It was a week and a half ago, the Business Weekend, Lit Fest 2009, and the topic was “Breaking and Entering”—essentially, a primer on creating a life in writing. We’d already heard a lot of sobering news from the publishing types. People were looking for glimmers of hope, and we assembled just the crack team to deliver.
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First of all, these three women could read Jack Nicholson’s manuscript-in-progress from The Shining and make it darned entertaining: Shana Kelly, formerly of the William Morris Agency; Elizabeth Geiser, whose spent her career in publishing and founded DU’s Publishing Institute; Cara McDonald, who was editor at 5280 and other lifestyle magazines for years and years before becoming a freelance writer and editor.
No, I’m not an apologist for the random workings of our panel-creating ways. This seemingly mismatched olio produced entertaining and helpful anecdotes and some bits of wisdom that emerged, finally, as the “truths of the day,” so far as we could see. As far as I could, anyway, but I’m nearsighted.
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- Some success stories have everything to do with stacking the deck in your own favor, building the pedigree in the great programs, and then getting a stroke of luck. Curtis Sittenfeld, the young woman who broke in with the novel Prep (and who Shana Kelly represented), was one of those people. She went for it, the stars aligned, and she got it.
- Some success stories have everything to do with the stroke of luck. Elizabeth Geiser recounted the tale of a writer who also tried to do all the right things, but doors kept slamming in his face. His submissions were crossing in the mail with rejections. Until one fateful seder he attended in New York City, where he met the person who would introduce him to the editor who finally took him on. He became a bestselling author.
- Cara talked of the fine balance between persistence and annoyance. Being persistent, if your work can back it up, can get you in. Being a pest just gets you swatted down.
- Elizabeth, more of a phone woman than a Facebooker, Twitterer, or e-mailer, on several occasions apologized for her profession. We accepted her apology.
- All of the women echoed the sentiment that “being beautiful is not enough.” There also has to be an energy to your work and your persona that lifts off the page. Cara calls it “the love.” She told the anecdote of the overlooked intern who presented an idea to the magazine that knocked everyone’s socks off. Look for the “socks off” moments. To do this, you must immerse yourself in serious study of what's going on in the field you're trying to break into
- ...which is another way of again echoing the previous panel, this elementary notion of “doing one’s homework.” For example, Cara said it was quite rare for someone to approach her and say, “Here, I know you all put together a Valentine’s issue every year, and this is a pitch to provide content for that.” Elizabeth concurred and said it’s the writer’s job to understand how the bottom line runs publishing, and to try to envision where their project fits in that scenario.
- If you really love it, you’ll find a way to do it, even in these challenging times.
Up next, four authors talk about the serpentine path they took to publication.
