The Delicate Dance of Agents and Authors

It is a marriage. You have a courtship then a honeymoon then a working marriage and then at some point a divorce. You never like to think of getting divorced when you are married but it happens. But lets back up to the courtship. You are a writer and they are an agent. You have something they want and they have something you want. It should be symbiotic and so you start out by courting them. You send out your manuscript until an agent accepts and you go on a date.

Usually the first phone call is all hugs and kisses. They love your work and you love them because they promise a way to the promised land. The phone calls are all feel good and you get off feeling like you could leap tall buildings. Then you enter the honeymoon. They are submitting your work to editors. This is unbelievable. You have just jumped ahead ninety percent of other authors. You have a conduit to that mysterious world of publishing. Now is when you have your first quarrel usually. The rejections start coming in and you question the agent. Why did you submit it to them/ How about this person? This is a minor quarrel and you roll on.

Now here is the first fork in the road. The agent does or does not hit pay dirt. If he does not find a home for your book then you are looking at a quickie divorce. You might drag on a while but lets face it the bloom is off the rose and agents are in business to make money and if they can't make money off you then those calls will not be returned and those emails will go un-answered. You simply fall out of love. It happens. But if the agent sells your book then you go to the next level.

Now your are in a thriving working marriage. You have made the agent money and you have made money. Everyone is happy. This could last a very long time especially if your book does well. Maybe a lifetime. But, unfortunately, a lot of times the contract is paid off and the royalties dwindle and the followup book might not pan and then you enter that declining era in the marriage where no one is happy. You feel like you are not getting enough attention and the agent doesn't want to wast time on projects that won't pan out. So you divorce.

As an author you have to be very attuned to this cycle in author/agent relations. You want it to all work out the best but you don't want to be delusional either. If it feels like a bad marriage it probably is and you best be on your way to divorce court. There is nothing worse than thinking someone is doing something on your behalf when they aren't. So go get a divorce, then jump right back in the saddle and start dating again.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Less can be more--the London review of Franzen

If you read the review of Freedom in the London Review of Books then you are exhausted.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n19/james-lever/so-long-lalitha Like the novel the review goes on and and bitterly proves the point of novels that are too long. By the end the reviewer hopes for a shorter novel next time. All the comparisons to Tolstoy ring suddenly hollow; Americans taking a long novel and comparing it to a nineteenth century novel that was probably too long as well. Too many words for the writer become too many words for the reader when all is said and done.

But across the big pond the Brits don't buy off on the slow movement of the big book. To read this review is to go back to every lit class  you ever had where intern profs bulled through sludgy novels and told you what they really meant. And you sat there thinking, wow, I didn't get all that! Not too take anything away from the reviewer, I really believe he worked hard to give a novel he didn't care for, it's due. But when it was all said and done he seemed annoyed that he had to wait so long to come to the final conclusion that the book didn't work.

Of course the old less is more rule is silly by now in it's banal application. Hemingway may have said it and it has served many writers very well, but to apply to a book like Franzen's does seem like putting a band aid on a gushing wound. But you do wonder if the book could have simply benefited by some rigorous cutting. The reviewer of the London Book Review has many problems with the novel that would not be solved by simple reduction. But in our haste to proclaim a Masterpiece, American simplicity might be warranted again with a simple...I would cut that scene. Who knows, less still might really be more.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man due out in the fall.