The Intern

where INTERN lives now

2012-01-24T15:43:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend moved to a small town in northern California, where they are renting a shadowy nook on the grounds of a failing ecovillage. INTERN has passed through this town many times on cold and wet hitchhiking trips up and down the coast, but never dreamed she would live here. Now, she's the one waving at hitchhikers, but never driving far enough to take them anywhere they want to go.

It's a very good place place to be a writer, or anyone on the lookout for stories. You can sit in the coffeeshop and listen in awe and dismay as baby-faced highschool seniors discuss their upcoming bachelorette parties, or eavesdrop on pot growers griping about how much further the price of a pound plummets each year.

You can linger in the cluttered aisles of the tiny health food store while a barrel-chested back-to-the-lander expounds on his methods for harvesting wild yeast for homemade ginger beer. You can walk down the road to drink unusually strong gin and tonics in a huge, vacant bar decked out with logging photographs, and walk home again feeling like you've really done something with the evening, even though you haven't.

One of your neighbors beats a drum every morning and leaves gifts of bundled sage on your doorstep; the other one thoughtfully informs you of the best nights to go to the casino at the rez. The local newspaper consists almost exclusively of stream-of-consciousness letters-to-the-editor from people who have grown used to having their bizarreness tolerated and even celebrated by the rest of the community. As you read them, reality peels away. If these people are OK, you think to yourself, maybe I'm not doing so bad.

It's been a long time since INTERN has lived in a place where one can feel productive just by sitting on the curb and absorbing, knowing that something interesting is bound to happen or appear or amble up the sidewalk and tell a knock-knock joke. As a writer, INTERN often feels anxious about producing enough: enough blog posts, enough chapters, enough articles, enough tweets. But simply being is productive too, or can be. At least, that's what INTERN's been telling herself over the course of many hours loitering on the street.

**

INTERN wants to know: What's the most interesting place you've ever lived? Why is it that the world feels so rich and observable at some times and in some places but not in others? How important is lived experience to writing?

dinner with literary agents

2012-01-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, INTERN had the hallucinatorily good luck of being invited to dinner with an entire table full of young, up-and-coming literary agents. INTERN hardly made a squeak the whole evening, so content was she to be a fly on the wall to their conversation (she was also trying very hard not to drip tomato sauce down her shirt.) Today, INTERN would like to share with you a few observations from that delightful evening.

It's a reaaaally small world.

Everyone says publishing's a small world, but nothing brings it home more than a roomful of agents from different agencies going "Did you get that query about the time-traveling tabby cat?" "Yeah!" "Me too!" "So did I!" "I requested the full!" "What did you think of the sample pages?"

You will be pleased (and, INTERN hopes, not surprised) to know that the above exchanges never consisted of making fun of someone's query or manuscript, but were made in the spirit of comparing notes, the same way writers compare notes over requests, rejections, and offers of rep.

Publishing, by definition, is the act of making your writing public. That begins with your query. Agents read; agents talk. As if you needed another reason to put your best foot forward in everything you write.

Competition for writers is fierce.

As writers, we like to think we have a monopoly on wallflowerdom—watching our manuscript sit on the shelf while every other manuscript gets whisked off to dance. But agenting can feel like that too, especially when you're just starting out.

"I offered rep the second I finished the manuscript, but she'd already signed with so-and-so!" "We talked on the phone for two hours and I thought I had him for sure!" "The time-traveling cat manuscript went to the Paradox McBean Agency—did you hear?"

It's tempting to imagine that agents have it easy—they just sit around on velvet pillows rejecting manuscripts until something tempting comes along, at which point they simply pluck it out of the air like a ripe mango! But the truth is, there are plenty of other agents reaching for that same mango, and you can watch an awful lot of mangoes go to other agents before you finally win.

You are being scouted.

Ever post your work on AbsoluteWrite, Verla Kay, or another popular critique forum? Agents (at least the young, ambitious, web-savvy ones INTERN had the pleasure of hanging out with) scout writers from these websites more often than INTERN would have guessed. The market for great manuscripts (not "any manuscripts"—great ones!) is so fierce that some agents don't want to wait for writers to come to them. These agents use forums to find promising writing and, in some cases, request materials.

INTERN knows from experience that agents and publishers also scout non-fiction authors, although this is more likely to take place from published magazine or blog articles than from writing forums.

It's a hard game for everyone.

In the same way most writers hold down day jobs while they're struggling to make their first (or second, or third) sale, agents who are just starting out don't exactly have it easy. 15% of 1 or 2 book sales isn't very much, and until an agent has developed a strong list of clients and book sales, he or she might be working behind the coffee bar, right next to you (ever asked your fellow barista what he does on the side?)

This being said, agents have a pretty sweet job. In her next life, INTERN wants to be one. All those wine-soaked conferences! All those lunches with editors! So much tasty gossip it makes Gawker look like Watchtower Magazine! Oh, and that whole part about selling books.

Conclusion

So what divine secrets should aspiring writers take away from all this? Play nice. Write your best. Know that agents are just people (unusually intelligent and strikingly attractive people, but still—just people) and they truly want to discover great writing. Maybe even yours.

a very happy New Years update!

2012-01-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

Huzzah! 'Tis twenty-twelve! INTERN hopes you all had a very happy New Year full of sparkly hats and treacherous discount champagne. INTERN had a fine winter holiday during which she went 99% laptop free. Now that she's plugged herself back in, here's the news:

1. In a few days, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend will be moving to a highly dubious "ecovillage" in Northern California, where they will be contractually obligated to engage in a weekly drum circle with their newfound "community". Said ecovillage features such eco-friendly amenities as an "outdoor shower" (actually a rusty bucket full of rainwater) and a shed full of hula hoops. Why is INTERN moving to such a place? 'Cause that's what you get for surfing the housing ads on Craigslist at 2 AM on Christmas Eve after Techie Boyfriend's mother has mixed you too many pomegranate martinis. That's why.

3. INTERN got a Nook for Christmas and so has officially dipped her paw in the e-book revolution. While riding various planes, trains, and ferries over the holidays, INTERN realized that the worst part about e-readers isn't the reading-on-a-screen part (which is actually quite pleasant), but the fact that you can't sneak a glance at what a fellow passenger is reading (no cover or spine!) INTERN never realized how much she enjoyed scoping out other people's reading material until so many people started using Kindles and Nooks, at which point it became nearly impossible. Humph.

5. In other news, INTERN has decided to reinvent herself as an obscure Language poet known only by the pen name B'nan (like "banana" but so much more experimental). Look out for hand-stapled, limited edition chapbooks by B'nan showing up at a Walmart near you (yes, at a Walmart—B'nan is nothing if not a master of irony!) B'nan will also be available for live readings provided that a dinner of poached eel and pickled eggs is made available in the green room.

7. INTERN is also contemplating writing a line of business-and-marketing ebooks under the pen name Chad B. Winning (which sounds rather businessy to INTERN's ears). Said ebooks will be mostly fluff with the occasional pull quote taken randomly from a famous-quotations website and having no bearing whatsoever on the topic at hand. INTERN will also produce a series of business-and-marketing Webinars consisting of pitches for future Webinars. You are all invited to join INTERN in the tropical compound she will invariably purchase as a result of these enterprises.

9. But seriously—ecovillage. If you thought INTERN's hair was matted before, check again in a month.

That's all INTERN's news for today. What escapades, japes, and capers did you get up to over the holidays? INTERN wants to know!

now that INTERN has turned in her latest revision...

2011-12-12T11:50:00.001-08:00

...she is going to:

1. Check herself into the nearest Sanitorium.

2. Change out of and possibly wash the black fleece Revision Pants she has been wearing for six weeks.

3. Eat something that hasn't been sitting in a #%@$#$ crockpot for a week and a half.

4. Apologize to the people she has alienated, snarled at, and/or wept on over the course of said Revision.

5. Learn a new juggling trick.

6. Identify a new sort of wild mushroom.

7. Make plans to write a second novel that is infinitely simpler, neater, and more obedient than the first one. A foolproof novel! A novel that will require no Revision whatsoever! A novel that will come out of the box pre-assembled and smelling like glue!

8. A novel that won't wrap INTERN up in a poisonous cocoon of self-doubt and despair! A novel that will leave INTERN feeling like a genius every time she writes instead of a bumbling hack! A novel that will assuage all INTERN's fears and insecurities! A novel made of gold!

9. Search India suitcase for leftover Valium.

10. Watch some Christmas specials.

11. Go for a walk.

12. Look up "perspective" in the dictionary.

everything INTERN needs to know about revision, she learned from her phlebotomist

2011-12-02T10:10:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, INTERN wandered into a blood drive and signed up on a whim. The day was young; the cookies looked good; INTERN had nothing better to do.

The phlebotomist was a sandy-haired Viking in a long white coat who entertained INTERN with phlebotomy fun facts as he set her up on a rolling table and installed the needle. However, things got less fun from there.

Once the needle was in, INTERN lay on the table for what seemed like forever. Her arm ached like hell. Her blood dawdled out sluggishly. The lights on the ceiling buzzed. The phlebotomist wandered away to gossip with the Red Cross volunteer at the sign-in table. But INTERN's spirits were held aloft by the idea that all this discomfort was for the greater good.

When the phlebotomist came back from chatting up the sign-in volunteer, he unceremoniously yanked the needle out of INTERN's arm.

"What happens now?" said INTERN. "Is my blood going into the blood bank?"

"Nope," said the Viking, tossing INTERN's bag of blood aside like a loaf of moldy bread.

"What do you mean 'nope'?"

"We can't use it. Too thick. Next time, drink more water before you come in."

INTERN couldn't believe her ears. After all this waiting...all this aching...

"So what happens to blood you can't use?"

"We throw it out."

"YOU'RE THROWING OUT MY BLOOD???"

This was an outrage! This was unbelievable! Nobody throws out INTERN's blood! Especially not after making her lie on some table for an hour and a half!

INTERN's facial expression communicated as much, whereupon the Viking handed her a Star Wars band-aid and let her in on a little secret.

"Don't worry, lady. You'll make more."

Editors have been saying the same thing to writers from time immemorial.

When INTERN feels reluctant, indignant, rageful or wistful about cutting yet another scene from yet another draft of a WIP, she tries to remember that words are to writers as blood is to...well, everyone: We make more. That's just what we do.

Even though it's hard to see your blood thrown on the stink barge, it's good to know there's more where that came from. And if you drink more water this time, it might even end up in the bank.

all your e-mail are belong to us: in which independent bookstores get digital rabies

2011-11-30T22:52:00.000-08:00

The other day, INTERN found a trampled but still legible coupon on the sidewalk for 15% off any book at a charming local bookstore on the little island she is temporarily calling home.

"Huzzah!" exclaimed INTERN. "What a find!"

She stuck it in her purse along with various other sidewalk finds (feathers, pennies, someone's bifocals) and went along her merry way.

Today, INTERN went to the bookstore and picked out a book to give to her big sister for Christmas (The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes, in case you're curious—INTERN's big sister is a crafty lady). When INTERN took her purchase to the counter, she presented the friendly clerk with her coupon.

That's when things got peculiar.

"Write down your e-mail here so we can keep you updated on our events," said the (really very friendly) clerk.

"Oh, no thanks," said INTERN cheerfully. "I'm just visiting."

"You'll still want to know about our events," said the clerk.

"Oh, but—I mean, I'm not going to BE here. I'm moving to California," explained INTERN.

"Yeah," said the clerk, "but you'll want to stay updated on our events."

This was turning into some kind of bizarre stand-off. INTERN began to flail a little.

"But—I'll be living in my van. In California. This is literally the only time I'm ever going to be near this store."

"Doesn't matter."

She tapped the sign-up sheet for the e-mail list.

At this point, INTERN decided there must be something sinister going on. Perhaps the store had some kind of policy whereby employees would be fed to the hogs for letting customers escape with their contact information unharvested. If so, INTERN certainly didn't wish to responsible for this nice woman's demise. She scribbled down her e-mail address (yes, her real one—INTERN will never learn...) and hurried out of the store before the clerk could shake her down for a Facebook like as well.

**

This was a fairly benign experience as such experiences go, but it speaks to a larger phenomenon of people, businesses, and institutions jumping on the e-newsletter and/or social media bandwagon in an ineffective and slightly ridiculous manner.

The e-mail harvesting craze reminds INTERN of the time last winter she decided to make acorn meal. Like a greedy squirrel, INTERN gathered all the acorns she could find, conveniently overlooking the fact that some of them had black spots, some of them had been sitting on the ground for months, and some of them weren't the edible kind at all. At the end of the day, she had an impressive pile of acorns, of which only a tiny handful were actually suitable for human consumption. They ended up rotting in a bowl until Techie Boyfriend threw them outside.

You can have ten thousand newsletter subscribers and not reach a single person. What matters more than numbers is connecting with people who actually care. And for that you need to be a discerning squirrel, not a greedy one. Certainly not a rabid one!

INTERN is all for bookstores (and writers, and publishers) doing everything they can to connect with readers. But unless we're smart about it, all we're going to end up with is a pile of rotten acorns—or a bunch of newsletters for events happening 800 miles away.

**

Are you weirded out by having your e-mail address wheedled, bullied, or bribed out of you? Does anyone actually READ e-newsletters? Where do you draw the line between reaching your target audience and reaching some poor sap who doesn't know you from a spammer? INTERN wants to know!

thank you

2011-11-23T13:47:00.000-08:00

...for all the tweets and comments and celebratory e-mails. INTERN feels like she has hundreds of fairy godpeople helping and poking and waving their wands as she stumbles her way towards published noveldom, and that is a magical feeling indeed.

In case you are curious, here are some questions and answers about INTERN's forthcoming books!

Q: Isn't summer 2013, like, a year and a half away? Why the long wait?

A: The summer 2013 pub date is timed to coincide with INTERN's release from the maximum security women's prison from which she has been writing this blo—oh wait, that's some other intern.

It would take an entire post to explain the logic behind pub dates. Most importantly in INTERN's case, the summer 2013 pub date for Book 1 gives INTERN more time to write a brilliant Book 2 (not a sequel) in time for summer 2014.

INTERN is still getting the hang of novels. She's inefficient, delusional, and frequently confused. This timeline gives INTERN more time to develop as a writer—well worth the longer wait.

Q: But publishing as we know it won't even exist after the 2012 apocalypse!

A: This is why MIDNIGHT AT THE RADIO TEMPLE is written entirely in Mayan characters.

Q: Is the manuscript finished?

A: Actually, INTERN is up to her nostrils in revisions and is at this very moment grappling with the dreaded Athenian Novel Paradox. Every night, Techie Boyfriend talks her out of yet another ~~genius~~ completely wacky revision "solution" (what if the novel is REALLY supposed to be told from the point of view of the azalea bushes?!?), hiding INTERN's laptop as necessary.

Q: How long has this been in the works?

A: Oh, let's see. INTERN had the idea for the novel about a year and a half ago, wrote most of it while living in this van, did her queries while living on Rattlesnake Ranch, and accepted Harper's offer in August just before leaving for India.

Now that the proverbial squirrel is out of the suitcase, INTERN is happy to answer questions about her own experiences with querying/going on submission/etc, although such things vary so wildly from person to person that they are better saved for entertainment purposes than used as a roadmap for anyone else.

Q: What's in the future for INTERN?

Lots of revisions. Lots of freaking out. Lots of going for long, distracted walks through muddy Northwest forests. In another few months, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend will be living in their van again, leading INTERN to rename her novel MIDNIGHT AT THE WALMART PARKING LOT.

In short, nothing has changed...

**

Have more questions? Fire away in the comments! Otherwise, INTERN wishes you a very happy Thanksgiving!

midnight unmasking ceremony

2011-11-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

*eats dragon fruit*

*burns sage*

*dons ceremonial robes*

*shakes ceremonial rattles*

*reads relevant passages from the Tao te Ching*

*steals glance at clock*

*counts to three*

*scampers into the moonlight*

*gambols*

At this point, participants who wish to discover INTERN's "real identity" (as well as a totally unfounded rumor about this blog being defunct) are spirited over to this page (scroll down to the fifth item in the list).

Otherwise, here's the news:

Huzzah! Novels! Gamboling! Dragon fruit for all!

hedonic treadsorcery!

2011-11-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

INTERN was so impressed by this thought experiment at Kristan Hoffman's blog that all she feels like doing today is telling every writer she knows to try it.

And that is SERIOUSLY all.

Help a Writer Out: In Praise of Mutual Aid

2011-11-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

When INTERN was in college, she had the extreme good fortune of having a best friend whose parents were writers and well-connected in Vancouver’s small press scene. When INTERN expressed an enthusiasm for all things literary, they casually and with no great fanfare took her under their wing.

Over the next three years, they introduced INTERN to poets and editors in their literary circle. Lent her a constant stream of obscure books. Helped her produce her first chapbook. Let her tag along to readings and book launches. They were (and are) great people and the best mentors an aspiring writer could have asked for.

INTERN spent the weekend visiting these mentor-friends in Vancouver and also soaking in/trying to get a grasp on the Occupy fervor that has bubbled up in that city like so many others (have you guys seen Occupy Writers? Lemony Snicket!). And it made INTERN think about all the ways we can help each other, as writers and as people.

1. Introduce writer-friends to one another!

Sometimes it feels like the only way to gain access to Serious Writers and writer-friends is to join an MFA program. The other pros and cons of MFA programs aside, this is downright ridiculous. We shouldn’t have to buy the company of other writers because it’s too hard to meet one another on our own.

Instead, let’s play match-maker ourselves. Introduce a poet to an editor to a short story writer to a critique partner to a Pulitzer-winning novelist. We shouldn’t need to take out massive loans to make fruitful literary connections—all we need is one another’s good will.

2. Lend a writer-friend a book!

Let’s thrust books into one another’s arms, yelling READ THIS! Let’s raid each other’s libraries on a weekly basis. Let’s drop books in the mail at the slightest provocation.

3. Take a writer-friend seriously!

Serious Writers come in all different forms—published, unpublished, self-published, old, young, university professor, highschool dropout. Taking someone seriously no matter where they fall on that spectrum can make all the difference between launching a new writer-friend into the world and watching them give up.

4. Help a writer-friend in crisis!

We’re all crazy and broke and uninsured and dying of lyme disease and on the verge of becoming homeless. Let’s give each other a ride, a meal, a safe place to stay, and a friendly ear.

5. Share your skills!

Help a writer-friend with book promotion! Design a self-published writer-friend’s cover! Show a writer-friend how to use a printing press! Look over a writer-friend’s residency application!

6. Share the cake!

Umm, literally. If INTERN comes to your book launch and there’s no cake left, things WILL get messy, mutual aid or no mutual aid.

in which INTERN wrestles with a viper

2011-11-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

INTERN is bored of Scandalous Revelations (and talking about herself in general) so today let's talk about snakes.

The poet Rumi has a great story about a traveler who was about to put on his shoe when an eagle swooped down and snatched it.

"Goddamit!" said the traveler, shaking his gnarled fist. "Stinkin' eagle stole my stinkin' shoe!"

Just then, he watched as a poisonous viper fell out of the shoe the eagle had snatched, and realized that the loss of his shoe had prevented an even greater calamity, namely being fanged on the toe by a poisonous viper.

Sometimes things that feel like setbacks are actually benevolent eagles swooping down to stop you from doing something really, really stupid. And sometimes things that feel like successes are actually tests of your ability to wrestle with the viper on your own.

Sometimes, INTERN feels like each person has a different question dominating his/her life—"Am I a good person?" or "Am I living right?" or "Am I striving hard enough in my art?". And sometimes you freak out and instead of those big questions, your life gets taken over by small ones: "Do I have enough Twitter followers?" "Am I popular enough?" "What if that eagle comes back and steals my other shoe?"

INTERN read a short article in the New York Times yesterday by author Thomas Glave, weighing in on Amazon's push into the publishing world:

And now, as things become more dire for writers who want to develop into actual artists, Amazon, the behemoth that fears no one, enters the fray. Can Amazon’s profit-centered forays provide a healthy space for writers?

Amazon aside, this left INTERN's skull ringing: What DOES constitute a healthy space for writers who want to develop into actual artists? And to what extent do any these shiny things we dabble in—blogging, online writing forums, Twitter—actually hinder our development as artists?

Sometimes, INTERN frets that her writer-friends who toil in internet obscurity are somehow purer as writers than INTERN can ever be. They must be so much less distracted by superficial worries or equally superficial victories. They must really, truly worship at the altar of literary Quality, in the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance sense, in a way that INTERN is terrified she slips from. The internet provides writers with such a lively and supportive community—but are we helping each other ask the big questions? Or unwittingly fueling an endless parade of small ones?

Now, more than ever, writers can bombard themselves with comparisons. All you have to do is jump on Twitter to see who just got an agent, who just signed a mega-deal, who's having their novel turned into a play turned into a movie turned into a video game turned into a McDonald's toy. You find yourself thinking, "I NEED to get HUGE!" instead of "I need to work humbly for as long as it takes." And when you see the eagle swooping down out of the corner of your eye, you jump up and say "Fuck off, eagle!" And you tell yourself whatever viper's coiled up in there—vanity, emptiness, losing sight of the big questions—is worth keeping that shoe on your foot.

INTERN worries about these things. She worries about them all the freaking time. But she also believes that we CAN create a healthy space for one another to become true artists, no matter which technologies we're using, or else she wouldn't be writing this.

We can help each other ask the big questions, and we can help each other strive to be better artists, and we can help each other shake the vipers out of our shoes.

And we can do it in the digital age.

Week 'o' Scandalous Revelations, Part 2: Truth and the Anonymous Blogger

2011-11-08T10:44:00.001-08:00

One of the most frequently asked questions INTERN has gotten about this blog since its inception in April 2009 is "How much of it is true?"

When people ask this question, they are often referring to the more outlandish tales, such as yesterday's scandalous revelation or the time INTERN accidentally ingested part of Vampire Roommate's evil spirit absorbing tablets in her midday snack.

The funny thing is, the stuff that makes you say "Reaaaaally?" is the true stuff. It's the mundane details that INTERN has fiddled with—dates/times/genders/locations/ordering of events/identifying details of people and institutions—in order to respect the privacy of the people and institutions she's depicted. When she started this blog, INTERN was downright PETRIFIED of being discovered by her place of internment (she remains sworn to secrecy to this day). She therefore took great care to anonymize the crap out of every possible detail. Publishing's a tiny world, and there's a reason so many publishing bloggers are anonymous. Also, it's just plain fun.

There is also the matter of the untruths cooked up by readers' imaginations, which INTERN cannot control. Newcomers to this blog tend to assume that INTERN currently resides in New York City, when in fact she is writing this post from an abandoned houseboat on a small island off the Washington coast (and getting DAMNED SEASICK in the process). Recently, INTERN has seriously considered about adding some kind of sticker to her blog that says DOES NOT LIVE IN NYC, but that seems unnecessarily belligerent...

Then there are all those posts about writing, which are, of course, entirely fictitious.

**

INTERN will be taking a break from Scandalous Revelations tomorrow but returning on Thursday!

Week 'o' Scandalous Revelations, Part 1: An Uncensored History of This Blog

2011-11-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

As you may know from Friday's post, INTERN's days as an anonymous blogger will soon be coming to an end. In approximately a week's time, INTERN will be forced to step out from behind her Wizard of Oz smokescreen and reveal herself to all of you as the lowly Helga von Spinklehorn, hunchbacked, far-sighted, and possessed of the most enormous set of fangs you've ever seen.

INTERN is scared shitless. But also a little relieved. Because while anonymity bestows many freedoms, it can also make things feel a little, oh, impersonal after a while, and for a long time now INTERN has been craving the ability to share herself in a way she has so far been unable to do.

But first, INTERN promised you Scandalous Revelations. So here is the first one.

Scandalous Revelation No. 1: What's the Deal With That Photo?

If you've been reading INTERN's blog for a while, you may have noticed this photo in the upper left hand corner:

The appearance of this blog has remained unchanged for so long that INTERN has long stopped noticing it herself. But the truth is that this highly undignified photo contains the scandalous backstory of how INTERN ended up dabbling in publishing at all.

A few months before starting her first publishing internship (and this blog), INTERN was an itinerant hitchhiker seeking her fortunes in the USA post-university. She had recently landed in a certain illustrious City and commenced a whirlwind romance with Techie Boyfriend, and was now in need of both Funds and Gainful Employment.

After searching unsuccessfully for Real Jobs and failing to hear back from several internships, a fed up (and slightly manic) INTERN saw a job posting on craigslist for actresses for a (quote) respectful, safe, and all-female Adult Movie company. The pay? A thousand bucks per six-hour session.

"WHY NOT?" said INTERN, barely twenty-two and hungry for adventure. "Beats temping at some boring office!"

She ran across the street to the payphone and set up a meeting with the director, then ran back to the apartment and enlisted an extremely reluctant Techie Boyfriend to take a few photos proving that she was more or less female and not so hunchbacked as all that.

The very next day (these things move FAST when you're twenty-two and recently off meds and very, very gleefully stoked on life) INTERN met the Adult Movie Director at a pizza place, then went for a tour of the Studio. The director was a barrel-chested European man with long curly porn-director hair (conveniently the only non-female member of the company). INTERN, being a curious sort of person, asked a million questions and was generally delighted just to get an inside glimpse of the Adult Movie world, even though she had no prior interest in or experience with Adult Movies and hadn't thought any of this through for a single nanosecond.

That night when INTERN checked her e-mail there were two messages.

One was from the Adult Movie company offering INTERN a thousand-bucks-a-session job.

The other one was from a publishing house offering INTERN an unpaid internship.

Hot damn!

Opportunity was really knocking now. Was it going to be brains or booty? Had there ever really been a choice?

INTERN wrote to the publisher saying she'd come in on Monday, and to the Adult Movie company saying she'd had second thoughts about her career.

But the whole experience made INTERN think. If people were willing to pay top dollar for her scrawny, snaggle-toothed body, SURELY she could find a way to make a living off her brain.

INTERN started this blog as a way to keep that promise. The photo in the corner was INTERN's idea of an inside joke—a wink to all the crazy, impulsive, gloriously irresponsible whims at the heart of every adventure.

**

Stay tuned this week as the Scandalous Revelations continue to fly. And, um, please don't tell INTERN's mom about the real reason she ended up in publishing.

a very short post about a very big decision

2011-11-04T17:28:00.001-07:00

Due to a variety of Recent Developments of which INTERN will explain more in due course, INTERN has arrived at a point where it will soon no longer be practical (or indeed, desirable) to keep this blog anonymous.

INTERN is therefore declaring a Week 'o' Startling Revelations starting on Monday, culminating in a dramatic and shocking Unmasking to take place slightly later this month. Ladies and Gentlemen who are prone to fainting spells are encouraged to bring their own smelling salts.

But WHY?

HOW?

WHEN?

WHERE?

Not to mention, WHO?

Stay tuned as the revelations start to fly...

the kindle swindlers; thoughts on ebook piracy

2011-11-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

When INTERN and Techie Boyfriend were trekking in Nepal, the heaviest thing in INTERN’s pack was a copy of Vikram Seth’s 1500-page A Suitable Boy, recommended by several clever and tasteful readers of this blog. That book was the size of a dorm room mini-fridge—INTERN could have survived in the Himalayas for weeks just by licking the ink. Attempts to sneak it into Techie Boyfriend’s pack resulted in immediate discovery and expulsion.

So when INTERN spied a fellow trekker reading a Kindle at the tea house that night, she accosted him immediately.

“How d’you like that thing?” INTERN said, helping herself to a chair at the table.

He looked up, smiling. He was a blond-haired sales and marketing type from somewhere in the southeast. His face spoke of leadership seminars and rugy.

“It’s great!” he said. “Ever since I bought it, I haven’t paid for a single book.”

“Oh, like you’re reading classics on Project Gutenburg?” said INTERN. She had met a butcher, once, in small-town Oregon, who read Dickens on his Kindle when business was slow.

Sales and Marketing beamed.

“No, there’s these websites where you can download new books the same way you download movies.”

INTERN’s expression shifted from friendly curiosity to suspicion. Her formidable eyebrows knit, and she leaned forward on her elbows.

