

Posted: September 25, 2015 at 9:55 am

 

“Maybe you’re just going through a mid-life crisis.”

It was February 2012. Having just taken a bite of my smoked duck breast and gizzards, I started choking. I sat in my favourite booth at Café le Verdun with my medium-level-friend Dan, visiting from Canada. Dan had skipped a few levels on the relationship scale by inviting himself to stay with me in Aix-en-Provence. He heard for the first time I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore, and his conclusion surprised me. How could I be going through a mid-life crisis? I’m only 53! Uh-oh, wait a minute.

Cough. Swallow. I took a sip of Sauvignon Blanc. “No I don’t think that’s it, Dan,” I said. “I’m just so tired of reading contracts and the rest of that shit that I have to do something different.”

That’s a mid-life crisis, Billy.” Dan was talking with his mouth full and I could see bits of seafood lasagna in there. “You’re asking yourself what it’s all for, aren’t you? Well, I can tell you what it’s all for. It’s all for money. Forget about all that higher meaning bullshit. We do our jobs for the money.  Everyone wants to retire with lots of money and live in a house on the ocean and have a cabin at Whistler. If your job was fun, they wouldn’t pay you so much to do it.”

“But I can’t take it anymore.” I felt whiny. “Besides, last year I had tendonitis in my elbow from clicking my mouse all day.” I drummed the fingers of my right hand on the table, as if proving to Dan their connection to my injured elbow.

“Are you really ready to give up your clients?” Dan asked. “A barista makes ten bucks an hour. How many times does ten divide into your hourly rate?”

I told him the number.

“And you’re complaining? His job is way harder than yours, and he has to clean the toilets too. Are you fucking crazy?” Dan said. The waiter looked up from across the restaurant and scowled.

“I know, I know. My job was easy for me. Easy isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean. I have nothing to complain about, but I was miserable, all the time. I just need to escape. Somehow I thought that during this year in France, something better would miraculously happen to me. I figured I’d find something better to do or I’d meet someone who’d offer me some cool job.” I felt embarrassed saying that out loud, and looked down at my plate so I could avoid Dan’s eyes.

Dan pointed his fork at my chest. “You must have known that wasn’t going to work. What happens when you go back? It took years for you to get that great setup. You won’t just find two perfect clients like that, two huge clients, and start back where you left off. Some lawyers can’t find jobs, you know.”

“But I don’t want to start back where I left off,” I said. “I’m done with it.”

“You can’t do that, can you? How will you live? Don’t you want to retire some day?”

“Well, I can’t retire yet, that’s for sure. I don’t have enough money. But I don’t have to continue making what I was making. I don’t think. I’m not sure. Maybe when I go back, being a lawyer won’t look so bad anymore.” I paused. “What am I saying? It’ll still be bad. I’m an idiot.”

The waiter had appeared at our booth, hearing my last sentence, perhaps understanding. Dan waved him away with a flick of his hand. I could see the waiter roll his eyes and heard a suppressed sigh as he turned.

“Is it SO bad that you can’t do it for another five or 10 years, make a shitload of money and then retire to do whatever you want? Then you can go to France for as long as you want.” It sounded so simple when Dan said it like that, but I instantly recoiled.

“If I thought I had to be a lawyer for 10 more years, and that would be my last job until retirement, I would probably have to kill myself.”

“Really? You’d kill yourself?” said Dan. I saw the woman in the next booth, obviously a tourist, sit up straighter so she could hear the rest of our conversation.

“Of course not. I’m too much of a chicken. And if I killed myself, Carol would really kill me. But I just can’t keep doing what I was doing. I always thought I was smart enough to end up doing something cool or something insanely fun, and I ended up reading contracts. It’s just so boring.”

“What would be your perfect job?” Dan held up his arm to get the waiter’s attention. The waiter looked in our direction, expressionless, then walked toward the kitchen.

“I was asked that once at a party. Without thinking, I joked I’d like a job where I could paint nude portraits of my friends’ wives.”

