I work so damn hard on it. I write every day from dawn to past midnight. I’ve never worked so hard on any writing project before, not even my debut. The words burn like coals inside my chest, fueling me, and I must pour them all out at once before they consume me.
I complete the first draft in three weeks. I take a week off, during which all I do is take long walks and read books, just to gain a fresh set of eyes, and then I have the whole thing printed at Office Depot so I can go over it all with a red pen. I flip slowly through the pages, murmuring every sentence out loud to get a feel for the sound, the shape of the words. I stay up all night to incorporate the changes back into Word.
In the morning, I compose an email to my literary agent, Brett Adams, who I haven’t spoken to for months, since I’ve been deleting all his polite-but-urgent inquiries about how my second book is going:
Hey, Brett.
I know you’re waiting to hear about my second book, but I’ve actually got
I pause for a moment, and then delete that last sentence.
How am I going to explain all this to Brett? If he knows Athena wrote the first draft, he’ll need to get in touch with Athena’s agent, Jared. There will be messy negotiations with her literary estate. I don’t have written evidence that Athena wanted me to finish the book—though I’m sure that’s what she would have preferred, since what writer wants their work to languish in obscurity? Without proof of permission, however, my version might never be authorized at all.
But then. No one knows Athena wrote the first draft, do they? Does the way that it’s credited matter as much as the fact that, without me, the book might never see the light of day?
I can’t let Athena’s greatest work go to print in its shoddy, first-draft state. I can’t. What kind of friend would I be?
Hey, Brett.
Here’s the manuscript. It’s a little different from the direction we’d discussed, but I’ve found a new voice, and I like it. What do you think?
Best,
June
Done; sent; woosh goes my mail app. I shut the lid and push my laptop across the desk, breathless at my own audacity.
WAITING IS THE HARDEST PART. I SEND THAT EMAIL ON MONDAY; Brett doesn’t get back to me until Thursday, when he lets me know he’s reserved the weekend for having a look. I can’t tell if he means it, or if he’s stalling so that I won’t bother him. By the time the next Monday rolls around, I’m a mass of anxiety. Every minute feels like an eternity. I’ve paced outside my apartment block a million times, and I’ve resorted to leaving my phone in my microwave so that I’m not tempted to check it all the time.
I first met Brett through a pitch event on Twitter. Several days a year, authors will write a tweet-length query about their book and add the event hashtag, so that agents can scroll through the hashtag liking tweets they’re intrigued by. I wrote:
Over the Sycamore: Sisters Janie and Rose are having the worst summer of their lives. Their father is dying. Their mother’s never around. All they have is each other—and a mysterious door in the backyard. A portal to another land. #Adult #ComingofAge #Litfic
Brett requested my manuscript, I sent it off, mentioned that I already had a publishing contract in hand, and he offered to chat on the phone with me a week later. He struck me as a little dude-bro-ey—his speech was peppered with words like “rad” and “super pumped,” and he seemed awfully young. He’d graduated two years ago from Hamilton with a master’s in publishing, and he hadn’t been at his agency for more than a few months. But the agency was reputable, and his client referrals seemed to really like him, so I agreed to sign with him. That, plus I didn’t have any better offers.
He’s done okay for me over the years. I’ve always felt like a bit of a lower priority for him, especially since I don’t make him that much money, but he at least answers all my emails within the week and hasn’t lied to me about my royalties or the state of my rights, which you hear horror stories about all the time. Sure, I feel awkward and embarrassed reading curt, impersonal emails like Hi June, so the publisher won’t be taking your book to paperback because they aren’t sure it’ll keep selling, or Hey June, so no one’s biting on the audio rights front, so I’m going to take it off submission for now; just wanted to keep you updated. And sure, I’d thought occasionally about leaving Brett and querying again for an agent who might make me feel like more of a person. But it would have been terrifying to be out on my own again, without a single advocate in the industry.
I think Brett was expecting I’d quietly give up on writing on my own. I’d give anything to have seen his face when I dropped that bomb in his inbox.
He finally emails me back around midnight on Tuesday. It’s short.
Hey June,
Wow, this is really special. I don’t blame you for dropping everything to work on this project. It’s a little different from your range, but this could be a great opportunity for you to grow. I don’t think Garrett is right for this book—we should definitely take it out on wider submission. I’ll handle that on my end.
I only have a few editorial suggestions. See attached.
Regards,
Brett
Brett’s edits are light, noninvasive. Aside from line edits, they’re mostly cuts for pacing (Athena could get so wrapped up in the sound of her own prose), moving some flashback scenes around so the narrative is more linear, and reemphasizing certain themes at the end. I sit down with some canned espressos and do them all over seventy-two hours. The words come easily to me—revisions are usually like pulling teeth, but I’m having fun with this. I’m having more fun with writing than I have in years. Maybe because it’s someone else’s words I’m chopping, so I don’t feel like I’m killing my darlings. Maybe because the raw material is so good, and I feel like I’m sharpening gems, trimming away the rough patches to let them shine.
Then I send it back off to Brett, who submits it first to Garrett, since he’s technically allowed the right of first refusal. Garrett passes, just as we’d hoped. I don’t think he even bothered to open the file. Brett then immediately sends the novel to a half-dozen editors, all senior decision-makers at powerhouse publishers. (“Our reach list,” he calls it, as if these are college applications. He’s never submitted any of my work to a “reach list” before.) And then we wait.
THREE WEEKS LATER, AN EDITOR AT HARPERCOLLINS TAKES MY BOOK to acquisitions—the meeting where all the important people sit around a desk and decide whether to buy a book. They phone Brett with an offer that afternoon, and the number makes my jaw drop. I didn’t know people paid that much money for books. But then Simon & Schuster wants in; then Penguin Random House, too, then Amazon (nobody in their right mind goes with Amazon, Brett assures me; they’re here just to drive price up), and then all the smaller, prestigious independent houses that somehow still exist. We go to auction. The number keeps going up. They’re talking about payment schedules, earn-out bonuses, world rights versus North American rights, audio rights, all these things that weren’t even part of the conversation for my debut sale. Then at the end of it all, The Last Front sells to Eden Press, a midsize indie publisher that has a reputation for cranking out award-winning prestige fiction, for more money than I’d dreamed I would make in a lifetime.
When Brett calls to tell me the news, I lie down on my floor and don’t get up until the ceiling stops spinning.
I get a huge, splashy deal announcement in Publishers Weekly. Brett starts talking about interest for foreign rights, film rights, mixed media rights, and I don’t even know what any of that means except that there’s more money coming through the pipeline.
I call my mother and sister to brag, and though they don’t really know what this news means, they’re glad that I have some stable income for the next few years.