“You mean you pirate them.”

He nodded, unaware of INTERN’s growing wrath*. “Yup. I figure the Kindle’s paid for itself about three times over already, just from all the money I’ve been saving on books.”

He took a sip of his Everest, giving out a yelp of surprise as the bottle shattered in his hands, the beer spilling all over his Kindle, which began to hiss and smoke and then melt into a puddle of black plastic and metal on the wooden table.

“What? WHYYYYY?” Sales and Marketing shouted. “Why did you do this, INTERN? Why me?”

But INTERN was already stalking away, her laser gun clinking softly at her side.

**

E-book pirating makes INTERN mad for obvious reasons: INTERN is a writer and has many writer-friends. But it’s a sheepish, ambivalent kind of mad: after all, INTERN downloaded music in college (though she has since sworn off it) and still enjoys the occasional ill-gotten movie (but does using your friend’s Netflix account now and then really hurt anyone?). Come to think of it, there’s probably a program or two on her computer that wasn’t strictly paid for (but it’s OK if it’s from a giant corporation, right?)

Laser gun fantasies aside, the truth is that INTERN can’t summon up as much righteous ire for people who download pirated ebooks as she would like to. Because she understands only too well their justifications. In a culture where “everybody’s doing it,” you feel like a sucker for paying for something everyone else is getting for free. Eventually, you get so used to getting that something for free that you feel downright outraged when someone asks you to pay for it.

“I’m not paying seventeen ninety-nine for a friggin’ album,” you sputter, as if someone told you they were going to start charging you three dollars a night to sleep in your own bed.

Somehow, it’s started feel like you’re the one in the right, and the music business is the greedy interloper trying to snatch back something that “should” be free.

INTERN and Techie Boyfriend have a younger friend, a real scrappy kid who isn’t above stealing a bottle of wine or a bike part here and there. One day, Techie Boyfriend asked him how he psyched himself up to steal something. Didn’t he feel guilty?

“No, man,” said the kid. “You just need to believe you deserve to get it, and it’s easy.”

**

How do people who wouldn’t steal a book off the shelf at Elliot Bay justify downloading pirated ebooks?

Easy.

Digital products (like ebooks or mp3s) are like a big outdoor concert. You and your friends want to see the bands, but you don’t want to buy a $35 wristband, so you sneak in. Who does it hurt? It’s not like there’s a finite amount of music. The paying customers don’t get any less because you snuck in. As for the band? Well, if you hadn’t been able to sneak in, you wouldn’t have bought tickets anyway, so it really doesn’t make a difference either way.

Whereas stealing a physical book reduces a finite amount of books on the shelf by one, ebooks and other digital forms seem infinite. Stealing one doesn’t appear to reduce the stock—so how is it stealing? Besides, you wouldn’t have bought the book anyway…(or is that bullshit? Maybe you would have bought the book in 1980, but now you feel entitled to it for free. Better not think about that…)

**

How big an impact will ebook pirating have on writers and publishers over the next few years? And is there any way to preserve a mindset of book-buying in a culture that sees digital theft as harmless?

As someone who has seen her own work available for download on a torrent site, INTERN will be watching the ebook revolution with some wistfulness. But as a person whose own hands have been far from clean, INTERN can’t deny her own culpability in creating the culture that put it there.

**

How concerned are you about ebook pirating? Have you seen your books on pirate sites? Can authors do anything to reverse the tide? Will the benefits of ebook sales outweigh the losses of ebook pirating? INTERN wants to know!

*At this point, you may be wondering if INTERN invented this anecdote simply to serve the purposes of this blog post, but INTERN can assure you that so far everything she has related is 100% true. The culprit’s favorite book in the entire universe? “The Four Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferris. Which should tell you something about his aspirations. *sniffs snootily.*

Halloween Special: INTERN's Guide to Royalty Statements

2011-10-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

This morning, INTERN found a blood-stained envelope stuffed under the door of her cabin. When she opened it, a royalty statement tumbled out, accompanied by a frantic note:

HELP. PUBLISHER TRYING TO KILL ME.

When INTERN inspected the royalty statement more closely (as you can do by clicking on it), she began to see why...

The royalty statement contained all the usual contents (a quick glossary is included below to jog your minds). But how to explain the sinister royalty rate of 6.66%? Or the curious use of the number 8 in the word "St8tement?"

INTERN wanted to believe that this chilling royalty statement was the work of a psychopath...but alas, it was practically indistinguishable from pretty much EVERY royalty statement INTERN has seen, right down to the blood stains.

Confused? Here's how to decipher the statement:

Royalty Statement Glossary

Regular sales – Low Discount: The number of books sold at a "low discount" to bookstores etc.

Regular sales -High Discount: The number of books sold at a bigger discount to
chains, book clubs, etc.

Regular sales – Five Finger Discount: The number of books stolen by local hoodlums

Reserve Against Returns: Amount of $ your publisher is witholding in case bookstores send back unsold boxes of books.

Reserve Against Martinis: Amount of $ your publisher is witholding for Happy Hour.

Total Copies Sold: The number of books your adoring readership has shelled out for.

Total Copies Sold To Your Mom: The number of books your mother has secretly stockpiled in the basement.

$100,000,000,000: The amount of money you figured your book would probably make in its first year.

$40,000: The amount of money you WOULD be making per year if you had chosen a reasonable profession like teaching or dental hygiene.

3.14159: Pi.

1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21: Fibbonaci sequence.

14, 6, 22, 31, 5): Your lucky numbers as revealed by a fortune cookie the accountant was munching on while preparing your royalty statement.

**

INTERN wishes you a happy Halloween—trade you snickers for reeses...

don't shoot the acquisitions editor: a traveler's guide to rejection

2011-10-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

When traveling in places like India and Nepal, you are quickly and quite against your will forced into the role of a Rejector (unless you want to come home with six dozen sarees, an altar's worth of Ganesh figurines, three or four dubious musical instruments and a pound of hashish). This gave INTERN new sympathy for the Rejectors in publishing, whose experience, INTERN imagines, must be something similar...

Imagine yourself in a crowded marketplace where you are shopping for shoes. Spread out before you are dozens of stalls where local cobblers are hard at work, surrounded by heaps of colorful shoes in all different sizes and styles.

"Oh man!" you think to yourself, your heart tingling with anticipation. "This is going to be the BEST DAY!"

You LOVE shoes. Nothing makes you happier than finding the perfect pair. You take shoe shopping so seriously it's practically your job. You stride towards the first stall, drawn at once towards towards a leather sandal in a style you haven't seen before.

Noting your interest, the cobbler immediately begins pitching his ware.

"This is the most beautiful sandal!" he sings. "Made with the finest leather! Ostrich leather, extremely rare!"

You turn the sandals over in your hands, inspecting the workmanship. You're a little dubious about the cobbler's claim about ostrich leather, but the leather is quite lovely. As you run your fingers over the stitchwork, the cobbler continues his stream of talk.

"You are most beautiful lady!" he says. "I give you good price! Unbelievable price! You try them on, beautiful lady!"

Charmed in spite of yourself by the cobbler's flattery, you sit down on the low wooden stool and slip the sandals on. Or rather, you try to slip them on. It turns out they're two sizes too small.

Giving the cobbler an apologetic smile, you put the sandals back on the pile.

"Too small," you say.

"Too small?" he says. "OK beautiful lady. Come again tomorrow, I'll have sandals two sizes bigger ready for you."

"That's OK," you say.

"You come back tomorrow! I work all night to make bigger size for you! I won't sleep until they are ready! Beautiful lady!"

"Really, I don't think I want—"

"Beautiful lady!"

You scurry off and try to melt into the crowd before he can make any more promises for things you didn't even ask for.

**

At the next stall, an irate cobbler chases you all the way down the block waving a pair of dilapidated plastic Dora the Explorer thongs in your face, despite your repeated shouts that you are NOT in the market for children's shoes.

At the next stall, you spot a pair of heart-stopping red stilettos. But they're just too similar to a pair you bought last month, and there's only so much room in your closet. You force yourself to put them back on the shelf, giving the cobbler your highest compliments.

At the next stall, you find some amazing clogs carved out of local wood. The cobbler is a genius, a craftsman of the highest order. But when you call up Harry at your personal Shoe Approval Panel to tell him all about them, he cuts you off mid-gush. "You've already blown the budget on clogs this season," he snaps. "You're supposed to be looking for running shoes with decent arch support."

At the next stall, you try on a pair of alpaca boots decorated with sea shells. Harry at the Shoe Approval Panel gives you the go-ahead to make an offer, but just when you're laying your rupees on the table, a rich New Yorker appears out of nowhere and throws down a stack of hundred dollars bills. The cobbler's eyes bulge out of his head. You frantically dial Harry. "I need more money! This New Yorker's trying to steal my sea shell boots!"

You appeal to the cobbler. "I can't offer you more money, but I really CARE about these boots. I'll wear them every day!" But the cobbler is already bagging up the boots. The rich New Yorker sniggers at you and swaggers away, boots in hand. Your sense of loss and disappointment is so acute you start to cry right there in the marketplace. The cobbler looks away in embarrassment. You slink off for a restorative cup of chai.

Once you've pulled yourself together, you head back into the marketplace to look at more shoes.

At one stall, you really hit it off with the cobbler, who is smart and friendly and gives you a fascinating history of shoe-making while you're browsing. You really WANT to buy shoes from this person. You could see yourself becoming good friends, and visiting her in her workshop, and making her shoes famous all over the world. But when it comes right down to it, you're just not a platform heels kind of person. They make you look ridiculous. You make THEM look ridiculous. And doesn't this extremely talented cobbler deserve to sell her shoes to a person who can do them justice?

The next few stalls contain shoes that are fake versions of brand-name shoes, shoes that are hopelessly overpriced, and shoes that look neat but just don't fit your feet. You chat with dozens of cobblers, most of them delightful people who are devoted to their craft. Every time you walk away from such a cobbler without buying anything, you feel a little twinge of guilt—but what are you supposed to do? If the shoe doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. And if you bought shoes from every cobbler who came along, you'd end up with a closet full of shoes you never wear.

**

By the end of the day, you've "rejected" countless pairs of shoes. It feels like half the cobblers in the marketplace are mad at you. Even the monkeys swinging in the treetops bare their teeth and hiss when you walk by. You try to remember where you saw that pharmacy. You could use some tylenol. And possibly a Valium.

Why do cobblers need to take everything so personally? If you were an octopus hat vendor and you went around to the cobblers' stalls trying to sell them octopus hats, most of them would almost certainly reject you. Nobody OWES it to you to buy an octopus hat, no matter how frustrated you feel.

You start to fantasize about becoming an octopus hat vendor, just to show all those cobblers what it's like to have to turn someone down.

"Beautiful octopus hat!" you would say, slapping the octopus onto their heads. "Made with finest tentacles!"

You wonder if you are becoming delirious.

You wonder if you have malaria.

You hail an autorickshaw and head back to your room for a nap.

The next morning, you head to another shoe market, where another crowd of cobblers are waiting to woo, frustrate, and enchant you with their infinite piles of shoes...

the real actual truth about traveling in India

2011-10-24T14:08:00.001-07:00

INTERN is back!

INTERN is back!

*hands out packets of incense and yak cheese*
*inquires as to whether or not postcards mailed three weeks ago have arrived*
*makes elliptical references to someone called Guru G. without explaining who this person is or why it is suddenly necessary for INTERN to dress in orange robes and eat only "high-vibrational" foods*

INTERN missed you all very, very much. She is delighted to be back and spent the entire plane ride home composing all sorts of posts in her head. But before she returns to things writing and publishing-related, she wanted to share a few insights gleaned on her travels, just in case you yourself are planning a trip to India or thereabouts.

The Real Truth About Traveling in India

When you tell a veteran traveler that you are going to South Asia for the first time, they will invariably tell you two things:

1. The roads are c-r-a-a-a-a-a-z-y.

2. You are going to get the trots like you wouldn't believe.

These two claims are followed by a knowing chuckle, and perhaps an anecdote involving crazy drivers and/or gastric distress, often both at the same time.

However, after spending roughly a month and a half in the subcontinent herself, INTERN found that the picture her informants painted wasn't entirely accurate. Here are some slight corrections:

Old Claim #2: You are going to get the trots like you wouldn't believe.

Real Actual Truth:

Over the course of your time in India, you will experience fever, headache, insomnia, loss of appetite, minor cuts and bruises, sunburn, upper respiratory infection, delusions, hallucinations, and temporary deafness.

You will not, however, get the trots.

Your host's family will include one retired medical doctor whom INTERN will refer to as Dr. Sandesh. Noting your shivers at the breakfast table one morning, Dr. Sandesh (who speaks no English) will slip you a small white pill, which you will gulp down with your chai. A little while later, you will start to feel sort of--better.

The next morning, you will be reading Rabindranath Tagore poems on the couch when white-haired Dr. Sandesh will shuffle in and press two more little white pills into your palm, giving you a magnanimous smile as he does so. Although your fever went away in the night, you have a bit of a headache, so you thank him profusely and take them right away.

A little while later, you feel--like--totally better, and you go wander around the neighborhood sniffing the tropical flowers by yourself and have a very good time.

Over the next few days, you and Dr. Sandesh establish a friendly routine. You try refusing the pills 'cause you're really not sick anymore, but he's so sweet and it's so nice of him to reach out like that, across the language barrier, so you always end up taking them.

In the afternoons, you go out by yourself and splash around in the Ganges, drink chai from little clay cups, and gaze at temples until the monks shuffle you out. You never thought India would be this mellow. You never thought you'd FEEL this mellow in such a new and overstimulating environment. But it's like everything is soft and rosy and OK, even when you get caught in some kind of protest and your Metro station gets shut down and there are police shouting into loudspeakers and you can't understand....it's like, just roll with it, man.

You start to wonder if India really does cause spiritual transformation like your friend who's into meditation claims.

Then one day Techie Boyfriend will leave for work a little late, and he'll witness your morning ritual with Dr. Sandesh.

"What are those pills?" he'll ask. Several younger members of your host family will be called in to confer.

It will emerge that Dr. Sandesh is slightly senile and that you have in fact been taking a high dose of Valium every morning for the past week and a half and not cold medication as you had presumed.

You will be mildly disappointed that your rosy outlook is not, in fact, due to a spiritual transformation.

You will feel mildly depressed for the next few days.

You will not, however, get the trots.

Old Claim #1: The roads are c-r-a-a-a-a-a-z-y.

Real Actual Truth:

Yes, the roads are cr-a-a-a-a-zy. The drivers honk once, then put the pedal to the floor.

However, you will have taken so many of Dr. Sandesh's little white pills that here's the thing: you don't give a flying $@%#.
You're so mellow you could be thrown out the front seat of an autorickshaw when it takes a corner too fast, and instead of feeling upset or shaken or at all ruffled, you will pick yourself up, smile dozily at the wide-eyed autorickshaw driver, and wander away to find some of those nice Bengali sweets before it gets too hot.

That is the Real Actual Truth about traveling in India, and now you know.

**

What have you all been up to while INTERN was away? Who's working on a new manuscript? Who got an agent? Who found some interesting mushrooms in the forest? Let's catch up! INTERN wants to know!

yodelings of imminent vanishment

2011-08-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

As you can probably tell from the sparseness of blog posts this month, INTERN has been rather distracted lately. For those of you who missed INTERN's elated tweeting a few weeks ago, here's why: INTERN and Techie Boyfriend are going to India and Nepal! On, um, Sunday. It's all very surprising and a little bewildering (Techie Boyfriend got a last-minute contract doing Incomprehensible Computer Stuff that mysteriously involves spending a few weeks in Calcutta) and INTERN has been sorting out visas and typhoid vaccines and looking for the perfect India Notebook in which to scribble her thoughts.

INTERN will not be taking a laptop, so this post might be the last you hear from her until mid-October. INTERN is not ruling out the possibility of checking in with a state-of-the-Indian/Nepalese-book-scene post or two, but you never know. Sometimes, INTERN feels the need to disappear completely for a while, if only to reconfirm that the writings she's writing and the schemes she's scheming and the direction she's heading are all the best and truest and freshest they can be.

INTERN will be back around October 10th, unless she and Techie Boyfriend buy a pet yak and move to the Himalayas.

In the meantime, INTERN wishes you long walks and surprising mushrooms and pages that flow and manuscripts that sell and many highly stimulating conversations.

Ten thousand delights to every one of you!

INTERN

never mind the bat nests: on fixer-upper manuscripts

2011-08-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

When INTERN was in high school, she longed for a part in the school play, Shakespeare’s As You Like It. She was awkward and graceless and made a completely ridiculous Acting Face whenever she practiced reading the script, but she cared, goddamit, and on the day of the auditions she delivered a passionate rendition of Jabberwocky to the bemused directors. INTERN’s best friend, who was listening from the hallway, declared the performance “psychotic” and suggested that perhaps acting had better be left to the regular drama kids, none of whom had a singular and unchanging Acting Face but were in fact capable of a full range of actorly expressions.

A week later, the cast list went up. INTERN was shocked to see her name at the very bottom, cast in a minor role (but a role nonetheless!) as a foppish Frenchman named Le Beau.

INTERN was thrilled but mystified. Wasn’t it ill-advised to allow such an inexperienced actress even a minor role in the production? She was well aware of how clumsy her audition had been.

But when she saw the director in the hallway later that day, he grinned. “We just had to cast you!” he said. “That face!”—and he literally howled with laughter as he kept on walking down the hall.

As luck would have it, Le Beau is perhaps the only character in the history of the English language for which INTERN’s accursed Acting Face is perfectly suited. As for her many (other) shortcomings as an actress, well, the director was willing to work on them. He had fallen in love with The Face; it was a fair bet that INTERN’s posture, her projection, and all that other actorly stuff would come into place in time for the show.

**

A little while ago, INTERN heard from a writer-friend who had just gotten his first-ever revision letter from his agent.

“She started out by saying what an amazing concept I have and how much she adores the novel. Then she basically said the entire plot doesn’t make sense, the ending is one giant cliché, and she almost stopped reading after two pages because the first chapter’s so bad.”

How, wondered INTERN’s writer-friend, did his agent decide to sign him at all, when the manuscript was rife with so many embarrassing problems?

INTERN encouraged him to ask his agent this very question. A few days later, INTERN heard from him again: “She just fell in love with the concept.”

INTERN has heard similar stories from other first-time novelists, often substituting “voice” or “writing style” for “concept.” Conventional wisdom states that your manuscript should be as perfect as possible before going on the hunt for an agent. In truth, though, plenty of less-than-perfect manuscripts find representation—as long as they’re less-than-perfect in the right way.

Just like INTERN’s experience with the school play, these manuscripts don’t have everything going for them. But they have SOMETHING going for them, and that something is special enough to convince the right agent to work with the author on the less-special bits. Like a bat-infested Victorian with a breathtaking view of the ocean, fixer-upper manuscripts are all about potential.

But how many bats are too many?

**
INTERN has spent all afternoon trying to come up with a scientific-looking table: If you have X, you can (maybe) get away with a little Y.

For example: If you have an incredible voice, you’re more likley to get away with a couple fixable plot holes.

Or:

If you have a big enough platform, you can probably get away with feeding your pet monkey some Adderall and having IT write the manuscript.

But this kind of generalization could cause all sorts of trouble, so INTERN decided to ditch the project.

INTERN does not mean to suggest that writers ought to toss their manuscripts in the mail, bats and all, trusting that their ever-so-brilliant voice/concept/platform will cause agents to overlook the problems. On the contrary, manuscripts should be as polished as humanly possible before going in the mail.

But if you’re a little experienced, or a little awkward, or if there are a couple misplaced boards in the otherwise impressive house of your manuscript, don’t despair. The great thing about being a fixer-upper (as opposed to, say, a Demolition) is that your manuscript is capable of being fixed. And with the help of the right agent or editor, that’s exactly what you’ll do.

too many agents, not enough gin: the truth about multiple offer situations

2011-08-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

In the past month, INTERN had the pleasure of supporting not one but two editing clients-turned-writer friends through the strangely harrowing process of choosing between multiple offers of representation.

"Multiple offers of representation?" you say. "How delightful! Surely these writer-friends did not require much in the way of emotional support."

Multiple offers of rep are the bizarro version of rejection letters. Instead of dashing your hopes, they suddenly make them seem possible. Instead of limiting your choices, they present you with a dazzling array. For the first time, you're the Rejector. You become *responsible* for your fate—capable of making the wrong decision (whereas if you have only one offer, it is always going to seem like the right decision).

As far as INTERN can tell, multiple offer situations are not particularly rare. Before it happens to you, please be advised of the following myths surrounding the multiple offer situation, and the hard truths that lurk behind them.

Myth #1: You will be ecstatic.

Have you ever seen one of those ads for antidepressants or heartburn medication, with the happy people twirling around in a field of daisies 'cause they feel so dang GREAT, when you know in reality they're barely hanging on by their fingernails?

There's this idea among yet-to-be-published writers that getting multiple offers of representation will look something like one of those ads: beautiful, well-groomed you will dance through the nearest meadow in an ecstasy of spiritual and intellectual fulfillment.

In fact, you will experience the mangiest week of your entire life. You will sit by your computer, hollow-cheeked and stringy-haired, reading your potential agents' Publishers Marketplace profiles, blog posts, and interviews until you can recite their stats in your sleep. You will be unable to sleep or eat. You will leap out of bed to Google "one last detail" until your significant other exiles you to the couch.

In short, you will be miserable and you will make everyone around you miserable.

Myth #2: You will ask useful questions during your Agent Phone Calls.

The internet is full of lists of Essential Questions to Ask Potential Agents. You will dutifully copy these lists down. You might even make a chart with which to organize and compare the various agents' answers.

When you're on the phone with the first of the agents, you will look down at your list, only to realize that the colors in the gently used children's birthday party napkin on which you copied the list in the name of eco-friendliness have begun to bleed in such a way that you can no longer make out a single word.

In a vain attempt to remember those Essential Questions, you will ask your potential agent such penetrating queries as "Who will photocopy—it—if it needs to be—um." And: "When can I expect the delivery?"

Myth #3: You will weigh the pros and cons.

It is astonishingly hard to find downsides to any of the agents who are offering you representation. After all, you queried them for a reason—if they had freaking DOWNSIDES, you wouldn't have queried them in the first place!

Instead, you will be overwhelmed by the upsides. And, oh, how many upsides there are:

Big Corporate Agency: "We have offices in New York, Paris, and the MOON!"

Wee Boutique Agency: "We only take on three new extra-special clients per year!"

Up-and-Coming Agent: "I've only made two deals so far, but they were major three-book extravaganzas!"

Established Agent: "I've made two hundred deals in my day! Stick with me, young whippersnapper!"

Uber-Agent: "Never mind the background noise, I'm calling from my private Lear jet en route to NYC to negotiate a major deal for a very special client of mine who just wrote a—oops, can you hang on for a second, Princess Diana's on the other line."

Friendly Agent: "Why don't you come over for apple crumble and we'll talk about your manuscript in person?"

Shady Agent: "I've already got Dreamworks on the line. All you have to do is fill out this money order as a small retainer"

Gangster Agent: "Welcome to da family. HarperCollins don't buy it, we bust some kneecaps, know what I mean?"

Myth #4: You will go with your gut.

When all the (botched) questioning and (impossible) pro-versus-con weighing and (increasingly incoherent) one-sided "discussions" with your friends and family are done, it will be time to make a decision. When that moment arrives, all you have to do is go with your gut.

But can you really trust your gut? What if your gut's a greedy little stinker? Should you go with Uber-Agent because she makes the biggest deals, even if all evidence suggests she's not only incompatible with you but downright insane? Should you go with Friendly Agent because you got along so well on the phone, even though you don't recognize any of the authors on her list?

This is your career, after all! Your career! Are you really supposed to trust your career to a friggin' INTESTINE?

You weep and fret and writhe until you're a shadow of your former self.

Then you sit down at the computer and start typing four rejection e-mails, and one acceptance...

***

Have you ever dealt with multiple offers of rep? How did you make your final decision? INTERN wants to know!

writing advice books INTERN would like to see

2011-08-10T09:21:00.001-07:00

Elements of Guile by Strunk and White: Tips on tricking agents and editors into representing/buying your manuscripts.

The Forest for the Bees by Betsy Lerner: An editor's advice to—OH MY GOD BEES!

Writing the Breakout Grovel by Donald Mass: How to beg famous writer-friends to blurb your book.

Building the Breakout Hovel, also by Donald Maas: How to build yourself a wattle-and-daub shack to live in once your breakout novel fails to break out.

On Smiting by Stephen King: Sick of writing? Learn the techniques of the bestselling smiter.

Nerd by Nerd by Anne Lamott: How to write science fiction and/or programming textbooks that will seduce the brainiest of readers.

Curd by Curd, also by Anne Lamott: An extended metaphor on writing as cheesemaking.

Writing Down the Clones by Natalie Goldberg: Clones are the new zombie-vampire-angel-trolls. Zen-style tips on cashing in on this hot new trend.

**

Which writing advice books would YOU like to see? INTERN wants to know!

Happy, happy Wednesday to you all.

little jars, tasty jams: thoughts on making it big

2011-08-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

There's a delightful French expression INTERN heard once which goes "les bonnes choses viennent dans des petits pots" (or something like that). Literally translated, it means "good things come in little pots," but INTERN has always read it as "tasty jams come in little jars."

Lately, INTERN has been thinking about what it means to be successful as a writer, and how different-sized jars of success each come with their own particular brand of delights. You don't "make it big" one time, but over and over, leaving a sticky jam trail in your wake...

Observe:

Jar #1: You hand sell 10 copies of your poetry book Ode to a Bolete and make out like a bandit (fifty BUCKS!), which you gleefully spend on pints for you and your poetry buddies. You can't get over your good fortune, and in the following weeks you write your best poetry yet.

Jar #2: You win a small poetry contest for your chapbook Lament for a Lactarius, and the prize is publication by a micropress run out of a friend's friend's basement in Portland, OR. Now this is it, this is the bigtime—somebody ELSE is publishing YOUR POEMS. Sure, your "publisher" is a tweaky hipster boy with those earlobe extender plugs, and the name of the press is Sour Kitty Editions, but you are being published just the same.

You still have to buy your own pints at the launch party, BUT STILL.

Jar #3: After submitting your new poetry collection Sonnets for a Suillus to just about every small press in Writer's Market, you just about get a heart attack when Waterbrook Press, a tiny but established house based in Elora, Ontario (where's that? oh, who cares! you think to yourself) offers you a real. live. book deal.

They send you a three hundred dollar advance which you use to buy groceries, just so you can brag to your friends that your Book Royalties are paying your grocery bill and not be flat-out lying.

The cover design is a little clunky and you notice a few typos when you're paging through your poems, but there it is—your book. Your first real book. This time, the launch party takes place at your local library, where are you advertised as a Local Poet. The library springs for cookies and coffee. Six people show up, three of whom buy your book at the end. Later that week, you are interviewed by a community radio station.

Basically, you're famous. You never stop feeling proud of yourself, even when Sonnets for a Suillus only sells 62 copies over the next three years.

Jar #4: You get a Very Exciting E-Mail one day. An editor at one of the better small presses happened upon a copy of Sonnets for a Suillus at a garage sale and "fell head over heels in love with your voice" (her words! she actually said that!) If you have another manuscript ready, please consider submitting to Better Small Press.

You jump up and down. And squeal. To be perfectly honest, things have been pretty quiet for you since Sonnets for a Suillus came out. Waterbrook Press shut down when Bill and Mary, the couple who ran it, retired to Florida, and you've been too busy with your job to enter any more contests.

Over the next few weeks, you scour your poetry folder for good poems, poems worthy of sending to Better Small Press. You work day and night, writing new poems, better poems, the best poems of your entire life. You send them to that editor and hold your breath. When she comes back two weeks later (two whole weeks! it's cruel!) with an offer, you're so relieved you faint on the carpet.

Your editor thinks your working title, Dirge for a Deadly Amanita is a little heavy for the overall tone of the collection, and together you come up with the new title Ghazals for Gomphidus.