“That doesn’t sound like it would pay much. Can’t you just do that in your spare time? A real job would be the lawyer for Playboy Enterprises.” Dan giggled. “That would be fun.”

“I doubt they let the lawyers take the pictures. Or hang out in the grotto.”

“You’re probably right. That sucks. I just think that throwing away all those years of school, when you’re at the top of the heap, is crazy. Maybe there’s a different way you can be a lawyer that you’ll like better.” Dan waved at the waiter again, who had returned from the kitchen and was three booths away, intently studying his empty tray.

“Yeah, I thought about that,” I said. “Maybe there is. But I don’t think so. I hate all the lawyer bullshit. And I am tired of having to be perfect. Everyone expects me to be right all the time, everything is so exact. I like broad strokes and ballpark answers, I like artsy stuff, and I’m stuck with the opposite. I’m a total faker.”

“That’s not true. You can’t be a faker for 20 years and still have a bunch of happy clients. You’re good at your job, obviously.” Dan was always a bit in awe of the career I created, and believed me to be much smarter than I actually was.

“Well, it’s not me. I’m not that guy. I don’t wanna be that guy,” I said, without eloquence.

“How can you waste all that education?” Dan asked.

“Who says it’s wasted? Can’t I do something else with my brain?”

“Sure you can,” Dan said. He paused. “Maybe you can do business development for some big company and negotiate their deals.”

“That’s kinda what I was doing already. No, I have to make a clean break. I don’t want any job like the one I had. If I do this half-assed, I’ll end up where I was before. I’ve got to let go completely, turn everything upside down.”

“Wow. I don’t know if I could do that,” said Dan. I was perversely happy that he was afraid to do what I was planning, but I didn’t tell him that.

“I like the idea I’m finally thinking big, but thinking big is scary. I never thought I would have the guts to do this. To leave law. That’s all I know how to do.”

“It’s not the smartest financial decision you’re making.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Every bit of logic tells me the smart thing to do is go back to law, work hard for 10 years and then retire. But my heart and soul are screaming at me to never do law again. It’s not me. So I have no choice but to do something different.”

“Well then, I guess you do.”

“It could be my mid-life crisis. Maybe. But I think I’m now confident enough to not worry about what other people think I should do………..and not for one minute more do something that I don’t want to do,” I said, raising my voice much more than I intended. I certainly sounded more sure than I was. I could see the waiter coming our way.

“Sounds like you’ve made up your mind,” said Dan.

“I have, I guess. I don’t know. I’m freaking out a bit. Oh, here’s the waiter. Should we order dessert?”

A Little Bit Pregnant

Posted: August 27, 2015 at 3:30 pm

 

Writing a book is like being pregnant.

I’m the first one to say that pregnancy is MUCH more difficult than writing – I say that not because it’s politically correct but because I believe it. I’ve seen two babies being born and it’s a good thing the guys aren’t the ones shouldering THAT responsibility. Still, there are several similarities between pregnancy and my current occupation of rewriting my complete book, the book I thought was finished last November.

I feel like I’m 9 months pregnant. I know there’s something really amazing growing inside me and I just want the thing to come out.

The exact moment of a baby’s conception is fun!  It may have seemed like a great idea at the time, but months later the woman balks at the enormity of the undertaking and wonders if she even likes children. When I conceived my book, I had no idea that all the fun stuff was also right at the beginning. After that it’s just editing and difficulties and frustration. Why did I think I would like writing?

Both types of conception usually get going around the fourth glass of wine.

A guy should never ask a woman if she’s pregnant. Because if she isn’t, watch out. Don’t ask me why it’s taking me so long to finish my book. I can be just as testy.

A woman in pregancy’s later stages is asked every day on the telephone if she’s had the baby yet. “Of COURSE I haven’t had it yet. Don’t you think I’d call my own mother if I had a baby?” Don’t ask me if I’ve finished my book yet. Believe me, if I had, you’d know. I would have twisted your arm to buy one already.

The birth of a child and the birth of a book, while not equal in importance or energy required, are both beautiful events (and a great relief!).