A year or so ago, clicking on the desktop folder that housed
my manuscript THE WITCHES OF DORKDOM
released a few personal demons I was still battling. The book itself was
finished, but the disappointing attempts at getting the book published, and
then failing utterly, was not yet laid to rest. I was still choking and sputtering about the “what could have
been” in my life.
Great expectations, when not met, will do you in…but
mediocre expectations when not met destroy you even quicker.
I originally wrote the tweener’s novel (age 10 and up) in
2006, over 6 years ago. I asked a friend to read it, now a New York Times bestselling author, to
read it. Not only did this author read my unpublished tome but suggested it to
their own personal agent, something he rarely did. I was thrilled, humbled and
speechless to the point of immobility. All I could do was to sit around and
wait for his agent’s response.
It would surely be positive, wouldn’t it? After all, this
was of the agencies bestselling clients who praised my work. The agency was
bound to say yes.
I began to daydream, and soon fantasies of success enveloped
my every day. To be honest, daydreaming is something I never allow myself to
do, to feel good about my future. I am usually consumed on a daily basis by the
failures of my past.
Color me doom and gloom because any fantasy of mine is
likely a nightmare of the inevitable personal destruction. And I have a lifetime of observation to prove it (as
Abed so wisely pointed out about himself on the television show Community.)
So, thinking about the possibility of being successful was
new to me. Although I do well in corporate comedy, I don’t actually work a
lot…usually my agent has to track me down and ask me a few times if I’d like to
do a show. I either have my head in the clouds, in a book, or sometimes, up my
ass. But if THE WITCHES OF DORKDOM sold to a major publisher, I could finally
pay off my car and be debt-free. It took me to my mid-forties to pay off my
student loans. Why not be able to pay off a car in my late fifties? Wait a
minute! Maybe it would even sell to the movies! (By the way, this thinking
positive thing is very addictive and likely dangerous). Or maybe I could prove
everyone single person who had said I had no talent or told me “to be quiet and
not talk about my writing” even at family events, was wrong. Maybe I would
finally look good in their eye. Maybe I would …
How naïve I was. Most authors are. It’s why we writers are
able to write stories in the first place. We unconditionally believe in happy
endings.
Around a year after I submitted it (it took that long for
the agent to finally tell me her agency was not going to sign me) I felt like I
had been hit by a truck. Supposedly, it took that long because the agent was
dealing with business issues, reduced staff, etc. My manuscript was at the end
of a long list of To Do’s. But the real reason, in my opinion, I was dropped? I
was asked if I would change it to third person in case a publisher asked for
that to be done. Foolishly, I said no.
I wrote it in First Person for a reason. I couldn’t see it in another voiced than the
one it is and I had all these books planned. I know realize how pathetic that
made me look. Here I was, an unknown writer saying no to a suggestion.
If I had it to do all over again, I would have said yes, and
prayed that the publisher would even think to ask something so stupid. And if
they did, I would have rewritten in third person until I was so famous I could
tell publishers everywhere to go do to themselves what many couples do for
pleasure.
But I didn’t say yes, I said no. The relationship with the
agency ended and that was that.
But my pity party doesn’t end there. Almost immediately I
signed with a very large New York agency. I was assigned a young agent, around
23 or so I think by the sound of her voice who called me and thanked me for
writing such a ‘brilliant book’. She said they never get ‘books like the one
you sent.’ I truly believe she was convinced that the book would be snapped up
almost immediately, maybe even go into auction.
Actually, it didn't go anywhere except to a few publishers.
When it was rejected by 5 or 6 of the top publishers my agent, who was younger
than many of my shoes, immediately dropped it and refused to send it smaller
publishers, or even to the other larger ones. In my opinion, she was more
devastated than I was. If I remember correctly. I had to console her on the
phone after each rejection…or that may be just the memory this aging brain has
created. All I know is that I didn't feel consoled, at all.
Finally, I received an email stating she felt it wouldn't be
worth it to continue to try to sell the book.
I never heard from the young
“agent” again until a few years later when out the blue, I received what
I was assumed was a mass emailing to all of her email contacts in her online
address book, informing anyone who might be interested that she was now working
as a freelance editor.
I wasn't interested, at all.
At this point, I didn't know what to do. So I did what I normally do, nothing. And yes,
I know now that even a mistake is better than no action. Just like I know that
it would have been better to say yes to the third person rewrite. And I should
have knocked on every door out there. Instead, I put the folder into another
folder on my computer and didn’t look at the manuscript again. I didn't want to
self-publish it, not this book. Not after all the hopes and dreams I had had
for it. Now self-publishing has been very good to me, especially my book
HOTDISH TO DIE FOR, but, like a lot of authors, I wanted the big guns behind
me. Maybe if for nothing else than the bragging rights that come along with
saying, “Why yes, I've been published.”
And finally, years later, I am publishing the book on my
own. With the help of Marilyn Victor who did the incredible cover illustration
on THE WITCHES OF DORKDOM, and Donna Seline, who formatted the book, THE
WITCHES OF DORKDOM is now for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in one
book store in the United States, actually the best bookstore in the entire world,
Once Upon A Crime in Minneapolis.
Maybe it’s because of my pesky brain tumor that was
discovered this spring, or that the fact that I survived a mild stroke, that I
have this urgency for this book to be out there is the universe, not just
sitting in a file on the computer. I want this sweet and funny story .to be a
legacy of sorts. It really is a good book,
and would make a terrific gift (insert smiley face here)…but by getting
it out there it allows me to not only bury my past, but to begin to believe again
in possibilities and happy endings.
I need to let it be the book it was meant to be, a pretty
darn good tale that will entertain and daughters, sisters, nieces, mothers and
grandmothers…something I have been trying to do all my life.
I published “The Witches of Dorkdom” under the pen name Nora England, a
combination of my grandmothers’ names. If I can’t make me almost famous, maybe
I can make them.
And in case you're interested.....