Better Small Press really has their act together. You're actually a little embarrassed when you think about your experience with Waterbrook Press, which wasn't a real publisher after all. With Better Small Press, Ghazals for Gomphidus get some attention—you do a dozen radio interviews and read at six different libraries and two highschools. A few poetry websites run reviews of your book. A month after Ghazals for Gomphidus comes out, you get your very first piece of fan mail. You're so touched you actually weep.

Jar #5: Things are going well. Extremely well. You release another book with Better Small Press (Cinquain for a Chanterelle) and it wins some kind of award. Suddenly, you're getting REAL attention. A writers' conference invites you to be their guest poet. A local poetry festival invites you to be their featured reader. The local highschools invite you to run poetry workshops with students. Somehow, you've become a real poet. A poet with a Bio that contains more than a list of your hobbies. You've made it. Really made it, this time.

You get a two more pieces of fan mail. One of them is from another poet, a poet you've HEARD of—ohmygod, did THAT POET actually read YOUR BOOK?

You can't believe how successful you are, how charmed and magical this whole ride has been. You are so, so grateful and lucky.

Jar #6: Your third book with Better Small Press wins a Lannan Literary Award. That $150,000. One. Hundred. And. Fifty. Thousand. Dollars. For writing poetry.

Suddenly, you're not just local-poet famous. You're famous famous. You get interviewed on NPR and CBC Radio Canada and some other big stations. You are invited to be a guest poet at Bread Loaf and the Sewanee Writer's Conference. Creative Writing departments at a few small universities get in touch about openings as a poetry instructor. You do readings at independent bookstores and more than six people show up. Plus, your editor at Better Small Press takes you out for pints, and Better Small Press pays for them (even though you are now the proud owner of $150,000).

Fan mail turns into fan e-mail. People are really READING your poems. People you don't know and haven't met. You have a Following. You spend hours crafting heartfelt responses to every e-mail.

The Lannan Award lets you quit your job, and you designate an entire room in your house as your Writing Room. You thought you'd made it before, but all that seems like kid's stuff now. Now, you really know what it means to be successful.

Jar #7: Your next book, Pleiades for a Psilocybe, wins both the Nobel Prize AND the Griffin. Has that even happened before? Suddenly, you're being interviewed in the New York Times and Atlantic Monthly. Even crazier, your book is chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection, and you're invited as a guest on her show. Apparently, grown men who have never read a book of poetry in their lives start weeping uncontrollably when they read Pleiades for a Psilocybe.

For the first time ever, chain bookstores start carrying your book (it has that fancy Nobel Prize winner thingy on the front cover). Not only that, they start carrying your older books—and people start buying them. The sales figures on all your books go up. People even start hunting for that embarrassing piece of juvenalia Sonnets for a Suillus. One day, you come across an extremely rare copy of Ode to a Bolete for sale on eBay for three hundred bucks (three hundred BUCKS!).

You accept a position as the Distinguished Chair of Poetry at the creative writing department at NYU. Your calendar swiftly fills up with engagements—poetry festivals, writers' conferences, keynote speeches. When you're not teaching, you spend all your time on the interminable book tour that has become your life.

Your inbox is flooded with e-mail. You receive dozens of e-mails a week from people who have been touched in some way by your books. But now, people are also sending you THEIR poetry and asking for advice, and you're not so into that. Some people also e-mail you about their personal problems and you're not sure why—you're a poet, not a therapist, and you don't even know them! You still write back to every e-mail, but it's taking longer and longer, so you mostly keep your responses to a one-sentence thankyou.

Jar #8: You spend all your time touring, speaking, teaching, and being wined and dined. After years of toiling in obscurity, you are now rubbing shoulders with John Ashbery, W.S. Merwin and Sharon Olds. You really do pay your grocery bills with poetry money—and your rent and car insurance, too.

Then one day you get a call from an editor at W.W.Norton. She knows you've been working with Better Small Press for a long time, but isn't it time to move to a bigger publisher who is better equipped to handle your needs as a famous poet? At first, you are adamant in your refusal. Then she drops some numbers.

You agonize for weeks. When you finally call your editor at Better Small Press and tell her you're moving to W.W. Norton, she breaks down weeping on the phone. You feel like a murderer.

But W.W. Norton really does do a better job of managing your career. Your books get co-op at Barnes & Noble, your print run goes way up, and there are full-page ads for your books in the pages of the New Yorker. Universities make bulk orders of your books for use in literature classes.

People write essays about you, about your work. There's talk of a biography. You've become so famous that being you is a bigger job than one person can handle, so your significant other quits his/her job to help manage your career. You get so much e-mail (so much WEIRD, overly personal e-mail) that you stop responding altogether. You also start turning down speaking engagements—if you accepted them all, you'd never have time to write!

You get a reputation for being "reclusive". Indeed, you rarely go out in public unless you're being paid six figures. You go to sleep at night confident that if you die before you wake up, your poetry will go on being read for generations and generations.

You've made it. You've finally made it...

***

So when did you really become successful? When you won the Nobel Prize? Or all the way back at Jar #1, when you were still stapling your poems into chapbooks at home? If you feel like you've made it when you reach one milestone, why does that achievement feel silly as soon as you reach the next one?

And the hedonic treadmill rolls on...

first draft contest winners!

2011-08-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Just a short post today, as Techie Boyfriend has kershwaggled the power cord to INTERN's laptop and gone to Seattle for three days. Battery life remaining: just enough to announce the winners of the International Sh*tty First Draft Week Contest!

INTERN is so proud of everyone who entered the contest and is so impressed by everyone's nerve, daring, and drafting skills.

Without further ado...

Sarah B has won the first 50 pages critique!

Kimberly Gould has won the revision survival kit!

Matthew C Wood has won the twigs and string!

Winners can e-mail their INTERN at internspills [@] gmail [dot] com to claim their prizes.

Off to INTERN's charmingly decrepit and squirrel-infested writing cabin to bang on the Smith-Corona...

International Sh*tty First Draft Week-CONTEST!

2011-07-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

All week long, fearless authors have revealed excerpts from their sh*tty first drafts. We've seen scenes like Christmas sweaters the manuscript outgrew; scenes that didn't carry their weight; scenes that have been cut and reinserted and cut so many times they don't even bother unpacking their suitcases any more.

Sh*tty First Draft Week was a misnomer in many ways. For one thing, much of the so-called shitty material in first drafts isn't so shitty after all. In fact, sometimes a scene or chapter is just perfect in its original context—but when you change other parts of the story, the context flexes and morphs until that "perfect" scene or chapter doesn't even make sense any more.

In this respect, drafting a novel is a bit like cooking a pot of soup: you can't throw in one new ingredient without affecting the flavor of everything else in the pot.

Another reason Sh*tty First Draft Week is a misnomer is the word "first". What about second, third, fourth, and fifth drafts? INTERN remembers hearing a director say that for every minute in a play, his theatre troupe does an hour of rehearsal (or was it ten hours?) INTERN feels the same way about writing: for every word that makes it into the final draft there are at least three words discarded. That's 300,000 words of drafting for a 100,000 word novel. This ratio is different for everyone, but it speaks to the huge amount of exploring, delving, mistake-making, playing, and who-are-you-kidding that goes into a finished creative work.

So anyway. On to the shitty first draft contest!

The Rules:

To enter, all you have to do is post a short excerpt from your own sh*tty first draft in the comments of this post.

You don't need to tweet about the contest or put it on a t-shirt. You don't need to follow this blog. You don't need to take out a Sh*tty First Draft Week ad in your local newspaper.

Just paste your goddamn draft excerpt in the comments.

The Winners:

INTERN will randomly select three winners by assigning each commenter a number and then drawing the numbers out of a bowl.

INTERN will not be judging the entries on any axis whatsoever, so don't fret about whether your entry is too shitty/not shitty enough/etc—winning is a matter of luck!

INTERN will announce the winners on Monday, at which point winners can send iNTERN their contact information to claim their prizes.

The Prizes:

One lucky winner will receive a first 50 pages manuscript critique by INTERN!

One lucky winner will receive a mysterious Revision Prize Pack!

One lucky winner will receive some twigs, bits of string, and perhaps a book or two!

**

OK, everyone! Ready to reveal your sh*tty drafts? As promised, INTERN will share a snippet of shitty draftery too.

Ready?

Three!

Two!

One!

Go!

**

INTERN's first draft snippet:

This is the story of a girl who was pregnant with a cat. The cat lounged inside her, lapping at sunlight, until the girl awoke in pain one morning; the cat was dragging its claws all the way out.

This is the story of a girl who gave birth to a spider. Her belly swelled up so that people thought she had twins, triplets, quintuplets. But no; all that happened when she went into labor was a very tiny black spider crawled out. After hours of pushing, a tiny black spider. After all that blood, a tiny black spider. After all those months of eating, a tiny black spider. It crawled away on quick spider legs and though she called for it the girl never saw it again.

This is the story of a girl who gave birth to a rat...

etc. etc. etc.

Explanation: INTERN often feels daunted by first drafts, so she'll use poetic devices like repetition to make things "easy" until she hits on an idea she wants to follow. For INTERN, drafts are full of experiments like this that help INTERN discover who her characters are and what they want to say.

So what's your sh*tty first draft about? To the comments!

International Sh*tty First Draft Week—Day 4

2011-07-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

The fourth and final Guest Author in the Sh*tty First Draft series is Alexander Chee, author of the novel Edinburgh. He has been at work on his new novel, The Queen of the Night, for several years. Since there is no cover art for The Queen of the Night yet, here is the cover of Alexander's previous novel, Edinburgh:

What a Tangled Web We Weave...

Revising The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

This is one of The Queen of the Night's oldest sections, and dates from March of 2004, a first draft. I revised it and eventually discarded it, though most if not all all of the themes here are at work in the novel still—a love triangle with at least one other hidden triangle inside of it, i.e., a secret other third party. The royal insignia, that is still significant in the novel, but differently.

The novel is about a young woman who is in sexual and artistic bondage to an older man, who uses her for various purposes, sexual, romantic, political. When I say bondage, I mean, he bought her from a brothel, paying off her contract. He is a tenor singer and a spy, and was looking for someone who had already been discarded, who he could then discard as he wanted to, when he was done with her. But in the process of his use of her, he eventually makes her over into a singer also, a soprano, and he falls in love with her. Or at least, that's what he believes. Because who wouldn't fall in love with someone who basically did whatever you demanded, and had to, in fact, because he owned you?

But by the time the tenor realizes this, he has lost her to a young composer, and she is intent only on escaping him. In this scene, she's preparing to go and preview parts of an opera the composer has written on a commission from the Russian empress, who intends it as an entertainment for the young Alexander's birthday. She is creating the lead role in it at the composer's request. She and the composer are preparing for the trip, which allows them a moment together—they are each with other, more powerful lovers. This trip allows them to sneak off together.

But the cufflinks will offend the empress, or at least, that was the intention when I wrote this first draft. That a gift which was first an affectionate one, from the prince to the tenor, then became an offhand one, practically a discard tossed to a mistress, who should have refused it. But she didn't, she kept it, and then it became an affectionate gesture once more, and obeying the gift's precise instructions. But this, I decided, would bring about what they sought to avoid, albeit unintentionally—the discovery of and sundering of their affair.

In that early draft it was the beginning of Chapter 8.

I'll say that I wouldn't be surprised in the least if I returned this to the draft, or some of it, but for now, neither version is in it, and I hope it's instructive. When I take something out of a draft, it's often because it doesn't belong where I put it---but it still belongs somewhere. So I save it.

They had been the cufflinks of the young Prussian prince, the beautiful young prince, who was now the beautiful young king. He had sent them to Niemanns, the tenor, after one of his performances, along with a cross he still wore on his neck when he offered me these. They were ivory swans on a sapphire field and set on white gold.

The young tenor at that time a lover. Of us both, as I would learn.

Was there an audience with the prince, I asked.

He made no answer. I blushed.

Take them, he said. Don’t you like them? Take them. Just don’t wear them in Germany.

I did as he asked.

He had found me at the Pillon, in my swan mask. He took me from there and set me up with his friends in an apartment near the Paris Opera; for him, really, though the others found it convenient. He was the one who paid for my voice lessons, took me to see the great operas, and in them, the great divas. He was the one who brought me to see the Lucia at La Scala that made me reach for all of this, who laughed afterwards, when I imitated her on the street. They think you are her, he said, of the passersby staring, as if perhaps I was the woman I imitated⎯for I did look like her, though younger. I remember how I laughed at him. Do you really think so, I said.

20 years later, when the composer needed a pair for our audience with the Russian Empress, I brought them out, thinking they would bring us luck. He examined them carefully. They’re lovely, he said.

Don’t wear them in Germany, I said.
**
Alexander Chee is the author of Edinburgh. He blogs at Koreanish.
**

To mark the conclusion of International Sh*tty First Draft Week, INTERN will be holding a Sh*tty First Draft contest tomorrow (Friday) open to everyone! To enter, simply post an excerpt from your own sh*tty first draft in the comments of tomorrow's post. INTERN will randomly select three winners—because the whole point of a sh*tty first draft is to write first and judge later.

Happy drafting!

INTERN

International Sh*tty First Draft Week—Day 3

2011-07-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

Today's guest post comes from Kat Zhang, whose HYBRID trilogy recently sold to HarperTeen in a major deal. Kat is an esteemed member of the League of Illustrious Interns (not that that had anything to do with it!)

No Slackers Allowed: Making Each Scene Count

I’m the sort of person who underwrites scenes the first round through. Which isn’t to say that I don’t need to cut things once I go back to revise, but when I revise a scene, it tends to get longer (and should). My first drafts of scenes are bare bones…sometimes not much more than dialogue and some sparse action shots.

Here’s a good example. This scene still exists in the final draft…much of the dialogue is word for word the same, but otherwise, the scene has changed quite dramatically. But I’ll talk about that later. First, let’s see how the scene was the very first time I sat down and pounded it out:

“He’s Will right now,” Lucy said as we came in the door. She was sprawled on the carpet, coloring with a reckless abandon. Hally dropped her book-bag on the counter and smiled at the little boy tottering up to us.

“Hi, Will,” she said, dropping into a squat despite her skirt. “How are you?”

Lucy looked up. “Who’s that?” she said. “Is she going to play with us too?”

Will jerked on the bottom of our shirt before Adie could answer. He ignored Hally entirely and looked up at us with petitioning eyes.

“We’re hungry,” he said.

“They’re not really,” Lucy said. “I just gave them a cookie. They just want another one.” She stopped coloring and climbed to her feet. “Is that girl going to play with us?” she asked again.

Hally smiled at her. “I’m here to help baby sit.”

“Who? Will and Robby?” the little girl asked. “They don’t need two people.”

She stared at us, daring someone to say that she, at seven, still needed a baby sitter.

The way it was, the scene isn’t too bad…nothing that makes me cringe, anyway. But it’s pretty bland. Okay, so Lucy is asking about Hally. There’s a little boy. Baby sitting. Yay?

I’m a big believer in every scene doing as much as it can, especially a scene as early in the book as this one is. So in the current (almost final!) draft of the book, the scene itself lasts longer. It no longer begins with Lucy’s first sentence but with the girls entering the house. That way, everything they see, from the size and layout of the home to what Lucy and her little brother are watching on TV, helps with the world building I’m trying to achieve.

Overall, when I revise, I outline the change I want to make, including which scenes will need to be inserted, which will need to be changed, and what will need to be cut. Then I write the new scenes, cut the old scenes they replace, and tinker with the results until it’s smoothed over well enough to seem like there was never a disturbance to begin with :)

**

The first novel in the HYBRID trilogy (entitled What's Left Of Me) will be coming out...actually, there's no official release date quite yet. Visit Kat's blog here for updates!

International Sh*tty First Draft Week—Day 2

2011-07-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

Today, International Sh*tty First Draft Week continues with a guest post by Sarah Pinneo, whose forthcoming novel Julia's Child takes a humorous look at the organic food movement. Like that complicated recipe for arugula-flax chips, novels don't always work out on the first try...(OK, INTERN is about the cheesiest/worst MC ever. Stepping out of the way now.)

The Dog Should Eat My Homework by Sarah Pinneo

My comic novel, Julia’s Child, incorporates some themes which are both fun and dear to me. Julia, the main character, is deeply involved with the organic food movement. (So deeply, in fact, that she’s a bit neurotic about it.)

So in love was I with the milieu of farmers, foodies and obsessive sustainability that I put all of it into the book. I put it in often. Early readers said “I love it, but there’s too much about the business in there.” So I parted with a few lines and called it even. My agent said “I love it, but the book shows its homework too much.” So I cut out more. I cut out plenty. I was sure of it.
Guess what my editor said? Yes—you win! She said the same darned thing.

Here is a before and after bit from Julia’s Child:

Chapter 4 Opener, Take I:

Fashion had never been my thing. One might argue that I’d gone out of my way to avoid it. Even though I lived in a city where fashion designers outnumber yellow cabs, I often managed to dress like a scarecrow. My long, straight hair had been cut the same way since I was a teenager. And with cooking and toddlers, my wash and wear uniform was essential, if uninspired.

My lifestyle, however, had lately become quite fashionable. Suddenly it was hip to be a “greenie weenie” like me. It was cool to reuse your shopping bags. It was cutting edge to carry around a water bottle, and refill it straight from the tap.

In fact, Green was suddenly so cool that cliques had formed, each with its own brand of righteousness. There were the “locavores” for example—people who wouldn’t eat anything grown further than a hundred miles from home. Then there were the “freegans,” who wouldn’t buy anything new. They get by with clothing and house wares rescued from the landfill. It’s dumpster diving for the new millennium.

But being hyper conscious of the environment wasn’t easy. Checking up on the sources for everything you buy, and going out of your way to find local products took a lot of effort. And it was often a thankless task. The earth never sent Thank You notes. In that way, it was a lot like parenting. (Chapter Continues.)

Chapter 4 Opener, Take II:

“Get this. The new toothpaste I bought you has a childproof top.”

“Groovy,” Luke answered. He hit the car’s turn signal and steered us toward the exit off the interstate.

“I also bought you a different shampoo,” I told Luke. “This one is organic and not tested on animals.”

“I’m fine with that,” Luke said. “Just as long as you don’t make me smell like a woman.”

“I promise if anyone at work asks to borrow your perfume, you can switch back to the old one.”

“But seriously—just don’t switch the toilet paper,” he warned. “First of all, I don’t like the idea of recycled toilet paper.”
“They don’t mean recycled from toilet paper.”

He just shook his head. “Even so. I try to be ‘green’ too, Julia. I’ll plant some extra trees in Vermont if you want. But I’m not using sandpaper in the bathroom.”

Well?

The first version is essentially a lecture by the main character. Who wants a lecture? The second version features the main character’s same personality traits, but done in (what I hope is) a more interesting way.

I’d like to say that this will never happen to me again, that I’ll never fail to hear the obvious truth when a string of readers repeats the same bit of critique. But alas, (nerd) love is blind.

**

Sarah Pinneo is a food writer and the coauthor of The Ski House Cookbook. Her first novel, Julia’s Child, will be published by Plume in 2012. If you ask her whether it was easy or difficult to make the leap from published non-fiction writer to published novelist, she will laugh and point out the fact that her two books have publication dates which are more than four years apart. Sarah also edits Blurb is a Verb, a blog entirely devoted to book publicity.

International Sh*tty First Draft Week—Day 1

2011-07-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Every day between now and Thursday, exciting authors will be revealing excerpts from the first drafts of books you may have read (or might be reading soon!) Today's fearless author is Nova Ren Suma, whose YA novel Imaginary Girls has been getting rave reviews from Kirkus, the L.A. Times, and everywhere in between.

But writing an acclaimed literary YA novel doesn't happen in one draft...

A Scene Sliced Out of IMAGINARY GIRLS

by Nova Ren Suma

I write long. My first drafts are a study in endlessless and an experiment of how many times I can have my characters discover and rediscover the same thing and face up to the same epiphany. In first drafts, apparently everyone I write about has amnesia. That, or it takes me a few times to get a scene down right.

This means that when it comes time for revision the first thing I do is cut. I cut, then rewrite, then cut some more. (Then I do it again. And again.) The snippet of the scene I'm about to share isn't something I cut out of horror--this does happen; I've been known to cut-and-cringe--this scene was simply something that didn't fit the more I kept writing.

Imaginary Girls, my first YA novel that came out this summer, is the story of two closely entwined sisters: Ruby, the magnetic older sister, and Chloe, the little sister and narrator of the book. Technically they're half sisters, since they have different fathers, but Ruby would punch you in the face if you said they weren't fully related. Here's a piece of a scene I cut about Ruby's dad:

The car jolted to a stop on the curb.

“Another errand?” I joked.

Ruby looked at me sideways. “Have to stop here,” she said. “Always have to stop.”

I looked to see where we were--the house just before the hill, the one with the funky sculptures scattered around the front lawn. A fence separated it from the sidewalk--painted blue with fluffy white clouds. Ruby despised that fence. It forced you to be cheerful, she said, when maybe you weren't in the mood. No one should force a feeling on someone who's just innocently driving by their house.

“Remember this place?” she said.

I nodded. Sure, I remembered. She always liked to mess with this house. It gave her such glee. If Ruby was ever depressed, drop her here and let her have at it.

She despised more than the fence. She despised the purple the house was painted; the fact that someone dared paint their house purple; the colorful deck chairs on the lawn; the fact that there were even deck chairs set out on the lawn when there wasn't a deck to put them on, so strangers could just walk on in through the happy fence and kick back on the chairs and be happy; and especially the “art” on the lawn, abstract sculptures made from items probably scavenged from the nearby dump. It was the ugliest art Ruby had ever seen and it bothered her so much, she had to avert her eyes when driving past it.

But that really wasn't the point, and I knew it even if Ruby wouldn't say it. This house happened to be where that man lived, the one we saw around town sometimes, the one she said was her father.

Ruby caught the look on my face.

“Don't be so serious,” she said. “I just need to do one window.”

See, I liked the idea of Ruby wrecking her estranged father's house, to let him know she's well aware of who he is. But if I did that, it puts weight on Ruby's father--a character who barely merits mention in the book. I'd have to tie him into the plot later. Also, it means that Ruby actually cares. And anyone who's read the book knows Ruby only cares about herself, and her little sister. The deeper I wrote beyond first draft the more I realized that it was a detour I didn't need. (Props to my wise editor who must be given credit for helping me come to this and other realizations.)

So I cut this scene free. In truth, I cut so many pages from the first draft of Imaginary Girls--about 200--and rewrote them that I think this shows how sometimes when you're writing a first draft you're not really writing your story yet. You're writing toward your story.

Your first draft may be bloated and repetitive and out of character and utterly random, as mine often are, but you toiled to get those words down on the page for a reason…

…So you could cut them and make room for the better words--and the true story--meant to follow.

***

INTERN here. As you can tell from Nova's excerpt from an early draft of Imaginary Girls, there are many reasons for cutting a scene besides shitty writing. Sometimes, scenes with GOOD writing need to get cut too, because they simply don't fit the story anymore. Visit Nova's website here.

Stay tuned as International Sh*tty First Draft Week continues tomorrow with an author whose passion for food led her to cook up a book deal with Penguin!

How Books Work: The Hunger Games (Part 2)

2011-07-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

In yesterday’s post, INTERN mentioned Stephen King’s review of The Hunger Games: “Reading The Hunger Games is as addictive (and as violently simple) as playing one of those shoot-it-if-it-moves videogames in the lobby of the local eightplex; you know it's not real, but you keep plugging in quarters anyway.”

He’s right, of course. But what makes this comparison so apt? How does The Hunger Games deliver a similar experience to playing a video game? And why are books about games (and books that read like games) so addictive?

INTERN recently discovered a fascinating non-fiction book that answers exactly this question.

In Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, she argues that games step in to fill basic human needs when reality fails us. When real life doesn’t provide enough goals, rewards, community, meaningful work, or sense of cause-and-effect—when real life is boring, alienating, ambiguous and unintelligible—games provide us with challenges, adventures, and authentic camaraderie with other players. Where real life can feel pointless, games test our abilities and present us a constant stream of obstacles and rewards. Games give us experiences we deeply crave—and which can be sadly lacking from modern life.

Which brings INTERN to The Hunger Games. Like the video games described in Jane McGonigal’s book, The Hunger Games provides readers with near-constant obstacles and rewards. Not only that, but the obstacles and rewards in The Hunger Games could literally have been pulled from a video game: a nest of trackerjackers, a silver parachute that drops from the sky…

Like (most) video games, there is ALWAYS a clear goal: find water, find Peeta, blow up Careers’ food pile. To achieve these goals requires skill (how many activities in modern highschools and workplaces still call for that?). Katniss shoots a bow and arrow, distinguishes edible plants from poisonous ones, skins and cooks meat, dresses wounds. Like a videogame, The Hunger Games fulfills our basic hunger to be useful, to not be alienated from our labor. Katniss isn’t skinning rabbits in a rabbit-meat factory where the results of her labor will be shipped to Wal-Marts across the nation—she’s doing work that directly literally means survival.

Like a video game, the ever-changing arena in which the Hunger Games take place always keeps Katniss at the very edge of her skill level. It’s never so easy as to become boring, and never so impossible the players give up. Dancing at the edge of your skill level—whether you’re playing a video game or sailing a boat—is where humans enter the psychological state called flow (a state of absorption in a task that can feel almost euphoric).

And reading The Hunger Games can put you in flow as well as any video game.

**

So what does this mean for writers?

Obviously, writing dozens of Hunger Games knock-offs isn’t a very attractive option. But more writers could harness the game-like qualities exhibited in The Hunger Games in their own books, whether or not the books themselves are about games (or even dystopias at all).

Readers are human. Humans, like lab rats, have basic cravings. If you can speak to these cravings, you’ll win a reader for 300 pages.

So what are some game-like qualities writers can apply to their manuscripts to make them more addictive?

Clear goals. Characters are always in pursuit of something, which the reader should be able to name on demand.

Cause and effect. Characters’ actions have consequences. Always.

Obstacles and rewards. Obstacles speak for themselves. But rewards are just as important. Finding a tool, weapon, magical object, or guide adds excitement and gives readers an emotional boost. Rewards don’t have to be limited to adventure and fantasy stories, either—even a contemporary novel can use them, although they’ll come in a different form.

The right level of difficulty. i.e. stakes. Just like a video game, readers will get bored if your character’s trials are too easy, and worn out if they go too long without a small victory or reward. To put your readers in flow, keep the challenges coming at the very edge of your character’s ability to deal with them. And don’t neglect internal (emotional) challenges either.

A conflict-rich environment. Your story’s setting shouldn’t be inert. Again, think of games: if you land on the black square, you get bounced back six spaces. If you jump on the yellow crate, you accidentally release a monster. The setting dispenses dangers and rewards at every turn.

None of this is new or surprising—indeed, it’s the oldest writing advice in the book. But then again, humans have played games forever too.

Coincidence?

INTERN thinks not.

How Books Work: The Hunger Games (Part 1)

2011-07-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

If you've read The Hunger Games (or been in the mute and intensely focused presence of someone in the process of reading it), you know that it's practically impossible to put down. Stephen King compared the book to an arcade game that keeps you helplessly plugging in quarters round after round, and after reading it herself INTERN can say that that's a fair approximation.

What exactly is Suzanne Collins doing, on a sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph level, that makes this book such a terrifyingly addictive read?

To shed light on this question, INTERN repaired to her secret basement Book Lab, where she soaked a randomly-selected chapter of The Hunger Games in a bath of chemicals designed to reveal the exact function of each sentence.

Oh, and what an exciting experiment it was! Within seconds, the words themselves melted away, leaving only bright colors representing the following things:

Here is what Chapter 12 looks like following the experiment. If you have a copy of The Hunger Games handy, you might wish to read along. If you don't have a copy (or haven't read the book), skip down to the very end of this post for a summary*.

Notice anything interesting? Here's what INTERN sees:

New discoveries prompt internal conflict.

Pale blue sections (in which Katniss is seeing, hearing, tasting things) are often followed by dark blue sections (internal conflict).

