The Joy Luck Club

Sometimes you get rejected because the story is badly written. Sometimes it's because it's not a subject the editor likes. Sometimes it's because the editor had a fight with his partner right before he went to bed and saw your manuscript first thing in the morning. Sometimes it's because the editor used your manuscript as a coffee mat and had to throw it out after there was significant spillage. Sometimes it's because your story came in the same day John Updike's did and no matter how good it is, it will never beat out an even terrible story by Updike. Sometimes it's because you can't get your story past the Cerberus of literary magazines - a pale-skinned eighteen-year-old college intern with neither editorial nor life experience but a vicious grasp of the power of the red pen.

If you've been in the business of submitting your work for publication, then you've met your share of the above and probably more. Talent, never a bad thing to have, is not the be-all and end-all on the path to success. Luck has plenty to do with it. So does understanding how books are selected by editors. For me it has always been a mysterious process. Shouldn't the great writing always rise to the top? This might be true if there was no money involved, but alas, publishing is a business and has been a big business of national and multinational conglomerates since the 1970s. Some would say it has never been the same since. When Jason Epstein in 2001 wrote his treatise on the last fifty years of the book industry in Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future he said there were five major players running the book business in the United States - five. And so it gets more complicated than that. There are other mitigating factors.

"Isn't the process of selecting what gets published and what doesn't get published wholly subjective and controlled by mostly white men and women?"

So asked an angry young writer, his glasses pushed up against the bridge of his nose -and it wasn't me - at a workshop I attended ten years ago. I was young but much more naive and not in need of glasses, though I was a little angry at my seven years of foiled attempts at infiltrating the publishing systems' defenses.

I sat next to the rabble-rouser at the Old Chatham Writer's Workshop in upstate New York. We were in a large living room at an old Quaker Meeting House with a worn wooden floor covered by an old rose-patterned carpet, two barely padded sofas, and both soft and hard-backed chairs arranged in a large gallery-like circle beneath a high ceiling with exposed beams.

The six editors, all Caucasian, an equal number of men and women - the women with black and tan straight hair, some cut short in the fashion of the time; the men in glasses - shifted in their cushioned chairs. A few looked down at the carpet and studied the tangled thorns and petals spread out beneath their feet. One man, whose thinning hair drooped over his eyes as he looked down, bit into the thick skin of his thumb. Surrounded by other writers and publishing professionals, I leaned forward to hear what they would say.

"No," said a brave woman, black hair cut short, skin almost translucent. A patch of red colored her cheeks. "It's not about who is Black or white. It's about what is good literature and what is not. There is a standard, and it applies to all."

"But," the angry young writer continued passionately, flecks of spit landing on my arm, "what about the demographics of the book industry - who are the editors and agents? Who are the authors they are publishing? You are the arbiters of what people read and see as quality fiction. Isn't that true? Aren't you the true gatekeepers of what we consider art in fiction?"

"We can only work with what we are sent," said the man biting his thumb after spitting the extra skin out onto the carpet.

"But what about the manuscripts that aren't sent in the right format because the writer doesn't know what the right format is?"

"They can go to Barnes & Noble just like everybody else and do their homework. It's a business, and if you want to succeed in the business you have to follow the rules."

A number of heads nodded sagely at this old restating of the publishing canon.

"Still," the man continued, "we all can more or less agree to what is well-written so - "

Then an editor at a large publishing house - Publisher B - a black-haired and pot-bellied man, turned to face the thumb-biter, shaking his head, "I don't think we can."

"Of course we can, Jeremy. It's our job to know what good writing is."

There was quiet, nervous laughter.

Jeremy, the man from Publisher B, shifted in his chair for a moment as if unsure if he should push forward or retreat. Pushing his fingers back through his hair he made his decision. "Of course," he said. "You're right in one way - we're the arbiters of what's published and what's not. We say what's art and what's not because we choose what to publish. It's a huge responsibility and probably one of the reasons why we all love to do it."

I smiled, thinking, that took balls.