Katniss is constantly being forced to question things: is this berry safe or dangerous? Is this information true or false? Is this person a friend or an enemy? Every new input is a cause for internal debate. As a result, there is near-constant tension.

(Almost) every internal or external conflict results in a decision.

Red and dark blue sections (external/internal conflict) are almost always followed by dark green sections (action/decision).

Katniss doesn't idly speculate about how to resolve a conflict—she takes action. Sometimes the action is internal (deciding not to trust Peeta) and sometimes the action is external (flinging away the poisonous berries). Whichever action she takes pushes Katniss further along her path. She's always in motion.

Some decisions result in further conflict.

See the alternating red and green patches on the second page? Here, Katniss encounters an obstacle (thirst), takes an action (asks Haymitch for water), and fails (water doesn't appear). She's forced to make a second decision (keep on searching, even though she's nearly dead of exhaustion). Conflict isn't necessarily resolved in one try—instead, it escalates and gets worse.

Internal narrative is slipped in with the action.

Notice how those little grey patches tend to appear in the middle of light blue ones? In fact, there's only one place in this chapter where an entire paragraph is shaded in grey. That's because the author is doing an expert job of weaving in nuggets of memory, backstory, and "telling" without slowing down the pace of the story.

The chapter ends on an unresolved conflict.

See how the last two sentences are highlighted in red? That's a cliffhanger. Katniss is woken up by a raging forest fire (external obstacle!). Dun-dun-duuunnnnnnn...

**

You can try this experiment yourself with any book you admire. What is the author DOING at any given moment? What purpose does each sentence achieve? Do any of the patterns suggested by this experiment hold true for other chapters in other books? Which other patterns can you find? What's the visual ratio of description to internal narrative to conflict?

These things are worth studying. Or at least, they're fun to study, if your particular brand of insanity is anything like INTERN's.

Happy experimenting! And don't forget to enter the International Sh*tty First Draft Week contest next week!

**

*INTERN doesn't want to risk copyright infringement by posting the actual chapter here, but here's a quick summary of what's going on for those of you who don't have a copy of Hunger Games handy:

[2 sentences establishing Katniss’ present position in a treetop]

[1 line dialogue Katniss overhears from treetop]

[2 sentences describing what Katniss sees.]

[internal conflict: Katniss questions Peeta’s motives/integrity]

[action based on internal conflict: Katniss decides not to trust Peeta]

[action: Peeta moves out of earshot, Careers discuss him]

[2 lines overheard dialogue]

[3 short sentences showing Katniss’ internal reaction to said dialogue]

[a little more dialogue]

[action: Peeta returning]

[3 sentences dialogue]

[action: Careers move away, Katniss changes her position in tree.]

[internal conflict: if Peeta really is on the “bad” side, why hasn’t he told the Careers about Katniss’ secret skill?]

[action: birds fall silent and hovercraft appears to take away dead body.]

[action: Katniss comes down from her hiding place in the tree.]

[internal conflict: Katniss knows the cameras are watching, so she has to act “on top of things” and not let any fear or confusion show.]

[action based on internal conflict: Katniss smiles at the camera]

[internal conflict: Katniss remembers her snares—is it too dangerous to check them?]

[action based on internal conflict: Katniss checks the snares and is “rewarded with one fine rabbit."]

[action: Katniss guts and roasts the rabbit.]

[action: Katniss camouflages her pack, eats some rabbit, goes off in search of water.]

[internal conflict: Katniss speculates about what people in the Capitol are making of her and Peeta’s “relationship,” tries to suss out her best plan of attack.]

[action/description: Katniss is getting thirsty, day is getting hot, etc.]

[external conflict: finds berries, but they’re unfamiliar—are they edible? are they a trap?]

[action based on external conflict: flings berries away.]

[action/description: Katniss is becoming exhausted.]

[internal conflict: the need for water is overpowering even Katniss’ fear of the Career pack.]

[action based on conflict: Katniss makes tentative decision to return to the lake in the morning.]

[action/description: Katniss wakes up foggy-headed and in dire straits.]

[external conflict: Katniss will soon die of thirst if she doesn’t find water. She weighs several different possible plans for getting water, but rules each one out. Then she realizes that Haymitch could send her water.]

[action based on conflict: Katniss says “water” in hopes that the cameras will pick it up and Haymitch will send some.]

[external conflict: why isn’t Haymitch sending water? Is he trying to make her suffer? Is there something wrong? etc.]

[action based on conflict: Katniss realizes Haymitch is sending her a message, and decides to keep looking.]

[internal narrative: Katniss recalls years when she watched the Hunger Games on TV, thinks of her little sister Prim watching her on TV this year.]

[action: Katniss falls down out of exhaustion/dehydration]

[internal conflict: Katniss thinks she has “misjudged Haymitch” and that he doesn’t mean to help her after all.]

[action/description: Katniss smells the air, strokes the ground, feels mud, realizes she’s reached water. purifies the water and drinks it.]

[external conflict/cliffhanger: Katniss wakes up to the sound of stampeding feet and the smell of fire.]

announcing International Sh*tty First Draft Week!

2011-07-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

*yawns*

*sighs*

*scratches mosquito bite*

*turns page*

*looks up and startles at presence of blog readers*

Oh! Hello there. This blog (and indeed, INTERN herself) appears to have hit the summer doldrums, a still and windless time when posting is sparse and great waves are even sparser. What was INTERN doing all last week? Gnawing on lemons? Weeping in the library check-out line? Fanning herself with a subscription card for The Economist while horse flies circled her head?

Well, yes and no. Or rather, yes, but that's not all. INTERN was also scheming. Specifically, she has been plotting a Week. A daring and mischievous Week. A Week in which published and not-yet published authors alike will reveal their deepest secrets. A Week in which you are all invited to participate.

July 25-29th is henceforth declared International Sh*tty First Draft Week.

Have you ever read a book so beautifully-written it made you want to quit, 'cause what's the point of writing when there are people out there who can write like that?

Have you ever read a novel full of such deep insights that your own manuscript feels like a swim in the kiddie pool by comparison?

Have you ever wished you could read the first drafts of your favorite books? Wished you could see your favorite authors' mistakes, out-takes, bloopers, and cut scenes? Have a peek at the process by which a first draft gets trimmed, stretched, dyed, stitched, and powdered into a published novel?

Well, haven't you?

Next week, for the first time ever, four exciting authors will be sharing excerpts of their first drafts on this blog and answering questions about the revision process that resulted in a published novel.

YES, IT WILL BE THRILLING.

But that's not all!

On the fifth day (Friday), henceforth known as International Celebration of Sh*tty First Drafts, INTERN invites EVERYONE to post an excerpt from their own sh*tty* first draft in the comments (or post it on your own blog and put a link in the comments). It will be like skinny-dipping—we'll all run into the freezing cold lake at the same time! Yes, your first draft is embarrassing, but so is everyone's! To the lake! To the lake!

To make the first-draft reveal all the more thrilling, INTERN will be offering priceless prizes to three Sh*tty First Draft participants selected at random.

The prizes will be:

1. A first 50 pages critique by INTERN! (this can be applied to any present or future manuscript, and does not need to go towards the draft in question.)

2. A Sh*tty First Draft prize pack including a red pen (for scribbling all over your manuscript), various made-by-INTERN motivational signs for posting around your desk, perhaps a Book or two, etc. etc.

3. A Mystery Package of books and twigs and bits of string and aluminum foil and...oh wait, you are writing a book, not making a nest. Well, INTERN is sure you will find something clever to do with it.

SOUND LIKE FUN?

YESH?

The excitement begins next Monday. In the meantime, INTERN wishes you happy drafting!

*Why the asterisk in "Sh*tty," you ask? It stands for all the ways in which first drafts are the very opposite of shitty: they can hold flashes of inspiration, stretches of brilliant writing, and scenes that got cut not due to shittiness, but out of necessity. The asterisk stands for *or otherwise unusable for whatever reason. But that was too bulky to include in the official name, don't you think?

great big truths

2011-07-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sat down to write a story and found yourself thinking "I'll write about a heartbroken detective who returns to his hometown! No, that's been done. OK, I'll write about a boy genius who wanders the streets of New York. Dammit—done. OK, come on brain..."

The more you think about it, the more it seems like every story idea has already been used a million bazillion times. What's the point of even writing another novel?

This is a scary question, and if you think about it too hard, you risk falling down a nihilistic rabbit hole and bumping your head. What's the point of writing novels—so many novels—when there are already so many out there? It almost seems pathological. Or greedy. Or something like that.

The answer to this question—or at least, one possible answer—came to INTERN yesterday while she was out mushroom hunting (she found a handful of slug-eaten chanterelles and a lovely if inedible russula, in case you're wondering).

A novel is more than just a collection of made-up plot and character details that fit together in a satisfying way. A novel, if it's good, will also contain one or two big truths. And no matter how many novels get written, here's the thing: Big truths are worth discovering again and again.

Finding out that Mrs. Hootlesby murdered her husband with a vienna sausage is astounding once, after which there might be little reason to read the book again. But finding out, along with Mrs. Hootlesby, that all relationships are banal, or that society itself is a murder machine, or that love conquers all—those ideas (or "truths" or "themes" or whatever you call them) are big enough to chew on for a long time. They elevate a story beyond the sum of its plot twists and make it shine.

And sure, maybe every great truth has been written about a million times too. That's because they demand to be grappled with. The triumphs they offer are fleeting, and need to be earned and re-earned again and again. Mrs. Hootlesby's murder plot is like an algebra equation: once you figure it out, the mystery's gone. But big truths are never quite figure outable. They're too big. There are too many moveable parts. And so we can write about them in so many different ways, and they never lose their power.

So write big. Plot, and even character, can feel like a crowded pond, but the big truths are an ocean that will never run out of space.

the writer takes a walk

2011-07-07T06:23:00.001-07:00

INTERN recently finished reading a fascinating book called The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram (a rather fuzzy title, thinks INTERN, for a very smart book). INTERN is notoriously terrible at paraphrasing books, but the basic gist (or at least, INTERN's unreliable and not-to-be-trusted version of the gist) is that since the invention of the alphabet, and in particular the vowel, humans have increasingly existed in relation to a purely human set of signs (as opposed to existing in relation to the entire living, breathing universe, as oral cultures seem to have done.) Literacy, according to Abram, sealed humans off from nature in a serious way--allowed us to live more and more inside our own heads, transfered meaning from the treetops to the page.

Oh, INTERN is so bad at this.

Anyway, it struck a chord. As writers, we spend so much time in relation to words—building imaginary worlds, forming arguments, thinking up the best possible phrasing for a thought. Everything that goes onto the page comes from the writer's brain, or is quoted from another writer's brain. It's like so many mirrors, all reflecting yourself back at you. When INTERN writes, she becomes strangely impermeable to the world. She needs to block everything out in order to enter the word-magic. INTERN knows a lot of other writers (and, come to think of it, programmers) also require this deeply blocked-off mind space in order to do their work.

When INTERN gets up and goes for a walk in the forest or city, however, she gradually feels herself becoming permeable again. Colours and shapes and sounds and smells all flood in. Where the act of writing turns INTERN into this tight little laser beam of selfness, going outside dissolves her, at least a little bit, and there's a palpable relief at becoming part of the world again.

Have you ever gotten stuck with your writing, then taken a walk and had a million brilliant insights pop into your head? There's probably a scientific explanation for this phenomenon (and if you know it, please share!). To INTERN, it almost feels like the ideas are coming out of the air, or shaken loose from her limbs by moving around. It's like there's a part of your brain that can only know certain things when it's taken away from the computer, and by going for a walk you let the genius loci take over and fill in the blanks.

Or maybe going for walks to prevent writer's block is just another writing superstition, like not shaving your beard while you're writing your novel, or, like, only changing your underwear every 100 pages (INTERN knows who you are!)

What are your writing superstitions? Are you a walker, a bath-taker, a rain-dancer? Why do these things help us so much? Is it just a whimsical habit, or is there something larger at work? INTERN wants to know!

country writer visits the city writer

2011-07-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

This post by the Rejectionist (about feeling like the treed and mountained West Coast isn't "large enough" after living in New York City for several years) gave INTERN cause to ponder.

As one who bounces back and forth between living in Big Cities and treed and mountained rural places on a regular basis, INTERN often wonders which is a better or more productive setting for a writer. City or country? Urban garret or forest shack? Here are some observations from both sides of the fence:

In the city, you can choose from a plethora of readings and book launches and literary events any day of the week. Except most of the time, you're too tired and cranky from your three jobs to actually go to any.

In the country, you can occasionally hear a local poet read from his latest collection of lyric poetry, at the end of which you are so tired and cranky you would rather work three jobs than hear the word "gossamer" ever again.

In the city, you work three jobs just to afford the sweltering and boxlike former storage unit you share with six to ten roommates who also want to be writers. There is one desk which you all share. When it's not your day for the desk, you write in the cupboard under the sink, cuddled up to a Windex bottle.

In the country, you pay the rent on your palatial old farmhouse with the loose change you find between the sofa cushions. There are perhaps three jobs to go around in the whole county and they are all inexplicably held by a kind middle-aged woman named Cindy. You don't have a writing closet; you have an entire writing barn. Birds hoot in the rafters while you type.

In the city, you pride yourself on knowing where to buy the dankest [insert obscure serbo-afro-korean pastry here].

In the country, you pride yourself on knowing where to find the dankest polypore mushrooms.

In the city, you are surrounded by writers and artists and do-ers of all sorts. It's heady and inspiring and intimidating and it makes you feel so so so ambitious you get a buzz every time you sit down to write.

In the country, you only know of one other writer in the area (the aforementioned lyric poet). You glare at one another in the bulk section of the food co-op. When you visit your writer-friends in the city, you are so starved for literary conversation they think you have rabies and try to sedate you.

In the city, you're so busy you steal time to write in five minute bursts, on the subway, in line at the coffee shop, or on one of the lunch breaks at your many jobs.

In the country, you wake up with the sun and write until noon. You do this every day. For a week. After that, you realize the chicken coop needs swabbing and the beet patch needs weeding and there's a wasp nest in the solar shower. For a week, you steal writing time in five-minute bursts. Then it's back to sun-up until noon.

In the city, when your country friends come to visit, you try to impress them by taking them to get the dankest serbo-afro-korean pastry EVER. And they pretend to be into it so they don't hurt your feelings, but you suddenly realize you don't even LIKE pastries, that in fact this whole obscure-pastry obsession is just an attempt at differentiating yourself from the teeming masses of people around you, who are likewise trying to differentiate themselves from you with their own obscure-pastry obsessions...

In the country, when your city friends come to visit, you try to impress them by showing them all the obscure medicinal polypores you foraged from the woods, dried, and ground up in a bicycle-powered mill. And they pretend to be into it so they don't hurt your feelings, and you're like, "fine, go back to your tiny apartment and eat an obscure pastry!" and you sulk until it all starts to feel rather silly.

In the city, you can go to one of a hundred vast and well-stocked libraries and bookstores and find anything you want.

In the country, you can go to one of one (1) tiny libraries and check out a tea-and-cats mystery or you can go to one of one (1) used bookstores and buy an entire box of Harlequin romances for twenty-five cents.

In the city, you and your agent go out for espresso and designer cupcakes like, every Tuesday at ten AM.

In the country, your agent occasionally fears that you have been eaten by a bear, when in fact the power's been out for a week following a pesky snow-lightning-flood-storm, and there was never cell service to begin with.

In the city, you are always broke because it costs $50 a day just to breathe.

In the country, you are always broke because there is maybe $50 in the whole county which you and your neighbors are continuously bouncing back and forth between yourselves for various odd jobs.

In the city, you forge your dream critique group out of like-minded writers. You meet every Tuesday morning at eleven AM and engage in scintillating literary discussion.

In the country, you finally find out about a local writers' group after months of looking. The next meeting is in three weeks. You look forward to it with every fiber of your body. When the morning finally comes, you show up at Bud's Coffee Shack ten minutes early. Who is sitting at a smudgy plastic table but your archnemesis, the lyric poet! You turn on your heel and stalk out of there, crumpling your carefully-assembled pages in your fist.

In the city, you are constantly applying for writing fellowships in nice bucolic settings, where you fantasize that you will be so very productive and inspired by nature.

In the country, you are constantly applying for fully-funded MFA programs in cosmopolitan settings, where you fantasize that you will be so very productive and inspired by all the fast-paced urban grit.

**

So there you have it, writer-friends! The country or the city: both hold their challenges for the struggling writer, and their rewards.

INTERN wants to know: are you a city writer or a country writer? Or are you a suburban writer or a writer-on-the-moon? What is it like to be a writer where you live?

huzzah! 'tis Canada Day!

2011-07-01T05:44:00.000-07:00

'Tis summer! 'Tis Canada Day! INTERN is aflood with fond reminiscences of her literary homeland, and wistfulness at her increasing americanization. The Canadian literary scene, which once felt so urgent and intimate to INTERN, feels like that highschool best friend she hasn't spoken to in years. Yet the longer she lives in the big, bad USA, she feels less and less like a Canadian and more and more like an amorphous blob of North Americanness, unmoored and still finding her place.

INTERN knows that approximately six people who read this blog are Canadian. This post is dedicated to them.

You know you are a Can-Lit brat when:

...the most memorable book of your childhood was Le Chandail de Hockey by Roch Carrier.

...you sent your first unsolicited manuscripts to Annick, Coach House, and Arsenal Pulp Press, and got at least one nice hand-written note back as a rejection letter.

...the first literary journals you read/published in were subTerrain, Contemporary Verse II, and West Coast Line.

...you read The Globe and Mail every day for years and got irrationally upset when they changed their font.

...you get irrationally upset when people mistakenly assume a Canadian author is actually American.

...you are aware of Margaret Atwood's doings the way some people are aware of Lady Gaga's—she's just permanently on your radar.

...the characters in your stories write cheques and visit their neighbours.

...you get irrationally upset when blogger underlines the word "neighbours" in red to indicate a spelling error.

...you looked forward to the Word on the Street festival more fervently than you looked forward to Christmas.

...you can rattle off the names of Canadian authors like some sort of catechism: bill bissett, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jane Urquhart...

...when you go to a reading by a Canadian author (almost any Canadian author), and the reading is in the US, and go up and talk to her afterwards, it will turn out that you have at least a dozen Canadian writer-friends in common, and she will invite you out for a post-reading beer or three.

...the literary scene in the US seems so enormous and unwieldly in comparison that you despair of ever getting a grasp on it. Whereas in Canada, you feel like you can actually keep up on all things literary—or many things, anyway.

...your mom still bugs you to apply for a residency at the Berton House. Yes, it's in the Yukon. Does your mother really want you to get eaten alive by bears in the Yukon while toiling over the Great Canadian Novel? Yes, yes she does.

INTERN invites Canadian and ex-Canadian readers to add to this list in the comments.

how do you carry your drops of oil?

2011-06-30T06:40:00.000-07:00

After a long and sleep-deprived cross-country trek, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend are finally settled in at their most recent nest, this time a rustic cabin in the Maine woods. Internet is spotty at best (and picked up via a Rube Goldberg-esque antenna contraption Techie Boyfriend assembled from twist ties and bits of metal, which must be pointed North at all times and never, ever touched, especially by INTERN, whose touch has the awesome power of rendering most technological devices unusable). If the rate of posts on this blog is somewhat erratic this summer, you now know why.

All this rustic living (outdoor kitchen, outhouse, gallons of water carried from a pump, fireflies at night and tiny wild strawberries growing in tall grass) has put INTERN in a storytelling mood. So here goes.

There was once a young adventurer, let’s call her Brunhilde, who wished to receive the great secret of life from the queen. She traveled many days, crossing deserts and paddling through oceans and thwacking her way through thick, prickly, brush, and finally arrived at the queen’s palace at the top of an icy blue mountain.

She went into the palace and took a number from the small plastic machine at the door, and when her number came up on the digitial display, not unlike the one at the DMV, which was hanging from the pressed-copper ceiling, the queen received her in her throne room.

“Why,” said the queen, “have you sought an audience with me?” She was clad in a plain black suit and sat behind a mahogany desk twirling an ostrich-feather quill pen.

Brunhilde quivered in her boots.

“I wish to know the great secret of life,” she said.

The queen smiled. She opened one of the drawers in her desk and took out a silver spoon. She opened another drawer and took out a small crystal flask full of polar bear oil. Without saying a word, she opened the flask and poured a few drops of the precious oil into the silver spoon, and handed it to Brunhilde.

“Go out and enjoy the wonders of my queendom,” she said. “There are many marvels. Go explore. Come back and talk to me in a few days. In the meantime, hang on to this spoonful of oil for me.”

Brunhilde took the spoonful of oil and dutifully did as she was told. She went to the carnival district and rode the Ferris wheel; she went to the polar bear district and played with the cubs; she had a wild fling with a fellow explorer she met in the palace pub. When a few days had passed, she returned to see the queen.

“Your queendom is marvelous!” gushed Brunhilde. “I went on a sleigh ride and took a pottery class and sampled ten thousand flavors of halva at the market. Truly, your queendom is the most beautiful and stimulating place in the world.”

The queen accepted the compliment demurely. When Brunhilde was finished talking, she cocked her silver head and looked Brunhilde in the eyes.

“I’m glad you had so many adventures,” said the queen. “But pray tell: what happened to the drops of oil in the spoon?”

At those words, Brunhilde blushed. Somewhere between the Ferris wheel and the tilt-a-whirl, she had forgotten all about the silver spoon, and oil had splashed out on the ground.

“I forgot all about it,” Brunhilde confessed. Fearing the queen’s wrath, she began to quiver in her boots once more.

But the queen opened the drawer in her mahogany desk and took out the crystal flask.

“Hold out your spoon,” she said.

Brunhilde did as she was told, and a moment later there were three more drops of oil in her spoon.

The queen looked her in the eyes. “Go out and explore my queendom for three more days; then come back and talk to me.”

This time, Brunhilde resolved to be more responsible. She never took her eyes off the drops of oil in the spoon. Instead of riding the tilt-a-whirl, she stayed on the ground where it was safe. She was so worried about the oil that crossed the street whenever she saw people coming, for fear they would bump into her and cause her to spill the oil. Most of the time, she just stayed in her tent where the oil would be safe.

When Brunhilde went back to see the queen, the queen questioned her again.

“My queendom is full of marvels—tell me, what did you see?”

But this time, Brunhilde confessed that she had not seen anything. She had been too busy guarding the drops of oil in the spoon.

“What a shame,” said the queen. “All these days you could have been attending the kite festival, or learning to dance the electric rumpus, or trading bits of poetry with that lover of yours, and instead you spent the whole time watching a spoonful of oil.”

At this, Brunhilde grew frustrated in spite of herself.

“What’s this?” she cried, stamping a booted foot. “If I partake in the marvels, I spill the oil. If I guard the oil, I miss out on the marvels.”

At this, the queen shook her head sadly.

“The great secret of life,” she said, “is to enjoy all the wonders of the world—but never forget the drops of oil in the spoon.”

**
To INTERN, this story (a version of which she encountered for the first time several years ago) has always suggested a multitude of writing metaphors.

The drops of oil are a story’s theme, its kernel of truth, that writers must carry gently through the hall of marvels without either losing control or clinging too tightly.

The drops of oil are a middle path between being a pantser and being an outliner: a way of keeping your goal in the back of your mind, even as you make room for the unexpected.

The drops of oil are your readers: do you lose them in your flights of fancy, stifle them with too much explaining, or guide them with a light touch?

Wishing you all ten thousand marvels!

INTERN

on whoopie pies and elephant rides

2011-06-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

So you’re walking down the street one day when you overhear a couple of people gushing about whoopie pies.

“They’re so delicious!” you hear them say. “And so hot in New York right now!”

One of your foodie friends confirms the rumor: whoopie pies are the hot new street food. As a matter of fact, there are food carts popping up all over the place selling whoopie pies for six dollars each, and they’re making a killing.

“Six dollars each?” you think to yourself, incredulous. “For a whoopie pie? Hell, why don’t I make some whoopie pies?”

You go home to your kitchen, pull out some ingredients, and start messing around. Your first few batches are nasty, but you get the hang of it soon enough, and it isn’t long before you have a caseload of whoopie pies ready to sell.

You wheel your case of whoopie pies out to the corner and stand there waiting for your first customers. You’ve only been standing on the corner for ten minutes when a man in a designer suit and sunglasses sidles up to you.

“Whoopie pies, eh? So delicious. And so hot in New York right now. Are you in the market for a business partner?”

A business partner. It seems premature—after all, you only started making whoopie pies a month ago. But the attention is so flattering. And the man seems so convinced that your business can succeed. Why not jump in right away?

You and the man sign a deal, and soon enough he’s standing on the street corner right next to you, helping you sell your pies. He’s good at what he does: he orders you a nice big sign full of flashing lights, which attracts lots of customers to your stand. He writes brilliant copy advertising the tender sweetness of your whoopie pies.

“I’m not making any promises,” says the man, “but I have a feeling you might be able to quit your job soon and make whoopie pies full time.”

A week later, he strides up with the news: he’s snagged a deal with Whole Foods. A huge, unprecedented, four-whoopie-pie deal. For the next four years, you will come up with a new flavor of whoopie pie every year. Your pies will be distributed to 440,000 Whole Foods outlets across America. World whoopie pie rights have sold to Sysco Systems. Soon, everyone on the planet will be devouring your whoopie pies. Isn’t that great?

You’re overwhelmed. Flabbergasted. You can’t believe your luck. A four whoopie pie deal. Nobody gets a four whoopie pie deal. This is amazing.

Your business partner immediately launches a full-scale marketing campaign. From now on, you will be known as the Whoopie Queen. When people see your face, they will think “whoopie pie.” When people hear your name, they will think “whoopie pie.” You will live and breathe whoopie. You and your business partner will both be set for life.

This is amazing. This is amazing, you tell yourself. But also a little uncomfortable. After all, you started making whoopie pies on a whim. Because you heard they were hot. Because you knew they would sell. It seemed like fun, at the time. Just a fun little whoopie pie project on the side. But all of a sudden, making whoopie is your life. Your whole identity. And you didn’t exactly plan on that.

You start thinking about all the other projects you wanted to do before you got caught up in all this whoopie business. You used to enjoy baking bread, and growing vegetables. You sort of wanted to become a soup maker, before all this whoopie stuff started getting big. You used to love the feeling of pulling fresh vegetables out of the earth and transforming them into a nourishing, unusual, completely organic meal. Sure, making these elaborate soups took a long time and you never made a cent, but you loved doing it. Not that you don’t love making whoopie pies. Whoopie pies are fun. It’s just….it’s just…

You talk to your business partner about this whole soup idea. He’s sympathetic; he’s totally behind the idea of you being a vegetable soup maker. For now, though, it’s important for you to focus on making whoopie pies—just while you’re building your audience. After that, you can branch out into soups. You have that four-whoopie pie deal to think about, and you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

But by the time you’ve fulfilled the terms of your four whoopie-pie deal, your audience is huge and rabid and they want whoopie pies, nothing but whoopie pies. You’d feel bad disappointing them. You’d feel bad disappointing your business partner, who already has plans for another big whoopie pie deal. Besides, it’s not like you have time to experiment with soups anymore: being the Whoopie Queen is a full-time job.

You tell yourself you should be grateful for all your whoopie-making success, but deep down you’re frantic: how did this happen? Where did you veer off-course? Can’t you have your whoopie pie and eat it too?

It reminds you of that time when you were six when you went to the carnival with your cousins. As soon as you saw the elephants, you screamed “Elephants!” and ran to get in line to ride one. As you waited in line, you were so excited you squirmed. You were going to ride an elephant and it was going to be so much fun!

Finally, you got to the front of the line. The elephant man hoisted you up onto the elephant’s back. There you were, riding the elephant! It couldn’t get any better than this! You might as well be famous!

You turned around to wave at your cousins. But while you were getting onto the elephant’s back, they’d all wandered off to get cotton candy. Suddenly, the elephant felt scary-huge. It started lumbering away with you on its back.

“Wait!” you said, panicking, but the elephant man didn’t hear. You twisted around and saw your cousins laughing together, walking off with their cotton candy to find another ride. “Wait!” you shouted again.

“What’s wrong?” said the elephant man. “Didn’t you want to ride the elephant?”

You burst into tears without knowing why. Yes, you wanted to ride the elephant. But you thought your cousins would stay. Now, they’re all having fun without you, and you’re stuck on the elephant, high up and all alone, and who knows what other things you’re missing out on?

The elephant man was exasperated. “Aren’t you the little girl who begged to ride the elephant?”

“Yes,” you said, “Yes—but I didn’t understand!”

“Didn’t understand what?”

You clutched the elephant-saddle and sobbed. You didn’t understand that riding the elephant meant missing out on other things. You didn’t understand it was a choice, and making a choice meant giving up one thing for another. You didn’t understand that one tiny choice could carry you away on its back, while everything else you knew and loved got smaller and smaller in the distance.

**

Sometimes, you dream of riding an elephant all your life, and when it finally happens it’s a dream come true. But sometimes, you don’t realize you’re climbed on an elephant’s back until you feel it start to move beneath you.

Still, INTERN can’t decide if it’s better to choose your elephants wisely, or if the universe smiles on those who jump blithely onto the elephant’s back—or those who have the courage to jump off if they realize their elephant is moving in the wrong direction.

Where has your writing-elephant taken you lately? Are you conscious of your long-term career direction when you start a new writing project? Or do you chase dreams as they come to you, without worrying about where you’ll end up? Have you ever changed directions? Why? Was it hard?

INTERN wants to know!

"come on, baby, let's start new": on getting back together

2011-06-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

So it's been a few months since you and your manuscript broke up. At first, it was great—the freedom! the not-needing-to-share-your-sandwich-with-anyone! But lately, you've found your thoughts drifting back to the good times. Remembering all the cute things your manuscript used to do. Playing back those sweet sentences in your head. And you get to wondering what your manuscript is up to these days.

Your best friends say you're crazy. They point out that, mere months ago, you did nothing but whine about it. You and your manuscript used to bicker over the stupidest things. Your manuscript couldn't even bring up That Subplot (you know the one) without making you sulk for hours. Let's face it: you fought all the time. That's why you broke up in the first place. What makes you think this time will be any different?

Well, here's why:

"Baby, I've changed."

Before, you were immature. Irresponsible. You'd stumble in at 3 AM to find your manuscript waiting in the kitchen with its arms folded. "I was just out for a good time with my writer-friends!" you'd say. "Aren't I allowed to have fun anymore?"

Now, you make time for your manuscript. You make sure writing comes first. When your gamer friends call you up to play Dungeons & Dragons, you say something snappy like "pages before mages, bro!" When your math friends call you up to do algebra, you say "words before nerds!" When your zombie friends call you up to go staggering through the streets, you say "manuscripts before crypts!"

OK, INTERN's done.

"I'm finally man/woman enough to be with you."

Before, you adored your manuscript, but you just weren't strong enough as a writer to handle the challenges of being in a relationship with it. You didn't know anything about structure, or you thought that having your characters make lengthy speeches was the right way to express your themes. You were head over heels in love with your story idea, but you just couldn't make it work.

Since then, you've read some more books. Written some more stories. Aged a few years. Lived a little. Now, you've finally grown into that story idea like a too-big pair of shoes. You have the skills and insights you lacked before. You've picked up the tools. You've finally become the writer your manuscript needed you to be all along.

"We can work out our problems."

Before, you'd fight with the same old scenes every day, tinkering and tinkering but never making them work. It's the frustration that killed you in the end. The sense that no matter what you did, the manuscript never got any better.

Now, you're taking a broader view. Instead of tinkering with those stupid scenes, you're going to cut them and rewrite. In fact, you're going to cut everything, and you and your manuscript are going to make a fresh start, in a whole new town, where there's less of a chance you'll fall into your old patterns. This time, you're going to have a better plan. A killer outline. Or at least a commitment to work those problems through to the end instead of throwing up your hands in despair.

"Nobody else makes me feel the way you do."

After breaking up with your literary fiction manuscript, you flirted with some historical romances, thinking they'd be "easy". You were sick to death of symbolism and lyricism and all that snobby stuff that made your first manuscript fail, and for a while you ran around with picture books and weight loss guides, anything you could write.

It was fun for a while. But you know what? It also felt empty. You didn't have that passion you had for your literary fiction project—it was all about chasing money, or chasing something. You're ready to go back to your literary manuscript, even though it means hard work. At least it made you feel alive.

"Just give me one more chance."

You get down on one knee with a rose clenched between your teeth.

"TAKE ME BACK!" you say (which makes the rose fall out).

Then you run into each others' arms...

on finding beauty again

2011-06-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

There comes a point during revision when you stop seeing your manuscript as a work of art and start treating it like a leaky toilet: “shit, I got Chapter 6 to work, but now Chapter 9 is loose and I need a whole different kind of toilet-glue to hold Chapters 10 and 11 together.”

You make endless trips to the hardware store of your imagination, lugging home ideas and fixes that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. You screw scenes on and rip them out again, come up with the perfect sentence only to realize that you’re going to have to scrap the entire subplot it belongs to.

Where you once had a manuscript, you now have a messy construction site. Your book doesn’t even look like a book anymore—it looks like a pile of broken stuff waiting to be hauled to the dump. You don’t feel like a writer anymore, either—you feel like a deranged cook sweating over a boiling vat of soup that only tastes worse and worse with every ingredient you throw in to fix your last mistake.

You can’t remember what inspired you to write your novel. It’s a vicious ugly cold-hearted thing and it’s eating you alive. You’re a vicious, ugly, cold-hearted thing too, an evil plumber with a bag full of tools. You couldn’t find the pulse of your novel if you tried. It’s turned into a dead thing—or a thing towards which you’ve become dead.

“Writing is hard work,” you reassure yourself.
“Don’t tell me to take a break,” you snap at your well-meaning loved ones.

You fight your way grimly through the brambles.

Meanwhile, the world goes on lush and sun-filled just outside your field of view.

**

The realization that you’ve become numb to beauty is a terrifying thing. To wake up and discover that for days—weeks, months—you’ve been living like a machine. How can this machine-person create a work of great beauty? How can this person who sweats and curses and won’t even stop to take a walk in the trees ever expect to move people?

**

You panic.

Take the break they’ve been telling you to take for days/weeks/months.

Go for that walk you’ve been putting off.
Let yourself (gasp!) spend time with friends instead of scuttling off to your work space the second that dinner is over.

At first, it feels like it isn’t working. You’re just as wound up and single-minded as you were a few days ago. If you’re going to be like this, you might as well just work.

**

But when you try to work, you just get frustrated. So you go for another walk. You cook a meal. You dig in the garden. You read some poems.

**

You’re still too much of a machine to appreciate anything.

You’re hard inside. Functional. You’d rather be working.

But slowly, imperceptibly, beauty starts to push its head out of the ground like a tomato seedling. Your heart still feels like packed clay, but there it is—something living.

When you notice it, you’re so relieved you can’t help it: you fall on the ground and cry.

**

You can lose your soul doing just about anything. You can lose it in an office, you can lose it at an ashram, and you can lose it writing. The holiness of a given endeavor depends on you, not on the project, and even writing or painting or dancing can become savage and awful when you’re doing it out of fear instead of love.

There’s a fine line between working hard and becoming a monster, but it’s there and it’s real and it’s terrifying.

Today, INTERN is grateful for tomato seeds, and for all the people and songs and books that help her find her way to beauty again.

Having An Agent Is Weird

2011-06-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

Last night, INTERN was chatting with a writer-friend about all things bookish, and they got to talking about agents. How the internet is stuffed with advice about snagging one (always snagging!) but goes curiously silent after the proverbial wedding day, like so many fairy tales. Just like the (presumably awkward) deflowering scene that happens off-stage in those fairytales, there's something the internet doesn't tell you about agents: Having An Agent Is Weird.

Why is having an agent the most awkward thing ever if you've never done it before?

It's a bit like dating your first boy/girlfriend.

If you are the least bit neurotic, you will constantly ask yourself "Do we talk enough? Am I too needy? Too distant? Amy and Brad call each other, like, every hour. Should I fly to NYC to visit him?"

You are the least bit self-doubty, you will wonder, "Does she/he really like me? Does he regret going out with me? Is he just waiting for the right moment to dump me? Is she embarrassed to be seen with me?"

If you are least bit insecure, you will find your friends and relatives rolling their eyes every time you say something like, "Sorry, I can't come over for dinner—me and my ~~BOYFRIEND~~ AGENT have a phone date." or "My AGENT said the CUTEST THING on Twitter today!"

Once you realize your agent is ~~dating~~ representing 10-50 other people besides you, your anxiety will only soar higher: "Everyone else s/he represents is so much more famous than me! What if s/he's just dating me out of pity?" "All his other clients are bestsellers. I should BURY MY HEAD IN A HOLE."

Your friends will tell you to chill out and stop overanalyzing things. You will spend all your time doing quizzes in Cosmo and Seventeen in a desperate attempt to assess the rightness or wrongness of your relationship with your agent. When you finally meet your agent (for something intimidatingly classy, like gelato or salade frisee or, like, some weird pâté thingie you don't know how to eat) you will be so excited you will almost wet your pants. After the meeting is over, you will walk away thinking, "hey, maybe that wasn't so awkward after all!"

You will go back and forth on revision stuff, or submission stuff, or contract stuff, and you will gradually realize that you are in a businessy creative relationship, not an angst-ridden romantic one. Then, and only then, will the Weirdness start to ebb.

So there you go. Having an agent is weird—at least, it's as weird as you make it, until you realize all you have to do is act normal. Now you know!

three cups of lame: wily non-fiction bandits strike again

2011-06-13T16:33:00.001-07:00

So, you've probably heard about the recent legal ensnarglements surrounding Greg Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea, the latest of which is a personal injury lawsuit filed by irate readers who claim to have been "damaged" (to the tune of twelve bucks) by the discovery that parts of the book weren't exactly true.

According to the lawsuit,

"Mortenson and CAI committed actual fraud against Plaintiffs by inducing them to donate to CAI and purchase the book that Mortenson and CAI publicly represented to be a true work when in fact Mortenson’s books contained numerous fabrications."

Shocking, yes. But there's more:

“The purpose of these fabrications was to induce unsuspecting individuals to purchase his books and donate to CAI.”

Actual Fraud! Inducement of unsuspecting individuals! You'd think Mortenson had conned their grandma on the subway, not written a freaking book. INTERN isn't saying these readers aren't justified in feeling cheated—especially when you throw the whole charity thing into the mix, which changes everything. But what is it about truth—or the bending of it—that turns perfectly nice readers into a pack of hyenas? Why do we feel such personal affront—such outrage—when authors fail to meet our expectations of truthiness? What's the value of all this truth stuff anyway? And why are we, as a culture, so obsessed with it?

**

You might remember the James Frey settlement, in which the author of the memoir A Million Little Pieces and his publisher agreed to give angry readers their money back as long as they sent in a mangled piece of the book and some kind of maudlin victim impact statement in which they swore they would never have bought the book if they knew it wasn't 100% true. According to the New York Times:

“hardcover buyers, who are entitled to a $23.95 refund, must submit page 163 (chosen at random, according to the source familiar with the negotiations); paperback buyers (entitled to $14.95) must send in the front cover of the book; those who bought the audio book ($34.95) will have to send in a piece of the packaging, and those who bought the e-book, at $9.95 apiece, must send in some proof of purchase.

People making a claim will also have to submit a sworn statement that they would not have bought the book if they knew that certain facts had been embroidered or changed.”

It's that last sentence interests INTERN. When you buy a memoir, do you buy it because you believe it to be true—is truth just that titillating? Or do you buy it because it sounds like a good story about growing up in the '30s/being a call girl/surviving abuse? INTERN suspects it's some combination of both: the story sounds interesting, and the fact that it's "true" makes it all the more compelling—because we have a yearning to know the details of other people's lives, or because we find inspiration in stories that "actually happened" because they make us feel like anything's possible.

In real life, intimate relationships are characterized by a high level of honesty and truth-sharing. Couples and best friends tell each other secrets and make confessions they wouldn't make to anyone else. For better or for worse, many people experience the same feeling of intimacy when they read a memoir. Not a tempered, I've-never-even-met-this-person kind of intimacy—the same intimacy. Otherwise, why do so many readers react just as strongly to an untruthful memoir as they would to an untruthful friend or lover?

In Greg Mortenson's case, the whole intimacy thing is made even more complicated by the fact many readers of Three Cups of Tea also trusted him enough to donate to his charity, the Central Asia Institute. And yes, when you're asking people to donate to a charity, you owe it to them to use their money how you say you're going to use it. But when it comes to writing a memoir, how much truth you do you owe your readers? Is 95% OK? 90%? Or will only 100% do?

Personally, INTERN would rather read great books than 100% true ones. She also hates—hates, hates, hates—the way that litigation (or the threat thereof) stifles/poisons/kills all sorts of creative endeavors in this country, and would rather read a wonky memoir or two than live in a society that threatens its artists and writers with class action lawsuits if they don't conform to some arbitrary definition of truth. If we need to create a new genre to deal with this problem—sortamemoir, anyone?—INTERN is fine with that.

**

INTERN wants to know: How much truth do you expect from a memoir? How fake does a memoir have to be for you to feel cheated? Have you read Greg Mortenson's book? (INTERN hasn't). Do you feel cheated by it? Why do people love suing people so much in this country?

Autoresponse: Out of Office

2011-06-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

INTERN will be ~~locked in a moving vehicle with a bunch of axe murders from craigslist~~ out of office for the next ~~but seriously, if you don't hear from INTERN within a couple days, please notify the California Highway Patrol~~ 2-3 days as her and Techie Boyfriend complete Stage 1 of their ~~madcap scheme~~ well thought-out plan to move onto their friends' ~~commune~~ artist community for the summer.

In case of emergency, please contact INTERN's secretary, Slartybartfast, by waving a towel at the sky.

Thanks,

INTERN

little nudges, big effects: thoughts on #YAsaves

2011-06-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

If you been within two feet of a computer this weekend, you've undoubtedly already read about or participated in the massive #YAsaves thingie that erupted in response to this Wall Street Journal article deploring a perceived Grittiness Overload in YA. YA, the article implies, ought to be cleaner, safer— you should be able to grab it off the shelf like one of those "eating right" TV dinners and be sure you won't be getting more than 6 grams of swear words and 300 calories of Depravity.

A huge number of readers and writers have already written eloquently about how YA literature has given them empathy, hope, a lifeline, or just good readin'.

One thing INTERN finds interesting about the whole ferschnuzzle is the question it raises about the role parents should (or shouldn't) play in vetting what their kids read.

INTERN is speaking as a person whom YA explicitly *didn't* save—but not for the reasons listed in WSJ.

In INTERN's case, INTERN's mom didn't stop her from reading YA books because they were too gritty. INTERN was shamed out of reading them because in her (rather snooty when it comes to reading) family, YA books weren't considered "real books". She remembers hiding her copies of Speak and Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging out of sheer embarrassment. Most of the time, she stuck to "adult" books just to be safe. To this day, INTERN feels a prickle of self-consciousness when she lingers in the YA section, and not just because she feels (looks?) like a creepy hobo with spiders in her hair.

INTERN graduated straight from Wolves of Willoughby Chase to House of Leaves. At fourteen, she could give you all sorts of tips on living in a boxcar, but had no idea what it meant when her best friend started cutting. At fifteen, she could talk your ear off about post-colonialism, but was as awestruck when one of the prefects at her school came out as if he'd declared he was a Martian. A little dose of YA—gritty or otherwise—would have been instructive in both situations.

Until the #YAsaves thing happened, INTERN had never given much thought to the ways in which her parents influenced her reading. But now that she thinks about it, the influence was there, and it was huge. The attitudes you absorb about certain kinds of books when you're a kid—whether it's "those books are too hard for me" or "those books aren't worth reading"—those attitudes really do end up shaping you as a reader, and by extension, as a person. When you go to a library with a kid and comment on her selections, you send a strong message, whether it's validation or disdain. Those messages don't just dissolve into thin air.

So INTERN really, really wants to know: Did your parents or parent-figure(s) vet your reading material? What kinds of things did they push you towards? What did they push you away from? How did your parents' attitudes about books and reading influence your own?

how to RUG.

2011-06-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

You have doubtless heard of RUE—Resist the Urge to Explain.

From INTERN's personal lexicon of literary terminology, a lesser known rule:

RUG: Resist the Urge to Google.

RUG refers to the temptation, in this age of wifi-enabled coffeeshops and writing rooms, to interrupt writing every fifteen seconds to google a piece of crucial "research" for one's novel instead of figuring it out for oneself by thinking about it.

In the past few days, INTERN is guilty of googling the following:

"how to survive fall from fourth-story window"
"how to climb building"
"parkour how to climb building"
"what rhymes with "affordable"
"Pocky ingredients"
"how to drywall"
"schedule for #17 nightbus"
"how to true spokes"
"causes of accidental death in America"
"Fender guitars"
"causes of homelessness"
"homelessness statistics"
"Pocky flavors"

etc. etc. etc.

Only one of these searches resulted in information INTERN actually used. INTERN should have been more RUGged in her determination to stay focused.

INTERN wants to know: what stupid, pointless, barely-relevant things have you Googled recently in the name of novel research? Do you use "research" as an excuse to break the flow of your writing? Would you like to join INTERN in a sacred oath to stop Googling stupid #^$% when you're supposed to be writing? Yes?

trouble is on the road again

2011-05-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, a very nice group of bloggers e-mailed INTERN asking if she would like to participate in a "where I write" thingy where you send in a photo of your writing space. At the time, INTERN was feeling very Secretive and declined in what she hopes was a gracious and not too paranoid-seeming manner. However, INTERN currently finds herself in a time of great reflection regarding living and writing spaces. Here, therefore, is INTERN's belated answer.

For most of the past year, INTERN lived and wrote in a 1985 Toyota pickup truck with a fiberglass camper on top. After a three-month sojourn at a friend's cabin, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend returned to their van this week:

Yes, it's beautiful. Here is a picture of the inside:

INTERN's relationship with her van is complex. Like some sort of vehicular monkey's paw, it's come to represent a host of different things to INTERN, a lot of them tied up with her convictions and fears about being a writer. If you want to talk about universal themes, here are some of INTERN's as regards her writing space:

Pride: INTERN bought her "home" with a chunk of the advance for her first book. That little flare of hope and pride she felt in being able to support herself as a writer/editor (even if it meant living in a van) was a precious thing.

Despair: Sometimes, INTERN sees the van as a symbol of her failure to succeed in the "real world" and a reminder that her last three attempts at holding down "real jobs" to pay the rent ended in embarrassing psychiatric kersnarfles.

Freedom: Living like a nomad has given INTERN the freedom to survive as a writer/editor, and provided a context in which her mental quirks don't matter nearly as much as they do in a "normal" context.

Trappedness: The longer you live like a nomad, the harder it becomes to find your way back into a more stable existence. Suddenly, the prospect of finding a place to live and paying rent feels like an outlandishly difficult proposition.

Determination: INTERN and Techie Boyfriend are determined to find a life in which they can write and create and dream and spend 99% of their time together, even if it means enduring the occasional existential freakout on INTERN's part.

On more than on occasion, INTERN has issued bitter ultimatums regarding the van: INTERN cannot live in that thing, INTERN cannot write in that thing (as it turns out, INTERN both finished a novel and signed with her agent while living in or out of “that thing” which indicates that in fact, INTERN can.) If the van has taught INTERN one thing about writing, it's that you can't be precious about it. You won't always have an "acceptable" writing space, or power for your laptop, or a stable environment/life (conversely, if you have a job and family, you might not have as much time as you want). If you want to write, you have to do it anyway.

As INTERN and Techie Boyfriend head off on their next adventure, INTERN returns to her Toyota writing room with a mixture of excitement and wistfulness. The future is more than cloudy—it's completely friggin' opaque. Writing (and writing this blog in particular) are the one constant. And that makes all the despairing moments completely worthwhile.

**

INTERN wants to know: where do you write? What does your writing space say about you? What's the weirdest place you've ever slept?

ship 'o' scripts

2011-05-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

From INTERN's personal dictionary of literary terms:

The Athenian Manuscript Paradox: What happens when you replace every #%$% detail of your story so many #^@%# times you can hardly #^$%# recognize it any more.

The ~~ship~~ manuscript wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from ~~Crete~~ their first draft had thirty ~~oars~~ chapters, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old ~~planks~~ scenes as they decayed, putting in new and stronger ~~timber~~ writing in their place, insomuch that this ~~ship~~ manuscript became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ~~ship~~ manuscript remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
—Plutarch, Theseus[1]

Over to you: at what point are you still revising the same story, and at what point have you ended up with a completely different book? INTERN wants to know!

thirteen reasons why (it's hard to find the right critique partner)

2011-05-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

Why INTERN’s mom is not her critique partner:

“It's a neat story, but is it realistic? I mean, YOU weren't doing those things when you were seventeen—“ *blushes, looks fretful*
“—were you?”

Why INTERN’s dad is not her critique partner:

“Great story. Given any thought to law school?”

Why INTERN’s sister is not her critique partner:

“The second letter in the main character’s name is the same as the third letter in my middle name AND YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD NEVER WRITE ABOUT ME.”

Why INTERN’s grandma is not her critique partner:

“Can you print this again in a decent type size?”
“Like how big, grandma?”
“72 pt.”

Why INTERN's grandpa is not her critique partner:

*sets manuscript on fire by using it as an ashtray* *shoots rifle at ceiling* "Thieves! Vandals!"

Why INTERN’s best friend from college is not her critique partner:

“Du-u-de, the first two pages were so-o-o good, then I lost the manuscript on the beach when I was skimboarding.”

Why INTERN’s highschool English teacher is not her critique partner:

*sighs* “Well, it's not The Sun Also Rises.”

Why INTERN's kindergarten best friend is not her critique partner:

*twirls hair* "Can you make it be about a princess?"

Why that creepy guy on the bus is not INTERN’s critique partner:

“You’re the bomb, baby. Can I touch your hair?”

Why Techie Boyfriend’s little sister is not INTERN’s critique partner:

“I think the characters are really—OMG LOOK AT THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO OF A GUY BEATBOXING WHILE PLAYING THE FLUTE IT’LL ONLY TAKE A SECOND JUST WATCH IT!”

Why Harold Camping is not INTERN's critique partner:

"Throw it all on the stink-barge! JUDGEMENT DAY IS COMING BEFORE YOUR DEADLINE ANYWAY."

Why INTERN's eerily smart baby cousin is not her critique partner:

*drools on manuscript* *writes 20-point editorial letter analyzing manuscript's flaws from a post-Lacanian perspective*

Why the People In White Coats are not INTERN's critique partners:

"You do know that writing obsessively is a sign of mania? Let's get you on Depakote, shall we?"*

*happy mental health month and happy monday!

-INTERN

thoughts on universals

2011-05-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

If INTERN has been rather absent from the blogosphere over the past week or so, it's because she has been deep in her basement Book Laboratory conducting experiments and pondering the notion of universals in literature. What does it mean for a novel or memoir to have “universally relevant themes” or for a character to be “universally relatable”? These are terms that pop up pretty frequently in agents’ wishlists for the perfect manuscript, but they can be pretty mystifying until you get the hang of them. If you're not sure what's universally relatable about your story, how do you find out? And what can we learn about universal themes from books that already have them?

INTERN is no Donald Maass (for one thing, her grin is much toothier), but she’s found it helpful to boil down the first question to the following theme-finding formula:

“Not everyone can relate to x, but most people can relate to y.”

Actually, here’s an even better way of putting it:

“Not all readers can relate to (specific thing), but most readers can relate to (general thing).”

Here are some examples:

Not everyone can relate to being a blind ballet dancer, but most people can relate to the struggle to overcome adversity.

Not everyone can relate to being a spaceman with a troubled past, but most people can relate to the yearning to atone for past mistakes.

Not everyone can relate to being a widowed painter who falls in love with the town fire chief, but most people can relate to the bittersweetness of learning to love again following a heartbreak.

See what INTERN means? No matter what your novel or memoir is about (growing up on the prairie, solving international murder mysteries, being a teenage runaway, etc.) you can always rephrase it in its most general terms, otherwise known as its themes.

Think about having a beer with your best friends. Best Friend A is thinking about quitting her job to become a stand-up comedian. Best friend B just found out his girlfriend’s pregnant. Even though your life is completely different from theirs, you can relate to their feelings of uncertainty, hope, and facing big decisions. These are universal feelings that can be applied to a million different specific situations.

**

Once you’ve identified the elements that make your novel or memoir universally relatable, how can you tell if your novel has succesfully brought these themes out?

Again, INTERN is no expert, but after a couple weeks of experimentation she has developed the following Theme Test:

When you’re reading through your manuscript, are there places where you could pull out a sentence or two that would still be deeply meaningful if you encountered them outside the context of your manuscript?

Or put more simply:

Are there any sentences in your manuscript that a reader would want to scrawl on her bedroom wall or get tattooed across her back?

Here are some examples:

In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, we can pull quotes like:

"Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing."

And:

"If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite."

If you’ve never read One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, these quotes still convey a powerful message. They stand alone, even taken apart from the specifics of the story. They’re universally relatable.

Now, go back to your own manuscript. Can you pull out any quotes that are absolutely intrinsic to your characters, but are also somehow able to stand on their own? If not, you probably need to strengthen your manuscript’s themes.

**

That’s it for today! INTERN will now retire to her secret underground Book Laboratory to ponder some more.

Edit: Techie Boyfriend points out that this post makes it sound like the key to Universal Themery is to insert lots of Deep Quotes throughout your ms. INTERN is horrified to think that this might be the message that came across in this post! All INTERN meant to say is that *one* thing she has noticed (out of many, many factors that go into the making of strong themes) is a pattern, in some books, of character thoughts/dialogue that are intrinsic to the story while somehow being able to resonate outside the context of the story/book.

INTERN is a total spazz case right now! Hope this clears things up!

PS: For more thoughts on theme (and examples from several books) see this post by Sarah at the Greenhouse Literary Agency.

the curious incident of the RATTLESNAKE in the night

2011-05-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

CAUTION: Do not read this post if you are squeamish about snakes or the ingestion thereof. Thank you.

INTERN has not written much here about her life at the ranch, but last week there was an Incident so utterly...unusual...that INTERN cannot help but share it here. Also, because she has been telling you about rattlesnakes and she wants you to know she's really not exaggerating.

INTERN always suspected the cabin wasn't snakeproof.

Then one night, her suspicions were confirmed.

In case you are wondering, that is a diamondback rattler. On INTERN's kitchen floor*.

Alerted by INTERN's ~~cries of OH FUCK~~ calm demeanor, the Ranch Hands rushed in and dispatched it**. In case you are wondering, that is the rattler's actual HEAD. (it's dead in this picture).

Now, the rule at the ranch is if you dispatch a wild creature, you're not allowed to waste it. Next thing INTERN knew, she found herself in the middle of a chicken-fried rattlesnake cook-off. INTERN shits you not.

It was the grossest thing ever. And also kind of bad-ass. And even though INTERN is not a meat eater, it made her feel better to see that snake go to good use after it was dead.

Since then, INTERN has seen at least one snake every single day. But she is a little less afraid of them now.

*Full disclosure: INTERN took this picture after the rattlesnake was already dead. When it was alive, she was too busy having a heart attack to grab her camera.

**INTERN is not generally in favor of dispatching wild creatures, but the Ranch Hands do not share her qualms when it comes to kitchen snakes.

Week 'o' Critique Part 2: How to Revise (When You'd Rather Just Drink)

2011-05-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

In Monday’s post, INTERN talked about the 14 stages of Critique Acceptance. Today, she’ll focus in depth on #6: paralysis.

Getting a critique of your work-in-progress can feel a bit like getting your plans for your dream house ~~torn apart~~ reviewed by your architect friend. OK, so you always had a feeling that putting a spiral staircase from the bathroom to the balcony didn’t really make sense, but now here’s this outside person telling you that you also need to widen the doors, raise the ceilings, and put in a chimney to go with that fireplace.