"It's who I think is good, and who you think is good," he said pointing at the translucent-skinned woman, "and there's no one standard on what is good literature and I'd say we rarely agree among ourselves which of the good pieces are the best pieces. And ... " he began, scanning each of his colleagues, "most of the editors I know are white, so it makes sense they'll be more open to writers that they, well, know. We have limited resources to buy with, so we're very selective and, well... subjective. I have two criteria for selecting a book. Do I love the work, and will it make any money? I wish I didn't have to think about the other but it's there whether I want it to be or not. It's got to do both, or I can't ask my company to buy it. It's just not like the old days when editors bought books because they believed in nurturing a promising writer hoping that some day they'd create their, our, great American novel.

And then sometimes we make mistakes. Do you remember a little book called How to make an American Quilt? I read it and passed on it. It just didn't do anything for me. What do I know about quilting? Besides, who would have thought a book about quilting would become a bestseller and then a hit movie? How did I know they'd put Winona Ryder in it? Even today if it came past my desk, I'd probably pass on it. I mean, you," he motioned to his colleagues, "tell me. You've all done it too, right?"

There was a murmur followed by a long silence.

In my peripheral vision I saw a woman walk in. Her hair was black and she wore glasses. She took a seat in the back to my right.

"And then," Jeremy plunged on, "there was Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. I passed on that too. I didn't know how to sell it. Sure, I could tell it was well-written, but what did I know about the Asian experience and how to sell it to a mainstream audience? I can only do what I know how to do. We're all limited in that way."

The crowd turned to look past me - towards the woman who had just sat down.

"Oh, shit," Jeremy said.

I looked to my right also. The man next to me whispered, "That's Amy Tan."

I nodded.

"Hi, Amy," Jeremy waved. "I won't pass on another of your books if you send it to me now ... I promise! I've learned a bit since then."

I sent two manuscripts to Jeremy at Publisher B not long after that. We'd talked a few moments at one of the communal meals and I'd found out that he'd grown up in the same town I had. Why not send my manuscripts to him? I'm white and male. We shopped at the same sports shop for football equipment when we were kids. I had networked and we were connected. He didn't bite on either manuscript. Still, those words and his honesty about the business of publishing have stayed with me for ten years.

At the Frankfurt book fair this fall the Korean exhibition was highlighted with a football-sized hall. "The idea is to bring cultures together," the Buchmesse PR Director Holger Ehling stated in a recent Publisher's Weekly, "and of course to build the relationships that will connect publishers and marketplaces, preferably worldwide."

Not many people showed up, even with the free food and spirits that were handed out. In response, a U.S. publishing cynic is quoted by Editor-in-Chief Ms. Sara Nelson in her column in the same issue as saying, "We have a hard enough time getting our own books to readers. Books in translation are a very hard sell."

Ms. Nelson then states - commenting on cultural exchanges at the Frankfurt Book Fair - "But publishing, for all its admirable, high-end and altruistic qualities, is not about politically correct favors, it is - or should be - about publishing books that will sell. The smart publishers already know this ... "

Hey, I bought Yi Munyol's Out Twisted Hero, and enjoyed it! Sure it was only one hundred and twenty pages but it was hard-cover and I laid out $21.95 for it. It had a quote from Salman Rushdie on the back and it got a good pre-publication review in Publisher's Weekly. I'm part of the buying public, aren't I?

So where' s the tie-in? You spend three years of your life, working late at night at this second or third job of yours, ignoring your significant other ("You're having a love affair with that damned computer!"), sometimes your kids ("Daddy, can you play with me now?"), and sometimes performing substandardly at your paying job because you can't keep your eyes open unless you're using mega-doses of coffee - liquid toothpicks - to finish your novel and then it enters a fun-house version of Dante's Inferno.

"I love your work, Joe. I really do. This book is like a cross between Don Delillo's Endzone and The Natural - but I don't know how to sell it. I asked everyone at the agency and they said the same thing. So I'm going to have to say no."

Since big business took over thirty years ago it's gotten tougher out there. Everybody knows this, and yet a recent informal poll I took of writers I know who've been to writer's conferences all said editors and agents are still shying away from voicing this salability aspect when it comes to feedback and advice about their fiction. "Write a great book that you're passionate about and send it to me." That's all they say. There's nothing about, "And make sure it has a good angle with a top demographic, preferably a heavy female audience - otherwise I won't be able to figure out how to sell the damned thing."