How the hell are you supposed to build your house with all these new constraints? How do you even get started? Will it still look even remotely close to the house you envisioned?

Maybe you are a person who picks up a pencil and gets started. Or maybe you find yourself circling the drafts again and again as your brain threatens to explode from the sheer complexity of the task ahead.

Eventually, however, you have to do something. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with a cramped, dark, smoke-filled hobbit house and no one will come to visit.

With that in mind, here is INTERN’s secret strategy for dealing with paralysis, listlessness, or Work Avoidance of any sort:

Focus on what you can do.

If you’re feeling too paralyzed to even think about revision, take out a highlighter and highlight all the pages, paragraphs, or individual sentences that don’t need revising. Easy! Fun! It’s just like coloring!

If you’re too afraid of screwing up to start re-writes, make notes. You can’t screw up notes, can you?

If you’re too daunted to think about the high-level issues, go through your manuscript and fix the continuity errors. Or the screwed-up days and dates. Or other nonthreatening, fixable stuff.

If you’re too stumped to write scenes, write sentences. If you’re too scared to write sentences, write words.

There’s always something you can do.

Yes, all you’re doing is avoiding the real work.

Or are you?

**

Special Ed-sounding tasks like highlighting your good sentences might sound like a waste of time. But the point of these tasks isn’t to make Crucial Advances. The point is to get the ball rolling.

For INTERN, these dumb, easy tasks are like a gateway drug into the real work. Scribbled notes have a way of turning into scenes, and the process of fixing superficial errors has the pleasant side effect of sparking Real Insights.

So that’s INTERN’s secret for getting over paralysis. What’s yours?

Week 'o' Critique, Part 1: The 14 Stages of Critique Acceptance

2011-05-09T01:54:00.000-07:00

1. Anticipation

“Critique is finally here! Oh yesh oh yesh oh yesh.”

2. Dread

“Wait a second. What if Critiquer thought my manuscript was A CHEESY OVERWRITTEN TRAINWRECK and was pretty much just embarrassed for me?”

*bites fingernails, hovers mouse over critique document without opening it*

3. Elation

*scans first few lines of critique. notices words like “heart-wrenching” and “brilliant.”*

“Oh yesh oh yesh oh yesh. I am a pretty bird. Oh yesh oh yesh oh yesh.”

4. Dread

*skims down a little further to the body of the critique. starts noticing words like “confusing” and “unconvincing”*

5. Panic

*starts skimming faster. notices words like “cut” and “rewrite.”*

6. Paralysis

*sits at computer. gazes blankly at screen. for six and a half hours.*

7. Avoidance

"Critique? What critique?"

*bakes lots of cookies, goes for walks.*

8. Rededication

*sits down at computer. stares at critique. stares at manuscript. plays Eye of the Tiger on iTunes.*

9. Grim determination

*cuts hard-won chapters. rewrites scenes. finally gives in and starts book in a different place just like beta readers were saying all along.*

10. Surprise

*sits up in her chair and realizes that manuscript is actually getting better. a lot better. like, whoa.*

11. Second-guessing

*wonders if this feeling of great betterness is all in her head. wonders if all she’s doing is making things worse. wonders if maybe old beginning was better after all. bites fingernails.*

12. Wonder

pushes through doubts and keeps revising. starts to realize that the betterness is no illusion. starts to wonder how she ever thought her manuscript was publication-ready before.

13. Dread

sends revised manuscript to agent/critique partner/friend. lies awake in bed worrying that manuscript is still a cheesy overwritten trainwreck and agent/critique partner/friend will think she is some kind of hopeless case.

14. Elation

gets e-mail back from agent/critique partner/friend. a/c/f loves new ms and thinks it’s ready.

“Oh yesh oh yesh oh yesh. Oh yesh oh yesh oh yesh.”

**

INTERN wants to know: Have you ever gotten a critique or revision letter from your agent or writing partner? Which stage of critique acceptance are you at right now?

thoughts on plots

2011-05-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, INTERN is pondering plots. Particularly, she is thinking about how funny it is (and how perplexing) that you can write an entire novel (or even several drafts of a novel) and only realize at the very end that—oops!—you forgot to give your story a plot.

Before INTERN delves into this conundrum, an anecdote. Perhaps two:

INTERN was eighteen or nineteen years old. She had just finished writing a "novel" (in quotation marks for reasons that will soon become apparent) and was flogging spiral-bound copies of it for ten dollars a pop on a street corner in downtown Vancouver, wearing her then-standard uniform of hiking boots, aviator sunglasses and a blue polka-dot dress*. Within a few minutes, she had sold three copies and made a small fortune in ten-dollar bills. She stuffed the cash in her purse and made a swift getaway on her bicycle.

A few days later, she got an e-mail from the editor of a small press in Vancouver. He had read the manuscript and enjoyed the writing style. “If it only had a plot,” he wrote, “I would seriously consider publishing it.”

This e-mail knocked around in INTERN’s teenaged brain like a handful of shiny but mystifying foreign currency. “A plot,” mused INTERN, knitting her formidable unibrow. “A plot.”

At the time, this notion of having a plot was a fascinating but ultimately inscrutable enigma. INTERN put the project aside and spent the next few years writing experimental poetry and the requisite number of failed semi-autobiographical novel sketches (plotless, of course) that fizzled out after a chapter or two, never to be heard from again.

A little while ago, INTERN’s friend who had recently completed an MFA program sent her his novel manuscript. After reading it, she found herself telling him the same thing as the small press editor told her so many years ago: “The writing is beautiful—now, if only it had a plot!”

His response (more or less): “But it does have a plot! My character gets a job at a restaurant. Then she gets in a car crash. Then she stares at an ancient redwood tree and has deep realizations about the fickleness of human nature.”

All of which is a long and convoluted way of getting to INTERN’s point in writing this post: What is a plot, anyway? How can you tell if you have one or not? And how can a book that has lots of events—even lots of action—still be said to be lacking a plot?

**

As far as INTERN can tell, plot involves some combination of the following elements:

Cause and Effect: What happens in Chapter 3 has an effect on what happens in Chapter 10. That car crash on page 78 doesn’t happen in a vacuum—it creates ripples throughout the story, ripples that need to be resolved in a satisfying way.

A sense of interrelatedness: Characters and events are connected in meaningful, intriguing, and satisfying ways. If you drew a diagram of the connections between your characters, it would look like a dense web (everybody has some kind of connection to everybody else) not a snowflake (the main character is connected to a bunch of completely unrelated characters). That wise old barback we meet in Ch. 1 doesn’t drop off the map the minute she’s delivered her big speech—instead, we discover that her son died in the same car crash as the narrator’s sister.

Similarly, that transcendent experience under the redwood tree doesn’t stick out like an overdetermined thumb—it’s the mirror image of another scene that takes place under a monkeypuzzle sapling, and part of a greater theme that gets developed at an even pace throughout the novel.

Extended Conflict: The MC has an overarching goal or problem that takes a whole novel to resolve.

Yes, you have a car crash and a fight scene and a breakup, but unless these events are interconnected parts of a larger goal, you don’t have a plot—you have a series of events.

This is where a lot of manuscripts fail (including INTERN’s rogue street-vendor “novel”). It’s like being taken for a long, aimless drive and having various landmarks pointed out to you. The historical houses and whatnot are interesting at first, but eventually you get restless and want a burrito.

On the other hand, imagine your karate master has 24 hours to live and you need to drive across the country to receive her final words of wisdom before she dies. Suddenly, we’re going somewhere. The detours matter. If we stop at all, we’re stopping for a damn good reason. And you can quite your whining about that burrito.

Other Stuff: INTERN doesn’t want to get into structural stuff (rising action, climax, denouement etc.) because there are a zillion different ways of writing a great plot and they don’t all follow a classic pattern. Suffice to say that a plot generally involves a series of conscious decisions on the author’s part—the order of events (and the events themselves) are carefully titrated to achieve maximum emotional impact and intellectual satisfaction.

This is why “autobiographical” novels about your college road trip are so hard to pull off—because real-life events don’t necessarily happen in such a way as to deliver the kind of emotional/intellectual impact or sense of interrelatedness that novels require in order to be satisfying. Something to think about next time you feel like writing a bestseller about your unforgettable spring break in Tijuana.

**

INTERN is certain that she hasn’t taken every element of Good Plotmaking into account, and she hopes that you, her beloved reader- and writer-friends, will help fill in the gaps in the comments. Have you ever realized your novel was lacking a plot? And how did you go about teaching yourself to create one?

*Yes, she looked insane. People probably crossed to the other side of the street to avoid her. But INTERN wonders with some wistfulness if she will ever have the gleeful self-confidence required to pull such a stunt again.

PS: A parcel of Tumultuous Life Events have swooped in on INTERN and Techie Boyfriend all at once (novel revisions, rattlesnakes, and impending hobo-ness being only the tip of the iceberg) so posting will be erratic and/or increasingly deranged for a while until things get a little more settled. Rest assured that INTERN will check in whenever possible and will avoid sleeping in WalMart parking lots unless strictly necessary.

on the quest for the perfect writing cabin

2011-05-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

INTERN and Techie Boyfriend's residency at their mountain hideaway is swiftly coming to a close as the owner prepares to rent out their cabin to more lucrative and slightly sinister-sounding Summer People. As a result, INTERN has been spending a lot of time on craigslist looking for a cheap place to live.

"Just a little cabin tucked in the woods somewhere," thought INTERN. "A quiet place to finish those revisions. It doesn't even need indoor plumbing."

With this fantasy in mind, INTERN looked at postings for dozens of cabins and apartments advertised as "perfect for a writer or artist."

Well, it turns out landlords have some pretty in-ter-esting ideas about what writers are looking for in a writing cabin. Here are the features, taken directly from craigslist posts, that no writer can live without:

“on demand hot water”

You read that right, people—hot water's on DEMAND. That means no more formal application process for taking a shower.

“extra-large walk-in closet”

Perfect for storing all those designer shoes writers are constantly buying. No wait, it’s for storing all those bulky manuscripts writers are constantly printing. Or for hiding all those bodies writers are constantly axe-murdering. Or some combo of all three.

“includes satellite TV”

For keeping the writer's significant other entertained while the writer does yet another round of revisions. Because lord knows writers' partners don't have a life calling of their own.

“$1800/month”

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA. Oh West Marin, you are too funny.

“single individual ONLY. no guests”

Because writers hate nothing more than OTHER HUMANS.

“stunning spiral staircase”

So when people ask the writer when the writer's book’s coming out, the writer can distract them by saying, “Look, it’s a spiral staircase!”

“plowing EXTRA”

Plowing extra? Plowing extra what? Are we talking wheat fields here? Snow? Will the writer be snowed in with her manuscript if she can't afford to pay extra? Would you leave the writer to starve or freeze, her fingers still poised over the keys?

“BIG dogs welcome”

From what INTERN can gather, this means NYT bestselling authors only, unknown poets need not apply. Snooty, no?

“Previously tenanted by the retired editorial editor of The Providence Journal!”

Come on, writers—that’s, like, second only to living in Jack Kerouac’s house.

“am looking for “normal” couple to live here”

Does that mean Techie Boyfriend can’t wear a dress?

“wood burning fireplace”

Don’t you mean, rejection letter-burning fireplace?

**

Suffice to say, INTERN has not found the perfect writing cabin yet. If anyone is skimming the classifieds and happens to see one, please pass it along.*

*but no plowing of any kind. please.

"it's not you, it's me": INTERN's guide to breaking up

2011-04-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

breaking up is never easy…

About eight months ago, INTERN went through her first big breakup. It was horrific—there were tears, accusations of infidelity, tender afternoons where it seemed like everything was going to be OK followed by screaming sessions on the front lawn. INTERN has been too emotional to talk about it until now.

The breakup wasn’t with Techie Boyfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about. It was with the godawful novel she’d been working on for over a year. In many respects, INTERN’s relationship with this novel was more tumultuous than any of her other relationships have been, and the parting of ways was definitely messier. INTERN just didn’t know how to leave.

Lucky for you, INTERN has had eight months to mull things over. Here, with 20-20 hindsight, are six ways to know it’s time to break up with your novel.

You’ve been cheating.

There’s no use trying to deny it any longer—you’ve been sneaking around with another novel. You know, the one your mind drifts to when you’re supposed to be gazing into your other novel’s eyes. The one you’ve been having thrilling forbidden encounters with in coffee shops and bars and even, once, in your writing room when you were sure your other novel wasn’t home. The one you’re making plans to elope with if you could only find the courage to face the hurt and betrayal in your other novel’s eyes.

But hey, didn’t you read somewhere that people only cheat when their emotional needs aren’t being met by their current relationship? You’re justified in leaving your other novel by, like, the entire field of psychology. So no worries.

You’re in it for the wrong reasons.

You’re only dating your novel to make your best friend jealous. Or because you had something to prove. Or because it was convenient at the time.

But now that you’ve been together for a while, you don’t know how to break this to your novel without sounding like a total jerk. Well guess what? You are a jerk. And you ought to do some serious soul-searching before you start dating another novel—if another novel will even give you a chance after word gets out about what happened with the first one. Didn’t your grandma tell you you should only date someone you could see yourself marrying? Next time, don’t take up with a novel lightly.

You’re just too different.

You’re a literary fiction buff whose tastes run to Cormac McCarthy and Michael Ondaatje. For some inane reason, you thought it would be “fun” to have a crazy fling with a YA fantasy. “It’s only for the summer,” you told yourself.

Fast forward six months and you and that YA fantasy are living together in a shitty studio apartment arguing over who does the dishes. Your crazy fling has turned into a ball and chain. “Why did I ever think this would work out?” you ask your best friend, and she just rolls her eyes.

The spark is gone.

Sure, most relationships take work once the initial rush has worn off. But it’s not just that your heart’s stopped fluttering when your novel walks into the room—you’ve been actively avoiding spending time with her. Let’s face it: those late nights at the office aren’t due to a sudden desire to be Employee of the Month. And don’t give me that “I have a headache” excuse either. The truth is, you’re not attracted to your novel anymore. In fact, you get as much stimulation from working on your novel as you do from mopping the floor. Don’t lie—you’ve been fantasizing about other novels. It’s written all over your face.

You just can’t make it work.

You’ve tried date night, self-help books, and even couples therapy. But the same issues keep coming up again and again. Your novel always wants to talk about feelings, and you’re craving action. No matter how hard you try to like them, you find your novel’s friends shrill and annoying. And no matter how many times you promise yourself not to get caught in the same old patterns, you find yourself having the same arguments over and over.

After a certain point, you realize that no amount of outside help or advice will save your novel. You have to face the facts: this is a sinking ship, and it’s time to stop bailing and swim to shore while you still can.

Your novel wants commitment and you want to play the field.

You’ve been though one draft together. It was fun and all, but now you’re thinking you want to write a thriller, or maybe some poetry, or that screenplay you’ve been thinking about. Your novel, on the other hand, wants to settle down and make beautiful revisions together. Maybe even find an agent.

This freaks you the fuck out. You’re not ready to commit to untold months of revising, querying, and revising some more. You like your novel, sure, but that doesn’t mean you want to spend your whole life together. You’re only 25 (or 32, or 47) for crying out loud. This is your time to play the field. You’ll settle down later.

**

INTERN’s breakup has a happy ending. She ran off with the novel she really wanted to write, leaving the mistake novel behind. Will they get back together someday? It’s possible. But hopefully by that time they’ll have both grown up a little and learned something from their mistakes.

Before INTERN signs off, she’ll leave you with one last piece of (extremely hard-won) advice: whatever you do, DO NOT break up with your novel over the phone. ‘Cause no matter how mad you are, that’s just cold.

**
Have you ever broken up with a novel? Was it amiable, or did things get messy? Were you able to walk away, or did you keep running back? Did friends and family intervene? INTERN wants to know!

in which Bob Dylan tells us all the chill the #^$% out

2011-04-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

As writing conference season approaches, INTERN has noticed a corresponding rise in anxiety among her editing clients and writer-friends who are hoping to woo an agent at one of those horrifying events called speed-pitching or agent-bombing or Freeze Tag: Agent Edition.

They remind INTERN of newly-minted diplomats being sent to have dinner with an inscrutable and vaguely sinister foreign dignitary, obsessing over the information they read in their briefing:

"The King of Zanzibar will be ENRAGED if you use the little spoon to put sugar in your tea."

"The King of Zanzibar will consider it a MORTAL INSULT if you look at him with your left eye."

"The King of Zanzibar will think you are a BLITHERING IDIOT if you wear any clothing that has a zipper."

When the time comes to meet the King of Zanzibar, our diplomats stumble in twitchy, one-eyed, and fumbling with buttons.

"'Sup," says the King of Zanzibar, who is sitting on the couch in a tracksuit drinking a Sprite.

INTERN was going to write a post about how friendly and non-sinister most agents are, but her good friend Bob Dylan (himself a literary agent at B.D. Literary Management, LLC) offered to do it instead. So here's Bob, telling it as it is:

I ain't lookin' to compete with you
Beat or cheat or mistreat you
Simplify you, classify you
Deny, defy or crucify you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

No, and I ain't lookin' to fight with you
Frighten you or tighten you
Drag you down or drain you down
Chain you down or bring you down
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I ain't lookin' to block you up
Shock or knock or lock you up
Analyze you, categorize you
Finalize you or advertise you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I don't want to straight-face you
Race or chase you, track or trace you
Or disgrace you or displace you
Or define you or confine you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I don't want to meet your kin
Make you spin or do you in
Or select you or dissect you
Or inspect you or reject you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I don't want to fake you out
Take or shake or forsake you out
I ain't lookin' for you to feel like me
See like me or be like me
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

INTERN: Wow, Bob! Thanks for being so frank about what literary agents really want from authors.

Bob Dylan: No prob, INTERN. *strums guitar*

INTERN: So you're saying all you really want to do is be friends with authors? Lifelong friends with a fruitful relationship built on trust and creativity and lots of wonderful books?

Bob Dylan: That's about right, INTERN.

INTERN: Far out.

Bob Dylan will be available for speed-pitching at BEA, Backspace, and other major literary conferences this summer*.

*neither of which, to INTERN's knowledge, actually feature speed-pitching. Except if you happen to be Bob Dylan.

Guest Post: The Tricky Territory of Publishing Blogs

2011-04-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

Today's guest post is by Intern Liv of the League of Illustrious Interns. Liv works for a literary agency of some repute and has been sworn to bloggerly silence as a condition of her internment. Today, Liv explores the reasons behind anti-blogging policies in the publishing industry—and the benefits of keeping a low profile on the web.

On my first day as an intern for a lit agency, all of us were told that while it would be hard to be fired from an unpaid internship, it was still possible. Aside from general unprofessional behavior that could get a person fired anywhere, blogging about the agency or the internship was definitely one way to get the boot. With so much information already out there (and with many agents blogging about the industry themselves), it’s hard to imagine why blogging, especially from an intern, can be damaging for a literary agency. But here’s why:

1. Projects are kept off the web for a reason. Lots can change between the time a project is submitted to the time it’s ready for publication (the title, for instance). But when a project is on submission to editors, it’s vital that information, particularly submission statistics, remain private. It’s potentially damaging if an editor sees that the project has been through a round of submissions (and rejections) already, or if Editor EagleEye from Fabulous Imprint has already passed.

2. Interns are…interns. While most of us are mature, professional, and hardworking, we’re still learning the ropes, and there are interns who don’t quite have a handle on what kind of information should be kept private. There was that whole hullabaloo last year with the intern who got on twitter and posted out-of-context lines from queries she read. Her intention was probably to point out common query mistakes a la Queryshark, but she ended up insulting writers who never sent their queries off to be posted on twitter and made fun of. This kind of unprofessionalism can damage the reputation of an agency as a whole, and it’s just not worth risking.

3. Publishing is a small industry, and since most publishing professionals work in a specific area (Children’s, for instance, or a genre like Romance), it can be hard to get into if you develop a bad reputation. Getting a job in any industry is hard, but publishing jobs are incredibly competitive, so if you’re an intern hoping to use your internship as a foot in the door, it’s best not to shoot that foot. My experience with my agency has been positive and I do believe that they want their interns to move on to full-time (read: paid) jobs, and this policy can ultimately benefit us as interns. In fact, I’m so paranoid about blogging that not only am I using an alias for this post, but I also used an alias to contact the lovely INTERN. How’s that for risk-adverse?

Blogging, anonymous or otherwise, has changed the publishing industry for the better. Marketing/publicity departments routinely use blog tours to promote authors, and bloggers who have clout (enough followers) get ARCs for review. Blogging has also made the industry much more transparent—a lot of the information I learned about Publishing was gleaned from months of blog-reading, and it helped prepare me for my first interview. I’ve learned a ton from my internship, but a lot of it also reinforced what I read through blogs, and now I can speak intelligently about the industry, especially on e-books and how they might affect the future of the industry as a whole.

But aside from helping those who are interested in a career in publishing, blogging has been incredibly helpful for writers who need to familiarize themselves with the business side of writing. Everything from query help to agent advice to editor etiquette can be found on blogs to help you every step of the way.

The takeaway? Be careful with what you put out there—if you’re a writer submitting to agents, don’t put up your submission statistics. Not every agent will look you up, but you don’t want an agent to reject you based on your blog or twitter. But it’s also important not to get too wrapped up in the blogosphere—just focus on making your manuscript the best that it can be and when it’s time to submit, look at a couple of useful sites (Queryshark and the like) and don’t stress the details. You don’t want to end up as paranoid as me :)

Intern Liv

a frightful confession

2011-04-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

INTERN has a frightful confession to make, and here it is:

When one of INTERN’s writer-friends publishes a beautifully-crafted short story, INTERN berates herself for not being more literary.

When one of her writer-friends gets a big deal for a paranormal romance, she harangues herself for not being more commercial.

When one of her writer-friends writes a novel in a weekend, she scolds herself for writing so slow.

When one of her writer-friends toils away at his masterpiece for six years, she rebukes herself for writing too fast.

When a sixteen-year old writer-friend lands a three-book deal, she disparages herself for not being young enough.

When a sixty-year old writer-friend publishes her first book, she harasses herself for not being patient enough.

When a writer-friend publishes a book of poems through a small press, she chastises herself for not being obscure enough.

When a writer-friend sells a million copies of a sci-fi monkey thriller, she reproaches herself for not being famous enough.

“Why are you so dumb? Everybody ELSE can write a bestselling sci-fi monkey thriller in a week.”

“Why are you so slow? In the time it took you to finish one good manuscript, everybody ELSE published like ten books.”

“Why aren’t you writing obscure chapbooks/bestselling paranormal romances/famous sci-fi monkey thrillers? Why are you wasting so much time writing those silly things you write?”

These are the voices in INTERN’s head. They are not there all the time, but they come out now and then with their absurd list of demands: “Why aren’t you doing this? Why aren’t you doing that? Why can’t you just get your act together and be a literary-commerical-speed-writing-slow-toiling-impressively-young-inspiringly-old-obscure-famous-poetic-romantic-paranormal-thrillery-sci-fi-monkey-writer?”

Despair! Gnashing of teeth! Rending of garments!

If INTERN is lucky, these voices are answered by another, smarter voice. This voice says, “Hang on. You don’t even read monkey thrillers. You don’t even LIKE monkey thrillers. Why are you giving yourself hell for not writing them?”

Does Laurie Halse Anderson lie awake at night scolding herself for not writing Harry Potter?

Does John Ashbery beat his head against the desk for not being Isaac Asimov?

Does Barbara Kingsolver feel a twinge of guilt and panic when one of her contemporaries publishes an academic treatise on Rastafarianism?

No! Or at least, INTERN hopes the answer is “no.” Because that would be insane.

You write what you write. You are what you are. And, no matter how anxious you may be to have everybody like you, you’re not going to get there by scrambling to become what you think the world wants. You will never be young enough/old enough/smart enough/dumb enough to please everybody, so you should really just do what you love and let the world take care of itself.

There. INTERN has made her frightful confession. She will never write a bestselling monkey-thriller or publish a mind-blowing trilogy at age twelve, and that’s just that.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t feel so frightful anymore.

Top Ten Reasons You Should Rewrite That Scene

2011-04-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

When you're revising a novel, it's easy to ~~lose objectivity~~ become so delusional you can't tell if you've just created a stinking mountain of goat poop or written the next Grapes of Wrath. Each scene starts to read like a passage in a holy text—or does it just feel that way because you've read it so many times the words are looping through your brain like a mantra?

Fear not! INTERN is here to help. Here's INTERN's handy guide to figuring out when it's time to hit the delete key and write that scene again.

10. The scene is not really a scene.

Your scene is not a scene if nothing has changed by the end of it.
Your scene is not a scene if there was no internal or external conflict, no matter how subtle.
Your scene is not a scene if you were too timid to let anything dangerous happen.
Your scene is not a scene if you were too cautious to let anything unexpected happen.
Your scene is not a scene if the reader is banging her head against the wall saying “What was the point of that stupid scene?”
Basically, your scene is not a scene.

9. The scene doesn’t achieve anything new.

Does your scene introduce important new plot information? How about new emotional information? Are the characters’ relationships developing? Or is this scene just rehashing material you’ve already covered in other scenes? You might have a case of scenis redundanitus (see here for INTERN’s post on that subject). If your scene doesn’t bring anything new to the table, what’s it doing in your story?

8. The scene isn’t “worse” enough.

Classic writing advice says “make it worse,” but have you really taken the time to experiment? Here’s a before-and-after shot of a not-worse-enough scene.

Before: Milly and Bob are rookie cops (he’s the responsible, uptight one and she’s the funny badass). Milly’s antics make them twenty minutes late for an important training session. Consequence? They get chewed out by their superior and made to run laps. Big whoop.

After: Milly gambles away their squad car in a poker game. They show up to the training session six hours late and on foot. Sergeant Hardball throws them into a solitary confinement cell together/fires them on the spot/demotes them to the traffic beat/etc.

Obviously, things don’t need to go completely haywire in every single scene—that would be exhausting. But most first drafts err on the side of not worse enough.

7. The scene should take place somewhere else.

In Draft One, nine out of ten scenes take place in the same coffee shop. By Draft Two, you’ve realized that it’s actually pretty #%$@ boring when so many scenes take place in the same coffee shop. You rewrite so that some scenes take place on a chair lift, or in Central Park, or in a butterfly conservatory, or on the moon.

6. The scene should be combined with another scene.

In Chapter 3, you show a training montage of Sour Mountain High’s inept cheerleading squad struggling to learn a new routine. In Chapter 7, you show the Sour Mountain cheerleading squad struggling to learn the new routine. Both chapters bring something important to the story in terms of plot/character development/theme so you don’t want to cut them, but they’re too similar.

Solution? Try combining those two scenes into one. You’ve heard of combining characters. The same thing can work with scenes that fill the same function (sort of) but have valuable characteristics you’d like to keep.

5. The scene is boring.

‘Nuff said.

4. The scene belongs in a different novel altogether.

You wrote this really beautiful scene where a wise old man tells the protagonist the story of his life growing up on a farm in Idaho. The story goes on for seven pages and it has all these gorgeous images. The only problem? Your manuscript’s already 100,000 words long, it’s a thriller, and you wrote only the old man’s story ‘cause it was a nice break from all the action-y stuff.

Cut, save, file for future use. Your scene’s not wasted—it just needs the right home.

3. You’ve figured out who your characters are.

In Draft One, your characters have a fistfight over the contested ownership of a cheeseburger. By Draft Two, you’ve realized your characters are vegans trained in Non-Violent Communication. That cheeseburger scene in Draft One? It happened to different people.

2. You’re just filling time.

In Draft One, you account for every minute in your characters’ lives. Big scenes in which your characters experience major conflict are strung together with long, creaky suspension bridges of little scenes showing what happens in the meantime (vacuuming, taking a shower, going for a walk, etc.)

Do we need to know what happens “in the meantime”? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes those details are more necessary at the beginning of the story than in the middle or near the end. But if all your scene does is act as a bridge to a scene that’s actually important, it’s probably time to rewrite.

1. You can write a better one.

In Draft One, you were an Adverb Queen with a flair for lengthy descriptions of your main character’s “pale and luminous aquamarine-hazel eyes”. By Draft Two, you’ve leveled up—way up. Just looking at your old scenes makes you want to barf. Congratulations! Aren’t you glad you decided to wait a month before sending this old barf bag around to agents? Now that you’re a better writer, you can write the rich, tense, beautiful scenes you meant to write all along.

SCANDAL: Techie Boyfriend picks up chicks!

2011-04-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

INTERN has been all kinds of sleep-deprived and over-fretful lately, and when Techie Boyfriend and the Ranch Hands made a town run yesterday she elected to stay at home with a blanket over her head.

When they came home, Techie Boyfriend showed INTERN all the lovely produce and spices he'd bought at the market, then handed her a big bag of "vegan snacks" from the bulk bin.

"What is this stuff?" said INTERN, sniffing the paper bag. "It smells like chicken food."

At which point Techie Boyfriend gleefully unveiled the other box of groceries, which was actually A BOX OF CHICKS.

INTERN: *cries* *hugs Techie Boyfriend* *instantly falls in love with chicks*
Techie Boyfriend: *dances around the cabin getting a food bowl and a lamp*

Not to be outdone, one of the Ranch Hands proceeded to catch a baby mouse by the tail:

Surrounded by such wonderful friends and a menagerie of cute baby animals, INTERN forgot all about her silly worries and lived happily ever after.

an interview with the interns

2011-04-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

There's an abundance of websites out there dedicated to the study of literary agents—AgentQuery, QueryTracker, Literary Rambles, etc. etc. etc. But what about the interns who act as their front lines of defense? Where's InternQuery where you need it? Who are these unpaid underfed street urchins who field your queries today and might be editing or agenting themselves tomorrow?

INTERN is pleased to announce that select members of the League of Illustrious Interns have kindly agreed to share their loves, hates, deepest desires, and nefarious plans for the publishing industry. Meet the interns—'cause if you're trying to get published, they'll almost certainly be meeting you.

1. THE INTERNS AND THEIR PLACES OF INTERNMENT

Naughty Intern: Various literary agencies

[note from INTERN: yes, you read that right—some Illustrious Interns work at more than one place. Which means that, technically, the same intern might be reading your query at six different agencies. Come to think of it, how do you know that Naughty Intern isn’t, in fact, the only person who has EVER read your query, despite the fact that you queried half the agents in NYC? IT’S POSSIBLE. mumble mumble CONSPIRACY mumble. *shifty eyes*.]

Intern Rachel*: Arthur A. Levine Books

Intern Milan: Scholastic Press, Upstart Crow Literary, Simon & Schuster

Intern Cassandra: The Agent

Intern Miranda: Houghton Miffling Harcourt

2. WHAT THEY DO

Naughty Intern: I’m here at Various Literary Agencies, spamming your vampire queries, helping you prepare your manuscript for submission (i.e. specific line edits, grammar bullshit you should’ve learned in third grade and then applied to your novel), and convincing your agent NOT to pitch your novel as Twilight meets Gossip Girl.

Intern Rachel: I read your queries, double-checked every p and q on your book cover, and raved about you on Twitter.

Intern Cassandra: I read queries during the wee hours of the morning and on holidays. I'm the one who might pass on your project at 3 am or on Christmas. Maybe even 3 am ON Christmas. I'm that hardcore.

3. THEIR ADVICE TO WRITERS

Naughty Intern: Make your manuscript stand out. I’ll admit, I’m a query skimmer, so I usually look for key words and phrases that stick out. (AND NO. This does NOT mean you should bold/highlight/write your query in pink glitter pen.)

[note from INTERN: “Key words and phrases?” you ask. “Which ones?” INTERN doesn’t want to speak for Naughty Intern, but she’s guessing LUNCHTIME is a good place to start.]

I usually look at the sample pages more than the query. If a query sucks, but the sample pages are really great, I’ll usually request. So make sure your story has very strong beginning lines.

And this really is personal preference, but if your manuscript is fantasy or dystopian or [insert whatever the hell you want here] don’t reveal every little detail about your world in the query. You might say, “Then how will you know what my book’s about?” but leaving out those details usually makes me even more interested and eager to read, and more likely to request pages.

Intern Rachel: Learn to love revising.

Editors often tell me they’re never sure how good a writer is until they’ve been through one round of revisions together. Some authors are married to their first draft, but it's the authors who are able to see how moving those essential threads around, and even clipping a whole ream of them, can better reveal that inner beast of the story who really have what it takes.

And beyond that, you'll need all that inventiveness and persistence to keep playing the publishing game—this industry is built on second and third and fiftieth tries. So learn it early.

Intern Milan: Write and write well.

Intern Cassandra: Writing is a business. Treat it that way. Schedules, professionalism, etc.

Intern Miranda: Proofread. I know an editor who won't read beyond a cover letter with typos and once saw a pretty good proposal get declined because a different editor wasn't confident enough in the writer's grammar.

4. THEIR LISTS OF DEMANDS

Naughty Intern: At my place of internment, I would demand more field trips.

If I were holding publishing at gunpoint, I’d say, “Give me all your money, bitch.”

And then, I would say, “Give the smaller books a chance, too,” because it seems like every book being published these days is being pitched as the next big thing.

Intern Rachel: In all honesty, if I had the industry at gunpoint it would be hard not to demand my own imprint (and maybe to be John Green’s BFF).

But really what I want is to see publishers let go of some of their safety nets—those very typical stories that everyone expects will succeed. I want to see more books with diverse characters (and I mean that in every sense of the word, from gender to sexuality to race to ability and more). More of those characters accurately depicted on covers. More female leads and greater faith in boys to read about them.

I want the industry to do its job in questioning every stereotype that crops up in what we publish and refusing to perpetuate the tropes that dis-empower people.

There are a ton of good people in publishing doing this already, and I am so grateful for all the wonderful work that they do. But I think a lot of the big players are afraid to take too many risks. Sometimes I want to smack someone upside the head and say “Hey, teens these days don’t care half as much about that model's skin color as you do!”

Intern Milan: A physical office, my own cubicle, a fancy @publisherhere.com email, free lunch & coffee, pecuniary compensation, an actual job (promotion? yes please).

Intern Miranda: A cushy, secure gig with a salary, benefits, and unlimited editing-from-home days that allows me to read and make good writing happen for a living. Brilliant authors who provide intellectually stimulating discussions and collaborations with no conflicts. Commercial success for the best writing. And for Toni Morrison to be more valuable than Snooki.

5. ONE THING EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PUBLISHING

Naughty Intern: There are some things that you should never, ever compare your book to in a query letter. The Jersey Shore is one of them. This is why they invented the mark-as-spam button...

Intern Rachel: It’s a community. We often think of artists, especially writers, as toiling in isolation. And I think that at one time they sort of did. But now we’re all so close—because the heart of the industry lies in one city, because it’s so in flux and writers and publishers change imprints and houses all the time, because we now have all these fabulous ways to connect and move around and share our ideas—that it’s hard to remain anonymous.

That can put a lot of pressure on a writer, but it's also this great opportunity to meet other people and share ideas with them. And, like in any community, you get out of it about as much as you put in. Interacting with readers, collaborating with authors, and offering help and praise wherever and whenever you feel so moved really does pay off.

Intern Milan: Interns read, interns reject. Very few make it to the agent or editor's desk.

As much I take pleasure in sending rejection letters (sadistic? kind of.), I am determined to unearth the next best book from the slush pile. Send your novels. I will plow through submissions until I can find The Book.

Intern Cassandra: It only takes one agent/editor to say yes.

***

If you would like to know more about these illustrious interns, you may stalk them at the URLs below.

Intern Rachel has a blog here.
Intern Cassandra has a blog here.
Intern Miranda has a blog here.
Naughty Intern has a very naughty blog which shall remain nameless.

*Intern Rachel is now an Editorial Assistant. She retains the title "intern" in this post for the purposes of Illustrious Intern solidarity.

theories of literary greatness that enrage and perplex

2011-04-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

INTERN will never forget the time she went to hear Margaret Atwood speak at her university. The auditorium was packed with adoring Canadians. There was a mood of feverish excitement. Even the ushers (who would normally be stoned to the point of psychomotor retardation) moved about briskly, their maroon vests flapping about them like wings.

Margaret Atwood spoke for something like an hour and a half. She must have said many interesting things. But the only thing INTERN remembers Margaret Atwood saying came during the question period.

A small girl, all earnestness and pigtails, had approached the mic to ask Ms. Atwood what she should do if she wanted to be a writer. It was supposed to be some cute and fuzzy moment. Margaret Atwood was supposed to give the girl a kindly grin and coo something about reading lots of books and writing every single day.

Instead, she said something that had the whole audience muttering to one another as they filed out of the auditorium a few minutes later. She compared being a great writer to being a great magician, and said you were either born with the “hands” or you weren’t. Anyone could be taught to be a good writer; but only those with the ineffable “hands” would ever be great.

Afterwards, in the bathroom line, INTERN overheard an outraged woman complaining to her companion: how dare Margaret Atwood imply that literary greatness was not an equal opportunity employer? It was undemocratic. It was something like sexism or classism—it was hands-ism.

It upset a lot of people. To this day, whenever INTERN runs into someone who was at that talk, the “hands” comment is all they talk about.

**

There are always a lot of theories floating around about how great artists or athletes or business tycoons become great. Here are the three most common ones INTERN has seen:

1. “Either you’re born with the hands or you ain’t.”

According to the Margaret Atwoods of the world, it’s not just unreasonable to expect that absolutely anyone can be made into a great writer—it’s downright insane. Is everyone on the planet capable of being a great long jumper or a great forklift operator? Most people can become capable at these pursuits—but greatness, Atwoodians claim, is something else.

2. “10,000 Hours.”

According to the Malcolm Gladwells of the world, greatness isn’t something you’re just born with—it’s the entirely predictable result of practicing something for ten thousand hours. Take anyone with an interest in violin, writing, or hockey, check back once they’ve logged ten thousand hours in their chosen pursuit (or when the microwave dings) and there you go—great.

3. “It doesn’t matter how hard you work—in publishing, nothing matters except HOTT CONNECTION$$.”*

According to the conspiracy theorists of the world, it doesn’t matter how much writerly talent you possess or how hard you work—haven’t you seen those stickers that say Publishing Is An Inside Job?

4. “It doesn’t matter how hard you work—in publishing, nothing matters except being HUGE ON $$$OCIAL MEDIA.”*

It’s true, guys. Didn’t you know the formula the Big 6 publishers use for calculating advances is (Twitter followers + Facebook friends)2? Srsly.

**

What do you think goes into the making of a great writer? Was Margaret Atwood smoking crack when she told that little girl some hard truths about hands? Or is everything possible with enough practice and willpower and education? There’s a perception that writing is more “accessible” than other pursuits because it takes no training (besides basic literacy) to get started, but is our affront really justified when it turns out to be just as hard and frustrating and unfair as ballet? Is all this preciousness about "hands" just empty snootery?

INTERN is curious to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, she will be working on some complicated juggling tricks. Really. How else is she supposed to find out if she has the hands?

*note that #3 and #4 have nothing to do with Great Writing and everything to do with Great Networking—in keeping with INTERN’s recent theme of mixing up art with business.

chain of (publishing) fools

2011-04-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

As writers, we sometimes act like we have an exclusive claim on the misery of rejection. After all, you don't hear stories of agents who wallpaper their livingrooms with rejection letters or editors who lie awake at night wondering why nobody else can see the potential in their ideas.

"Of course they don't!" INTERN can hear you protesting, "They're the gatekeepers! All they have to do is sit around on comfy velvet armchairs rejecting everybody else!"

In fact, quite the opposite is true, as this post by agent Rachelle Gardner reminded INTERN last night. The publishing industry involves rejection at every level, like some sort of Russian nesting doll. Observe:

First, the writer is Rejected by several agents.

Once the writer acquires an agent, that agent is then Rejected by several editors.

Once the agent gets an editor interested, that editor can still be Rejected by the pub board.

Once the pub board has agreed to publish a book, that book can still be Rejected by readers who disdain to buy it.

And even if a small and passionate population of readers buy it, the readers can still be Rejected by an industry that decides it's not worth printing books that sell fewer than one billion copies.

And so the chain of tomfoolery continues. The level of Rejection going around, it boggles the mind.

So what's a writer to do? How to break the chain? How to keep yourself from becoming bitter and maudlin about the whole enterprise?

In INTERN's experience, the most powerful antidote to all this Rejection is the support and camaraderie of other writers. Because while many links in the Rejection chain are concerned with the business of writing—is this project saleable, is it movie-dealable, does the P&L look good?—the writers are the one link whose foremost concern is the art of it.

There's an excellent article about exactly this by an advice columnist over at The Rumpus. She writes:

We are not talking about books. We’re talking about book deals. You know they are not the same thing, right? One is the art you create by writing like a motherfucker for a long time. The other is the thing the marketplace decides to do with your creation.

Agents, editors, publishers, and the world at large can Reject your wish for a book deal.

But NOBODY, read NOBODY can Reject your ability to write a great book.

With this in mind, INTERN wants to know: Do you find it hard to separate the "business" and "art" sides of writing? To what extent do rejections reflect your ability as a writer, and to what extent do they reflect your ability as a businessperson/hustler?

introducing the League of Illustrious Interns

2011-04-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

There is a rumor going around the publishing world. Whispers have been whispered behind the photocopying machine. Knowing glances have been exchanged on the subway. Coded messages have been slipped in between the pages of ARCs.

Everybody's asking "Is it true? Could it be? Is there really a SECRET SOCIETY OF INTERNS being formed at this very moment?"

The answer is yes. But before INTERN says anything more, a brief Historical Note.

In 1876, appalled by the working conditions of the unpaid interns at her husband’s publishing house, Mrs. Augusta Schuster formed the Society for the Advancement of Intern Welfare (SAIF).

Fig. 1: Publishing interns in 1876 suffered from malnutrition, melancholy, and mange.

With the help of several other distinguished ladies in her social circle, Mrs. Schuster championed for the rights up unpaid interns. Thanks to their efforts, publishing interns in New York and London enjoyed a Golden Age that lasted from 1878 until 1929. During this Golden Age, interns saw their working hours shortened from sixteen hours to twelve, their rents subsidized by generous stipends, and their daily ration of hard cider increased from a pint to a gallon.

Fig. 2: Late nineteenth-century interns enjoying a casual chat.

With the great stock market crash of 1929 came the end of the interns’ fortunes. Mrs. Schuster and several other ladies of the Society saw their husbands bankrupted by the crash. A great many publishing interns suddenly found themselves homeless and penniless—a condition which persists to this day.

Fig. 3: Hobo interns seeking their fortunes in the 1930’s*.

In 2011, however, a new day is dawning for interns. INTERN is pleased to announce the resurrection of the Society for the Advancement of Intern Welfare, hence renamed the League of Illustrious Interns.

The League of Illustrious Interns is a coalition of current and former Publishing Interns of every stripe—literary agency urchins, editorial brats, marketing rapscallions, and those who have gone on from their internships to become Editors, Agents, and Authors themselves.

While the League will have a strong focus on Mutual Aid and Secretive Endeavours, it will also serve as a Charitable Association to advance knowledge of the Publishing Arts. League members will drop by this blog occasionally to answer questions and weigh in on Publishing Issues. Members of the public are hereby invited to submit Publishing Questions for the League’s esteemed consideration.

Over the next few weeks, certain esteemed members of the League will be profiled on this blog. Although many choose to operate under the cloak of anonymity, all are Real Live Publishing Interns (or in some cases, former interns who continue to be involved in the industry). If you yourself are a Real Live Publishing Intern and wish to join the League, please contact INTERN at internspills [at] gmail [dot] com.

Fig. 4: Crest of the League of Illustrious Interns

*As you can tell from preponderance of males in the archival photographs, female interns and interns of color were unheard of until the 1940's. INTERN is pleased to report that the League of Illustrious Interns boasts a more varied mix of humans than the old Society.

announcing the Best Contest Ever

2011-04-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, INTERN joined Twitter a couple weeks ago and has been merrily catching up on such marvels as hashtags and YALitChat. One thing that continues to perplex INTERN, however, is the notorious Twitter Contest. Several times in the past week, INTERN has seen a tweet announcing a neat-sounding contest and clicked on the link only to discover something like this:

Enter my awesome amazing contest to win an ARC/first-chapter critique/my agent’s secret e-mail address/this weird pair of underwear I found at the laundromat.

Awesome, right? Enter right now! But first make sure you read the rules (see below).

THE RULES:

1. Before you enter, you must first tweet about this contest a minimum of ten times.

2. Also, your tweets need to be in ALL CAPS.

3. Also, you need to follow my blog, and my agent’s blog, and my mom’s blog, and this blog. No fair unfollowing after the contest is over!

4. Also, you need to display this extremely large and poorly-designed button on your blog for the duration of the contest and for three months afterwards:

5. Also, you need to change your profile picture on Facebook to display my book cover.

6. Also, you need to leave reviews of my book on Amazon, GoodReads, and one other venue of your choice.

7. Also, you need to provide screenshots IN TRIPLICATE of said reviews, tweets, profile picture, etc.

8. Also, said screenshots must be notarized by a notary public.

9. Also, you need to write a 250-word paragraph explaining why you want to enter this contest.

10. Also, you need to include a SASE. What, I didn’t mention you can only formally declare your entrancehood BY MAIL?

11. Also, the contest is only open between 3:02 AM and 3:01 AM on Sunday, April 2nd, 1872. YOU FIGURE IT OUT.

12. Also, you get bonus points if you create multiple Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, and Gmail accounts for the sole purpose of entering this contest multiple times.

13. Also, this contest will be capped at 5,000 entires.

That’s all, guys! HAVE FUN ENTERING THE BEST CONTEST EVER*.

Anyone else want an ibuprofen?

*at this point, INTERN would like to state that Twitter Pitch contests actually seem like a pretty neat idea**.
**but not if entering one is harder than filling out your #$@$@ tax return***.
***but seriously, where's the ibuprofen?

-INTERN

7 mindblowing Microsoft Word tricks every writer should know

2011-04-02T14:22:00.000-07:00

The other day, INTERN was flabbergasted to discover the existence of page breaks in Microsoft Word, thanks to this handy article about how to format a manuscript. This led INTERN to ponder the fact that, as writers, we spend so many hours—nay, years—of our lives using a computer program of whose many tricks and features we often remain woefully ignorant.

In order to remedy this sad state of affairs, INTERN spent the past few days unearthing some of the very best Microsoft Word tricks for writers. Here they are!

1. Custom AutoCcorrect

Everybody knows that you can set Microsoft Word to autocorrect typos like “teh” for “the”. But did you know that if you’re willing to invest a little bit of time upfront, you can teach Microsoft Word to automatically fill in all the annoying character names, words, and even entire phrases you’re too lazy to write yourself?

Say you're writing a novel about a spunky chap named Petronius Hermonculus Junior who has a habit of exclaiming "I say, I say, what weather we've been having!"

Simply create a custom AutoCorrect command like so:

and another one like so:

Now, when you're working on your manuscript, all you have to do is dash off "ph exclaimed w" and Word will miraculously transform it into "Petronius Hermonculus Junior exclaimed "I say, I say, what weather we've been having!"

You're welcome.

2. Autocapitalize first letters of sentences.

Listen here: if you have time to manually capitalize the first letters of your sentences, you're writing too goddamn slow. That's why Word has an AutoCorrect option that will automatically capitalize them for you. To turn it on, just go to Tools —> AutoCorrect and click the appropriate checkbox. Now never press the shift key ever again.

3. Custom Dictionaries

Anyone who has tried to edit a story or novel involving any amount of slang knows the misery and tedium involved in trying to use spellcheck ("for the last #%@$ time, 'shizzle' is not a misspelling of 'shingle'!") Enter the Custom Dictionary. Before you even get started on your next opus, create a custom dictionary (e.g. ShizzleNizzle Dictionary) and add nonstandard or made-up words as you go along. That way, when you're ready for the big spellcheck, you won't get bogged down by unwanted corrections.

4. Speak selection.

Some versions of Word allow you to highlight all or part of a document and have it read back to you by the computer. This is especially useful for the on-the-go writer who wishes to "read" his critique partner's manuscript while jogging on the treadmill.

5. Automatically find synonym.

Tired of thinking up creative ways of saying things? Simply highlight a word and right-click (or control-click) and Word will provide you with a handy list of synonyms for that word. Choose your desired synonym from the list, and Word will automatically sub it in for the boring old word. Incredible!

6. Automatically translate.

Tired of saying things in English? Simply highlight a word and right-click (or control-click) and Word will give you the option of translating said word into one of a dozen languages. Olé!

7. Automatically replace text with image.

Everyone knows about using the find/replace function to change character names, fix spacing issues, etc. But did you know that you can also use find/replace for images?

Let's say INTERN has just finished a manuscript which she desperately desires to submit to agents. There's just one problem—whenever the antagonist, Lady Ventriloqua, appears, the writing gets really, really bad. INTERN doesn't feel like fixing the bad writing. But she knows she can't submit her manuscript in its current state. What's a lazy writer to do?

Easy. Replace every occurance of the words "Lady Ventriloqua" with this image of a bunny:

Now, whenever the agent comes to a weak part in the manuscript, she will be so distracted by the cute and fuzzy image of the bunny, she won't even care.

Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Copy your desired image to the clipboard.
Step 2: Open Find/Replace.
Step 3: Put whatever you want to replace in the "Find" field. In the "Replace" field, put in these characters: ^c

This will cause Find/Replace to use the contents of your clipboard (e.g. the bunny picture) as a replacement for whatever you want replaced.

exhaustion hunting the great spotted WIP-alump

2011-03-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, INTERN was half-intrigued and half-horrified to learn about exhaustion hunting (also known as persistence hunting)—a style of hunting in which the hunter runs after her prey until it literally drops dead (or near-dead) of exhaustion, at which point, a festive barbecue ensues.

It turns out humans are the only creatures on earth who are capable of exhaustion hunting another animal. We can't run the fastest or gnash our fangs the fearsomest, but damn—can we ever hang in there.

Exhaustion hunters rely on their tracking skills to chase an animal over long distances without losing it. Whenever the animal stops in the shade to rest, the exhaustion hunter startles it into running again, until the animal is so weak and delusional it cuddles up to a thornbush and goes to sleep. From there, it's only a matter of carrying the animal's carcass back to your village in a victorious parade.

**

Writers are exhaustion hunters. INTERN can't think of that many other professions that cause people to ceaselessly pursue the faint or even invisible tracks of something as elusive as a story. And not just pursue it, but pursue it to the point of utter physical, emotional, and spiritual collapse.

Sometimes it feels like every writer INTERN has met over the course of writing this blog has an exhaustion-hunting story. The friend who waited months and months before finally hearing back from That Agent. The one who re-wrote his entire book three times. The one who has three jobs and a baby and still finished her novel. There are so many people out there with Serious Jobs and Serious Families and Serious Health Conditions and all sorts of other stuff going on and they still get it done. And not just get it done, but get it done in the hottest part of the day, in the middle of the desert, with nothing but thornbushes for miles around.

INTERN's big question today is: How the #%@$ do you do it? No really—how do you, personally, do it? What's your trick? INTERN has heard that long-distance runners (and presumably, exhaustion hunters) get something called "runner's high," a trancelike state of euphoria that occurs after one has been running for long enough. Is there such a thing as "writer's high"? Has it happened to you? Did you bag that spotted WIPalump in the end?

did you mean: nag a ram?

2011-03-29T01:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when INTERN is up very very late at night, she gets the urge to make anagrams out of her favorite publishing blogs' titles. Right now it is very very late at night and even the (temporary) pet newt Techie Boyfriend found for INTERN has gone to sleep (and she is nocturnal). So here they are:

The Rejectionist with "cretinise the jot," "entice jitters—oh!" and best of all, "eject thine riots."

Pimp My Novel: "envy limp mop"

Query Shark: "quark shyer"

Nathan Bransford: "hard nonfat barns"

Editorial Anonymous: "inanimately odorous" (!) or "aromatised oily noun" (!?) or "damnation—oily euros!"

Editorial Ass: "adroit lassie" (aww.)

Grab a Pen: "began rap" (sorry T.H.—it was either that or "pear bang!")

Perhaps next time INTERN is up late, she will anagrammize her favorite commenters (you've been warned!)

With love,

NINTH TREE

Special Topics in Calamity Novel Repair: Part 1

2011-03-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

Over the next few weeks, INTERN will be running a special series on novel revision. Or, if you share INTERN’s alarmist tendencies and fondness for plays on book titles, Special Topics in Calamity Novel Repair.

INTERN, alas, is not one of those whiz-kid über-writers who can bang out a novel, revise it in a week, and have it shipped and ready to print while everyone else is still figuring out they have their pants on backwards (in fact, INTERN has her pants on backwards as she writes this post.) Quite the opposite: INTERN is one of those horribly inefficient writers who lumbers around like a crazed elephant, sowing disaster at every turn, and deletes not just sections but entire drafts before she finally arrives at the draft she considers done. If INTERN is lucky, this is a phase she will grow out of with enough practice. For now, though, INTERN is a die-hard novel reviser.

If you are the same way, perhaps you would like to come along with INTERN on a revision safari. Our Special Topic for today is redundant scenes. Hold on to your elephants. Here we go.

**

INTERN has seen countless first drafts which are littered with redundant scenes—scenes that unwittingly make the same point or convey the same information over and over again without bringing anything new to the story. Here’s an example from an imaginary novel let’s call Marcia Lopez Is Seven Feet Tall.

Scene 1: First day of school. On the school bus, kids point at Marcia and laugh at her for being seven feet tall.

Scene 2: School gets out. Marcia goes to the candy store, where the shopkeeper laughs at her for being seven feet tall.

Scene 3: Dinnertime. Marcia’s new step-dad laughs at her for being seven feet tall.

Scene 102: Climax of the novel. Invading space-aliens laugh at Marcia for being seven feet tall.

As you can see, all four of these scenes have exact same function: showing how Marcia is an outsider. Sure, the details get switched up a little, but there’s no forward motion at all. This might work in a picture book, but it gets old fast in a novel.

Other common culprits for redundancy include “getting-to-know-you” scenes, training montages, and scenes showing characters falling in love. Taken individually, any one such scene can serve an important function in your story. But when you show your characters twirling around a skating rink holding hands, then lying in a field of daisies laughing, then snuggling on a couch watching movies, and nothing is changing or moving, then you’ve got yourself some redundant scenes.
How do you recognize when your scene is critical to the story and when it’s redundant?

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What does this scene actually DO?

(show the characters falling in love/show MC’s deepening dedication to becoming a basketball star/develop conflict between MC and her rival/etc.)

2. Do any other scenes do the same thing?

(yes/no/sort of/yeeeeees, but that scene where they lie in the daisies is just soooo sweet)

Obviously, it can take more than a single scene to fully develop a relationship or conflict. But the key word here is develop. That means in each scene, something important will have shifted. Instead of six “getting to know you” scenes, you’ll have one “getting to know you” scene, one “getting to hate you” scene, and one “getting to find out you’re my long-lost twin” scene. Readers will get bored if you keep presenting the same old information (Marcia Lopez is seven feet tall!) over and over again, no matter how many ways you can find to dress it up.

Once you stop writing redundant scenes, you will be delighted to find that your novel will mysteriously develop a greater sense of tension, conflict, and forward motion. Hurrah! Calamity fixed. Well, the first one, anyway…

love, fear, and the Pareto principle

2011-03-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

One thing that always comes up when Techie Boyfriend talks about his work as a code toad/interaction designer is the 80/20 rule: 80% of the features take up only 20% of your total programming time, the other 80% of which is spent fixing bugs you never even expected to have.

This is phenomenon is called the Pareto principle, after an Italian economist who noticed that most of the peas in his garden (80%) were produced by only a handful of super-productive pea pods, while the majority of the pea pods lounged around in the sun growing the other twenty percent of the peas.

**

INTERN has a friend, let’s call him Egbert, who recently wrote a query letter for his novel. Egbert embarked on the query-writing project with joy and enthusiasm and promptly churned out several decent drafts. Writing these pretty-good drafts took him about two hours.