Oh, there are still rules. We still hear them sung from the highest conference podium. "Keep your first novel short, under 300 pages. People don't like to read long works."

Yet look at the tomes authors are putting on agents and editors desks these days. They're breaking all the rules and still making it. A recent book by a first novelist weighed in at over 1,350 pages. And look at the wonderful use of footnotes - "Never use footnotes in fiction" - as a narrative device in Jonathan Strange (thank you for breaking that rule even if it almost drove me crazy reading the small print). How many of you out there who've read the book read the footnotes? How many threw it across the floor? Threw it twice? More than five times? But damn, the stories within the stories gave that book incredible texture and depth.

I can't even begin to talk about what is selling in non-fiction because that is an alternate universe ruled not just by the dollar but by the tabloid story of the moment and the insanity of the masses - who, as my High School history teacher always used to tell us, "The masses are asses." Why else would a book like Why do Men Have Nipples be a best seller or Trudeau's Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About?

And so the question of discrimination based on race or gender remains. Is it commerce or is it discrimination that causes editors to pass on books like The Joy Luck Club? Sure, someone bought it eventually and it is a publishing phenomenon now. But what about the thousands of other books like it that are not picked up and die a slow dust-collecting death in a writer's closet? Is it a factor of who the editors are, what they look like and who they know? Well, who else selects the books that go to those all-important acquisitions meetings and subsequent Barnes & Nobles pitch sessions? That editor at Publisher B was not just being ballsy he was telling it like it is. He understands white privilege and was, for one brilliant moment, willing to speak of it in the sanctuary of the white business world we call publishing. But why doesn't he, when he encounters a good book outside of his knowledge base, find someone who knows the target population to help him with the acquisition process?

Ms. Nelson did the same thing for all humanity in her Publisher's Weekly column - fair play to her. But, she was using commerce to explain the acquisition decision. If the acquisition decisions are discriminatory, isn't that a problem? Aren't we missing out on art because many times it never reaches the hands of the those with buying power? Perhaps the first thing that should be done is to stop talking about standards and quality, because although that's part of the picture it has long since become a sideshow - commerce has been a white king for thirty years whether folks want to talk about it or not. The fantasy of an objective literary selection process needs to be put to rest - so the new one, which is out there somewhere, working its way out of a slush closet - can some day replace it.

The Nose Knows

Two competitive sports have dominated my life since I was in college - one is fencing and the other is rugby. They are what I am made of and they define me in ways that continue to surprise and enlighten me.

What have I learned from fencing that I can apply to my writing? Today I fence more competitively than I did twenty-four years ago, when I first picked up a blade. Fencing has more texture in it now. I'm more present, less overwhelmed with performance anxiety - less in a rush to simply play and more able to notice the nuances of the game. It is a pleasure of individual moments - the scoring of a touch from a parry riposté, the aching in my legs from muscles that are exhausted from extended bouts, the locker-room smell of my uniform when it has been soaked with sweat, the feel of the blade's grip against my wrist as I strap it down.

I used to play almost exclusively team sports, first football, then rugby. These days I don't need to be surrounded by a team. I have found that, having both failed and succeeded on my own many times over the years, I am not as afraid of failing by myself as I used to be. For a good part of my life the pressure of competing individually has been overwhelming. I competed in Judo and fencing and did not do well in either of them so I exited the competitive lists after short careers. I can still hear the audience chanting, "Choke, choke, choke," during my first and only Judo bout, as the pressure of my opponent's arm on my windpipe tightened and I started to see stars. Today I am no longer struck dumb by the pressure. I learned how to make peace with it through my work as a public speaker and as an actor doing improv work for five years where the pressure to come up with wit (something I'm not especially good at) was as intense as any stress I've ever experienced. And of course playing rugby - attempting to catch a ball as 250 pound forwards careen down field looking to separate you from the ball the moment you touch it - well, that's helped too.

I fence épée. It's been called an older man's weapon, and a thinking man's weapon. It's also a direct descendant of the weapon used in a duel, unlike both foil and sabre, which are far removed from their ancestors. I've never credited myself with being a thinker, but part of the joy of fencing for me now is that I do think when I fence. I study my opponents and try to apply what I can do, to what I know about them.

I think of each story I write as a puzzle that I have to solve. Novels, essays, short stories, plays - each is a puzzle of some kind that I have to play with, probe, attack and defend against, until I find its heart and pierce it. What I love about writing is my knowledge of and awareness of its texture - it's plot, it's structure, its story arc, the creation of characters through words. It's one thing to write and another to have some level of awareness of the process of writing, to feel poised over the discovery of a plot point that has eluded me for three drafts, or to be aware of the idea for a new novel and watch it percolate for a full year while I work on other projects because ithis one is not yet ready to be born.

What did I take from playing rugby for sixteen years? The ability to bludgeon myself time and time again in the hopes of scoring - even when the opposition is bigger, faster, and tougher - even when my nose has been broken and bloodied. My list of injuries stacks up pretty handily against the number of rejections I've received. Times my nose has been broken - twelve (hence my nickname - Joe Nose). Times I was rejected by agents before I signed with my first one - seventy-four. Number of stitches in my head - last count, over thirty. Number of short story rejections - over two hundred and fifty and counting. Number of other broken and dislocated bones - twelve. Number of times I've come home and checked phone, email, and snail-mail hoping to hear about a publication offer - five-thousand eight-hundred and forty-one - more or less.

If you've scored even one try playing rugby you'd understand why you keep chasing after the white ball - because you must. It's been said, writers write because they have to, but to succeed in writing you need something more. Sure, luck never hurt anybody but it doesn't keep you in the game year after year. Persistence is key. So is a nose for the try-line. Know when you're close and don't give up until you place the ball on the ground beneath the goalposts. As my rugby-mates used to say, "The nose knows."

When It's Cooked.

How do you know when your manuscript is finished? I think it's easier to tell when it's not. I've got two markers. 1) When I don't feel like working on it anymore, it's usually not finished. 2) When I've asked for only one reader to review it and that reader is my wife, it's usually not finished.

I can tell in my gut when a book is done. The problem is that many times I want to believe a book is finished even when it's not. I want an ending to work that just doesn't, or a chapter to stay in when it needs to be cut. For example, I cut a chapter from my latest book, Remise, that I spent about a month on - I'm a slow writer but it also needed lots of research to get the details just right. I spent hours in the library and on the Internet - Stork Club, 1940's, interior layout, menu, characters who might be there, story set-up. I loved what I wrote. My writer's group loved what I wrote. It was a great chapter ... for another book. I cut the whole thing, near thirty pages, and wrote another chapter to replace it - one that fit. It just about killed me but it had to be done. I knew it.

A book has an arc to it that I can feel in the air with my hands, that, if I close my eyes, I can see. I work off of a three-act structure that is real to me even if it is invisible. Every edit I do brings a manuscript closer to the size and shape it needs to be. It's the metaphysical part of writing that is done by your third eye. Sometimes I can find the final shape myself and other times I need a guide. That's where friends who are writers/good editors come in. An agent told me once, "Your work comes in without needing much editing - it comes in clean." That comment I've kept with me. Be patient, I tell myself. Wait. Wait until the work is in its final shape. Don't give up on the process. The publishing road is littered with the bones of those who gave up and those who tried to serve their meal half-cooked.

Beginnings

A fellow writer, colleague in the field of HIV/AIDS, and friend, wrote to me recently and asked me the following about my work; "Going back to the use of the word 'pell' in your memoir The Pell, have you used metaphors/descriptors from one interest to describe another? For example, what transferable skills from fencing have you applied to training ? What about a few tips in your blog for people with varying and maybe even conflicting interests; where's the intersection? How can one make it all fit for both work and pleasure?"

I didn't know how to answer her then, but I've thought about it much since, and I'm coming around to some conclusions. These questions about writing and further questions about the writing process are where I'll begin with this blog and see where they lead me. Feel free to comment or add as I go along.