Soon after Egbert had written these queries, however, he began to fret. He really ought to get some feedback on them before proceeding any further. So he signed up for AbsoluteWrite and AgentQuery and SheWrites and the Nathan Bransford forums and a few other places for good measure. He spent several hours critiquing other peoples’ queries so he wouldn’t look like a critique-mooch, then posted his own for review.

Within a few hours, comments started flowing in. Egbert’s query was pretty good, except for the word “locomotion” which many commenters thought contained too many o’s. Two commenters thought Egbert’s query would certainly lead to requests; one mean-sounding commenter said that after reading this train-wreck of a query, she was dubiuos [sic] that Egbert’s writing career was going anywhere at all.

Egbert fretted over these comments and fretted some more. He stayed up late at night writing query after brand-new query in a desperate attempt to please every single person who had commented. He scoured the web for examples of successful query letters, reading just about every article that had ever been written about the art. Every ten minutes or so he checked all the forums he’d signed up for to see if there were any new comments.

This went on for several days, by the end of which Egbert’s eyes were listless and vacant in their orbital cavities and he had STILL not written the Query to Please All Query Experts.

Still he sat at his laptop and fretted, his forum-checking growing more and more compulsive, until he was no longer a writer but a soul-dead zombie, and the queries coming out of him read more like suicide notes than anything else.

**

Sometimes you write out of love and sometimes you write out of fear. First drafts, poems, and text messages to your significant other tend to fall effortlessly into the first category. Revisions sometimes drift towards the second, depending on the harshness of your inner critic, but can usually be pulled back.

Query letters, on the other hand, are notorious for ending up in the Fear category, even if they didn’t start out there. By fear, INTERN does mean mortal terror but also fear in the Buddhist sense—aversion to sucking, aversion to having this big stinking lump of a manuscript sitting on your desk for any longer than it needs to.

Egbert has good reason to be intimidated—after all, a lot of the query advice out there says you all but need a PhD in query-writing to do it right. Yes, it’s important to do your research and read QueryShark and get feedback from other writers. But when you’re lashing yourself onwards like an abused sled-dog, your query’s going to smell like Fear.

**

In Egbert’s case, writing a query was almost a ridiculously perfect illustration of Pareto’s principle. He wrote most of the sentences that ended up in his final query in a handful of inspired minutes. The remaining hours of fretting, forum-checking, and self-flagellation were largely (if not entirely) wasted.

Love and Fear are two very different places to write from. And as plenty of writers will tell you, five minutes in the former is worth a hundred hours in the latter.

**

In INTERN’s experience, the best thing to do when you find yourself in the fear-zone is to put your boots on and muck around outside until you realize that nobody else in the world except you has their brain in knots over whether or not you write the Query to End All Queries this afternoon. Trust the good 20% to keep you in peas for the summer and screw all the rest. You’re not a sled-dog. You’re a writer.

why queries get rejected—a pie chart in the manner of Kate Hart

2011-03-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the lovely pie charts over at Kate Hart's blog showing YA deals by genre and 6-figure YA deals by genre, hie thee over there—not only are they interesting, but INTERN has never actually seen a pie chart look so cute and fun you want to take it home and rub it behind the ears.

When INTERN stumbled across this post by Kathleen Ortiz, an agent with Lowenstein Associates, she was inspired to make a pie chart of her own (cue two hours of cursing at Microsoft Excel, enlisting Techie Boyfriend's expertise, and resolving to sign up for remedial math). Ms. Ortiz took a pile of fifty queries and jotted down the reason she either accepted or rejected each one. Here's an excerpt:

1- one sentence about book. I have no idea what form of fiction it is. Pass. (they also submitted the SAME query four times....trust the system. If you see "Thank you for submitting" after you hit "submit," then we got it.)

2- We don't rep romance. pass

3- Three paragraphs about the author. Nothing about the book. Pass

4- Asking if I would be interested in a fiction novel (groan). But it hasn't been written bc wants confirmation that I'm interested in the idea first. Pass

5- 350,000 words. Pass

6- memoir but no platform/credentials. nothing stands out. Pass.

7- We don't rep novellas. Pass

8- I really had no idea what the book was about. Too many plot lines. Pass.

9- Thriller that just wasn't suspenseful. Pass.

It's worth reading the full post to get a neat look at what goes on inside an agent's brain as she sorts through a tower of mail.

At the end of the day, here's how those fifty reasons charted up:

Ta-da!

*INTERN gets out her laser pointer and twiddles it around at random, feeling very serious and professorial for about thirty seconds*

OK, INTERN is going to stick to looking at Kate's pie charts from now on instead of making her own. Twas a fun experiment anyhow!

sunday special edition: your publishing horoscope for this week

2011-03-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20):

New possibilities arise when you have an extremely vivid dream in which the most gorgeous boy you have ever seen burns a stack of library books while gently whispering the words “YA paranormal”.

Aries (March 21-April 20):

A critique partnership could flower into something more this week—isn’t it time you read between the line edits?

Taurus (April 21-May 20):

A literary acquaintance who previously spurned you will come back unexpectedly with an offer of representation. Proceed with caution—is she really the best match for your work?

Gemini (May 21-June 20):

Quick reflexes could prove extremely valuable when a freak power outage threatens to wipe your 110,000-word manuscript out of existence. The oracle has said this before and she’ll say it again: back up your work.

Cancer (June 21-July 22):

A work-in-progress will go in a bold new direction when a stranger comes to town, throwing your entire worldview into question and sowing romantic chaos among your close-knit and culturally-diverse circle of friends.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 22):

Sympathetic writer-friends can make a stressful period easier to bear. But beware the temptation to turn critique sessions into opportunities to get completely $%# hammered, lest your WIP become gin-stained.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

Patience will be essential this week as you await response to an important query. Resist the temptation to follow up by e-mail or telephone—good things come to those who gnaw their fingernails to the bone while hanging in agonizing limbo.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

Gossip about an acquaintance who has recently signed with a sought-after agent will reach you today. Don’t let yourself be overcome by jealousy—your turn is coming too. But in the meantime, perhaps your acquaintance would be kind enough to honor you with a glowing referral?

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

Things may not go as planned this week when a dashing stranger taps you on the shoulder, asks if you happen to be working on a novel, and, upon finding out that you are, humbly inquires whether you would consider signing a four-book deal with Simon & Schuster, right here, right now. No need to query.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

Romantic turmoil ensues when your significant other discovers your ongoing flirtation with your critique partner, whose inline comments have become increasingly steamy over the past few weeks. It might be time for you to acknowledge that AbsoluteWrite is not a dating site.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-January 20): ←INTERN!

The aforementioned freak power outage takes a bizarre twist when Techie Boyfriend and the Ranch Hands go into the city for the weekend and you realize you are all alone with Creepy Caretaker and nothing but bobcats to hear you scream.

Aquarius (Jan. 21-Feb. 19):

Disorientation results when you awaken in the middle of a cornfield, having resolved to draw your writerly inspiration from alien abduction experiences rather than dreams. Now what were those words that bald-headed extraterrestrial whispered in your ear again? “YA space opera?”

**

happy Sunday from INTERN.

department of dubious dreamery

2011-03-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, INTERN has been noticing a curious trend in YA author interviews: authors who attribute their inspiration for a character or an entire novel to a dream.

By now, everyone is (over-)familiar with the Stephenie Meyer Legend: had dream about sparkly vampire and unsparkly girl discussing the intricacies of sparkly/non-sparkly love, woke up, penned four-book series, laughed hysterically all the way to the blood bank. (Cue wannabe bestselling vampire authors everywhere popping Nyquil and repairing to their beds.)

When she first heard of this Legend, INTERN thought it was an unusual story. But since then, INTERN has stumbled upon tons of YA authors who claim to have discovered their novels in a dream.

Humph. *glares reproachfully at her decidedly non plot outline-producing or query letter-generating bed*.

While INTERN doesn't doubt that these YA ladies are telling the truth about their nocturnal inspiration, she can't help but smell some kind of culture-bound fish. INTERN wouldn't be surprised if, in five or ten years from now, dreams had passed out of vogue and authors were instead pointing to mescaline trips or divination as the source of their ideas for novels. Creativity is a mysterious thing, and the collective story we tell ourselves about it is as prone to shifting over time as the collective story we tell ourselves about diseases or gravity or gender or fruit flies.

So why dreams? Why now? Why not "my cat beamed the story to me telepathically" or "I've been working on this @$!#@ manuscript for so long I don't even remember how I originally thought of it"?

This dream thing has something innately glamorous and weirdly flattering about it, while managing to be humble at the same time. It says "I am subject to bursts of divine inspiration!" but also "I really can't take credit for this—twas the dream!" That's a pretty appealing story. Best of all, it's an acceptable explanation within our society—one that doesn't make you sound either calculating or insane.

Before she returns to boar hunting, INTERN wants to know: What do you make of this whole YA Novels Based on Dreams phenomenon? Do you get your inspiration from your REM cycle? Is this dream thing a convenient explanation or the gospel truth?

Writer, Confess! Have you ever used a real person as a character?

2011-03-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, INTERN read about the lawsuit simmering over Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help,” in which a sixty-year old woman named Ablene Cooper is accusing Stockett of using her as a character in her book. Even though the character allegedly created in Ms. Cooper's likeness is depicted in a very flattering way, the experience of seeing herself (or what looks like herself) in a novel has her hot and bothered to the tune of $75,000.

This made INTERN scratch her head. Is it really illegal to use a real person as a character? What if you show them as being charming and intelligent and irresistibly attractive? What if you do the old gender switcheroo, or dress them up as a Deaf-Mute Bong Salesman or a Costa Rican coffee farmer? Who decides what degree of character-snatching is OK and what degree is punishable with a $75,000 fine?

In her quest for answers, INTERN stumbled across this blog about Writing and the Law, wherein she found the following quote by first amendment expert R. Smolla:

When an author wants to draw from a real person as the basis for a fictional character, there are two relatively "safe" courses of action from a legal perspective: First, the author may make little or no attempt to disguise the character, but refrain from any defamatory and false embellishments on the character's conduct or personality; second, the author may engage in creative embellishments that reflect negatively on the character's reputation, but make substantial efforts to disguise the character . . . to avoid identification. When an author takes a middle ground, however, neither adhering perfectly to the person's attributes and behavior nor engaging in elaborate disguise, there is a threat of defamation liability.

Humph. Deaf-Mute Bong Salesman it is.

**

Beyond the legal issues surrounding character-snatching, INTERN has long been fascinated by the emotions that suspected character-snatching evokes in the character-snatchee. One of INTERN’s earliest writer-memories is her big sister warning her, on pain of extremely prolonged and excrutiating Indian Burns, that she must NEVER, EVER, EVER write about her in a fiction, non-fiction, diaristic, poetic or journalistic context (INTERN realizes that by writing this sentence she is coming dangerously close to breaking this ban—but then again, INTERN’s big sister didn’t specificallty forbid blogging.)

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the endless parade of tiresome strangers in bars and subways who upon finding out you are a Writer, flatter themselves to think that surely you will want to use their story in a book.

INTERN can’t help but wonder if people fall into two camps: there are those who have a primitive fear of being Novelized the way the proverbial Lost Tribe fears the soul-snatching camera, and those who would consider Novelization—even in a negative light—the ultimate victory.

There are all sorts of arguments both for and against using real people in novels and stories. For example: "Truman Capote did it!" versus "Truman Capote's friends never talked to him again!" Using real people as characters can be disastrous in all sorts of ways, but if writers weren't allowed to do it at all, we'd lose out on a lot of good literature.

So, writerlings, INTERN is curious to know: Have you ever based a fictional character on a real person? Did that person go on to kill, maim, sue, or date you? What's your policy on character-snatching? Has anyone ever falsely suspected you of snatching them? Have you ever suspected another writer of snatching you?

Der Man Aus Tennessee: Ein Top-Western

2011-03-11T10:49:00.000-08:00

Besides INTERN and Techie Boyfriend, there are three other semi-permanent residents at the ranch: two sweet and loveable Ranch Hands of the djembe-stoner variety, who like nothing more than to partake of some herbal medicine and spend all day pruning grape vines, and the inevitable Creepy Caretaker, a lecherous, pot-bellied hermit who lives in a house on the hill and whose main responsibility at the ranch is puttering around in an ATV searching for Hot and Available Young Ladies to woo, of which this vast and unforgiving landscape is in disappointingly scant supply.

Every month or two, Hippie Roommate and her high-powered boyfriend drive up from San Francisco for an all-too-short weekend visit in which they have just enough time to unpack their organic groceries, hold an elaborate tea ceremony with cave-ripened thousand-year-old Pu Erh straight off the plane from Xishuangbanna, fret over possibile mutinies among the Ranch Hands, and enjoy a brief dip in the hot tub before motoring off again in a leather-seated pickup approximately ten times more powerful than any other vehicle at the ranch. For a moment, everyone stands around observing their departure wistfully, because they are well-liked and interesting to talk to. Then, the Ranch Hands, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend return to what they do best, namely, frolicking, and Creepy Caretaker climbs back on his ATV to continue his grim search for booty.

One of the challenges of living at a remote and clandestine mountain hideaway is that INTERN is constantly running out books.

The first time INTERN ran out of books, she tried borrowing books from the Ranch Hands (whose interests run, unfortunately for INTERN, more to Eckhart Tolle than Tolstoi) and from Hippie Roommate's H.P.B (whose interests run to expensive 2,000-page volumes about the history of tea). Last week, she finally hit rock bottom. It was time to venture out from the ranch and find a bookstore.

As the crow flies, the ranch is a mere 6.14 miles from the closest bookstore (INTERN knows this for a fact; she just checked using this neat Distance Measurement Tool on Google Maps). In practice, however, getting to this bookstore involves a harrowing full-day journey.

First, Techie Boyfriend will declare that the Spaceship needs a full head-gasket change before it will be safe to drive. After that little spot of maintenance is taken care of, INTERN will chase out the family of badgers that has taken up residence in the back of the truck, and Techie Boyfriend will fire up the engine.

Once the Spaceship is (more or less) running, they will pull onto the first of several dozen unmarked dirt roads, their caravan clanking and shuddering in an ominous way each time they hit a pothole. Every quarter mile or so, INTERN will hop out to unlock one of a seemingly infinite series of security gates, each with its own combination. Every half mile or so, Techie Boyfriend will hop out to engage in tense negotiations with the local dr—er, understandably cautious, if rather heavily armed neighbors*, who control some of the dirt roads in question, while INTERN does her best not to look like a Fed.

Having made it this far on their pleasant country ramble, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend emerge onto an actual paved road, from where it is only a gorgeous thirty-minute drive (pulling over every few seconds to let a gleaming white Lexus or two whiz by in an awful hurry) to the charming little town in which the bookstore is located.

To date, they have only made this journey once. Knowing it would probably be a long time before they returned again, INTERN found herself in a state of great agitation. What if she ran out of books again in a week? It seemed like no amount of Faulkner or Gertrude Stein or short story anthologies translated from Japanese would ever be enough to last her more than a few days.

Then INTERN discovered the foreign-language section. Foreign languages. Of course! It was the perfect solution. As savvy grade-three teachers everywhere know, NOTHING slows down an over-eager reader more than a book in a language they DON'T UNDERSTAND.

For the past two weeks, therefore, INTERN has been chewing on this little tome:

That's right. Ein Top-Western. So far, INTERN has figured out that the main character's name is Wingo Rowan and that he is fighting the Comanchen und Kiowas for Kontrolle of New Mexico. Either that, or having a very long barfight concerning a dropped wienerschnitzel.

INTERN will keep you updated on her progress in untangling the plot. In the meantime, she is already in the querying stage of ein Top-Western of her own (Der INTERN Aus Kalifornia). Maybe that twenty-book über-deal isn't so far off.

*At this point, INTERN would like to make it absolutely clear that the ranch at which INTERN is staying is purely a Pleasure Ranch, not a Business Ranch, if you know what INTERN means. But folks are pretty territorial in these parts, regardless of which category they fall into, hence the Secretiveness of her location.

INTERN returns!

2011-03-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

When last INTERN poked her head into the blogosphere, she was grease-stained and coolant-soaked and half-insane from breathing in too many Spaceship Fumes whilst repairing the van she had been living in with Techie Boyfriend for the past six months. INTERN is happy to report that her days of living in a motor vehicle are now over, and that she is finally ready to return to a slightly less auto-shoppy existence—and to this blog.

INTERN and Techie Boyfriend are currently holed up at a secret hideaway in the hills of Mendocino County, California, where they spend most of their time studying cougar scat and making elaborate plans to catch wild boars using ingenious and entirely humane traps built out of manzanita twigs and duck spit (not to fret—INTERN is still herbivorous. But only until she catches her first boar.) Those of you who have known INTERN for some time will be intrigued to know that INTERN and Techie Boyfriend are living here under the patronage of Hippie Roommate’s high-powered boyfriend (yes, that Hippie Roommate! what a dear!) who owns pretty much the entire state of California. Vampire Roommate has slipped off INTERN’s radar—although last she heard, he was still working at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club (!!!) and sharpening his fangs in the bathroom mirror.

As you have no doubt already deduced, INTERN is no longer an intern any sort (unless you count cougar scatology) nor indeed affiliated with the publishing industry in any official capacity except as a troublesome author whose tendency to have no fixed address causes her publisher no end of despair. She has decided to come back to this blog (and this particular pseudonym, rather than FORMER INTERN or something awful like that) because over the past few months she’s started to feel a yearning to reconnect. She has done her months of wandering, put in her lonely hours, sat in her proverbial bat-infested cave, waiting for a vision—and now it’s time to come home. Oh yes, and she missed you.

Part of INTERN wishes she could report that during her six-month absence from this blog, she had netted some twenty-book über-deal or authored a mystical text on par with The Tibetan Book of the Dead or launched a dozen secret blogs she never told you about or spawned a batch hyper-literate octuplets who are at this very moment being interviewed by the New Yorker. But to tell you the truth, that’s not what INTERN did. What INTERN mostly did was sit in her bat-cave fretting over the idea of Quality and berating herself to get Serious about her Art*. Incidentally, she also learned how to juggle three balls. Neat-o!

Going forward, INTERN feels the need to make certain Declarations about this blog. You can probably guess what they are, but here goes anyway:

-INTERN reserves the right to de-anonymize at some point, at her sole discretion. This means you might check this blog someday only to discover that it is in fact written by a thick-ankled old snake wrangler from Bryan, TX or an eleven-year old Siberian orphan ensnared in childhood by Intern Slavers from New York (what? you don’t know about the Intern Slavers? what a scoop.) She probably won’t do it anytime soon (or perhaps ever). But maybe!

-INTERN also reserves the right to outsource this blog to India should her intensive schedule of boar-hunting and manuscript revision prove too cumbersome.

-INTERN furthermore reserves the right to shift the focus of this blog from writing to Jungian theory and drop some serious apocatastasis on your animas. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Oh, screw declarations. You all know why INTERN is here. She doesn’t need to declare nothin’.

It’s good to be back.

With infinite adoration and gratitude,

INTERN

*being cougar scatology.

!!!surprise x-mas post!!! Everything INTERN Needs to Know About Manuscript Repair She Learned From Fixing Her Spaceship

2010-12-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

Greetings, erstwhile readers! Over the course of the past six months, INTERN has found her thoughts straying to you time and again, wondering how you're doing and how your dear manuscripts are getting along. Now, in this warm and fuzzy season of well-wishery, INTERN is breaking her vow of bloggerly silence to indulge herself in a brief hello.

As some of you may know, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend have been living in a spaceship they bought for $750. For most of the past month, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend have been completely swallowed up in engine repair as they desperately strove to make it to Techie Boyfriend's family homestead in California in time for Christmas. Over the course of those alternatingly tense and joyful hours spent under the hood of the spaceship, or lying underneath the spaceship while Techie Boyfriend dropped various tools on INTERN's face, INTERN realized that engine repair is basically the same as manuscript repair, except greasier and with a greater chance of getting blinded by terrifying chemicals.

INTERN would therefore like to share with you some quick insights, now that she has abandoned writing for auto shop. Here they are:

Everything INTERN Needs to Know About Manuscript Repair She Learned From Fixing Her Spaceship

1. It helps to have a beta driver.

Because there is a good chance that you, on your own, are completely delusional:

Techie Boyfriend: Whoa. Why is the spaceship shuddering like that when you start it?
INTERN: (gripping the wheel and grinning broadly) Hmm? It’s not shuddering.
Techie Boyfriend: What’s that black smoke coming out of the engine?
INTERN: (gazing vacantly straight ahead) There’s no black smoke.
Spaceship: (spitting balls of fire) Frak-bleargh-akakakakakakkkk
Techie Boyfriend: Oh my god. Pull over. We’re about to blow up.
INTERN: (turning to Techie Boyfriend and snarling viciously) WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO GODDAMN NITPICKY ABOUT EVERYTHING???

2. There are parts of your engine held together with zip ties that really ought not to be held together with zip ties.

This might explain why that gas station attendant who walked by when you were checking your oil the other day begged you with tears in his eyes not to attempt to drive your van any further.

3. The functionality of your engine is not “subjective”. It is not “different for everybody”. Either your engine runs or it doesn’t. Either it degenerates into a smoking wreck in an east Texas rest area or it doesn’t. Either it is purring along nicely at 60 mph or it is sitting on the side of the highway with the four-way flashers blinking.

If you are still not sure which camp your engine falls into, just ask any objective bystander for a speedy clarification.

4. You cannot step into the same engine twice.

This is an ancient saying attributed to Heraclitus. What Heraclitus means is that, every time you pull the head cover off to adjust the clearances on the valves just one last time before driving your van off into the sunset, you will discover that the engine you thought you’d been working on for the past infinity days has been replaced by a completely different engine with a completely new set of completely impossible-to-solve new problems.

5. If you take apart your engine, you will find that some idiot stripped a bolt in the intake manifold, figured it “wouldn’t matter that much”, and created a horrible coolant leak that will now take you twenty hours to repair.

That idiot was probably you.

6. No engine part is an island.

That means you can’t replace the bejongler without realizing that the wokkapiggery and the bauschnauserum also need replacing. You will also realize with horror that the Imminent Death Cable is frayed to a half-millimeter in thickness, the Brake Pads of the Apocalypse are fossilized, and some young punk scratched your new gradient-fractal paint job with a key. The scary problem you initially set out to fix is actually trivial in comparison to the howling ruination that is the rest of your engine. Have fun with that, Chip.

7. Other people will try to distract you from completing your engine repair job.

Like the upstanding citizens of the Bryan, TX neighborhood association who give you 24 hours to clear your eyesore of a vehicle out of your friend’s driveway when the engine is already completely disassembled in the garage. And, um, the Arizona police.

But whatever happens (or whoever comes glaring), you must prevail over these minor distractions and get the job done, because at the end of your day you believe in your engine even if nobody else does, and you are determined to make it run. And screw Bryan, TX anyway.

8. There’s no shame in calling in some expert assistance if you get stuck.

Like your uncle’s cousin’s friend’s neighbor’s socially awkward but mechanically-minded teenaged son, who will help you diagnose that strange ticking sound in exchange for frightening amounts of Mountain Dew.

9. Your engine does not work through a mysterious and incomprehensible combination of wizardry and leprechauns.

In fact, your engine works through a rational and really quite accessible process of mundlefrommery, sparklemangery, and dequarkification. Like, RTFM.

10. If you keep at it long enough and don’t give up, your engine will slowly start to reveal its secrets.

You will start to realize that bolts that were impossible to unbolt two days ago now come off and on with ease. Wires that seemed to go nowhere yesterday now clip neatly in their sockets. Oil that was dripping all over your face yesterday is now staying obediently inside the proper receptacle. The mechanic’s flight suit that looked ridiculous on you last week is now looking authentically filthy, giving you reassuring amounts of cred when you’re waiting in line at Napa Auto Parts. You will start to realize that maybe this engine repair thing is possible after all.

11. No engine repair experience is ever wasted.

Because even if, God forbid, you end up hauling your spaceship to the junkyard, you will have learned so much, gotten your clothes so greasy, and tested your relationship with your beta driver to such an extreme level that you will approach your next engine repair job with that much more wisdom, insight, patience, and, um, possibly dread. You will be a stronger person. A more knowledgeable person. Perhaps a person who now requires a few years of mental and/or physical and/or marital therapy to work through all the issues that came up over the course of the Engine Repair Experience. But all in all, a person who is now better quipped than ever before to work with whatever engines the future holds.

**

That is all. Just in case anyone is fretting, INTERN and Techie Boyfriend made it to California in time for Christmas despite approximately twelve hundred engine-related disasters, and an exhausted INTERN spent the holiday lying on the couch like a sultan while Techie Boyfriend's many relatives fed her cookies and piled lots and lots of novels on the floor for her to read. What happiness!

INTERN misses you all and wishes you all ten thousand delights. May you all gallop into the new year with glee in your eyes and inspiration at your fingertips. Thank you for allowing INTERN the indulgence of this yuletide post. Godspeed!

in which INTERN gets real/also a love letter

2010-07-31T11:07:00.000-07:00

So.

It's been fifteen months since a young and wide-eyed INTERN started this blog. Everything was so exciting! There were publishing secrets to uncover and manuscript snafus to ponder and Nemesis Interns to thwart.

Then, INTERN spent some time nailing down some thoughts on revision and book-buying habits.

After a few months of that, INTERN missed publishing so much she did a second internship and learned all about how Distinguished and oh-so-Selective publishers (and their authors) can be sort of crazy.

Shortly after, INTERN fled the venerable confines of that internship in order to stumble awkwardly through her own book's release and promotion while trying and, INTERN admits, probably failing to not let her anonymity become annoying.

And now, dear readers, dearest dears, most beautiful and friendly and clever ones, INTERN has said just about everything she feels like saying about publishing and writing. INTERN has emptied the junk drawer of her brain on this matter and all that's left are child-sized band-aids and dried-up rubber bands. INTERN does not want to dilute this blog with posts that aren't 100% stoked and earnest and alive, because y'all deserve better and can get it at such fine blogs as The Rejectionist and Pimp My Novel. Plus, it's time for INTERN to clear her mental plate for new projects and adventures.

So here's the deal:

INTERN might wander back to this blog now and then if/when she has something to say about writing/publishing/books. No idea when or how frequently.

If you'd like to be alerted to INTERN's other projects and adventures, then shoot an e-mail to internspills [at] gmail [dot] com, introduce yourself, say hello. INTERN would be delighted to hear from you, would sincerely love to get to know you better, and promises to write back. INTERN will also remain available for manuscript critiques and other stuff for former/current and new clients.

This has all been so wonderful and has brought so much joy and excitement to a seriously lowly INTERN's life. INTERN is actually shaking as she writes this because she's remembering how truly happy and ridiculous the past fifteen months have been (also, she has had way, way too much caffeine). Thanks to all of you for reading, and a special thanks to people like Editorial Anonymous and Editorial Ass whose bloggerly generosity in the first few months were a great encouragement to INTERN.

INTERN will now take a break from eulogizing to answer a question you might have, namely, Where is INTERN going from here?

Well, right now INTERN and Techie Boyfriend are living in a highly dubious motor vehicle INTERN bought with the last remnants of her freelance money. INTERN is finishing a novel she's been "working on" (aka painfully tearing apart and rewriting) for over a year and is probably going to try her hand at writing another blog about a different subject (the steel industry! mushroom identification! the repair and maintenance of highly dubious motor vehicles!). Writing about writing and publishing in this blog has made INTERN more aware of the ways in which her own writing is inadequate and immature, and she wants to spend the next few years (or, um lifetime) honing and practicing until her own fiction is up to the standards she has described in this blog.

So if you ever see a white 1985 Toyota pickup with a supremely unlikely-looking camper shell lurking outside your house, apartment, or bookstore, know that there is an INTERN sitting crosslegged in the back with her laptop or notebook, writing and writing with an earnest (or is that manic?) glint in her eye. Knock on the window if you like (but please be sure to simultaneously announce that you are not the police or some kind of assassin, because INTERN is easily spooked). INTERN can also be easily lured out of her hatch by a trail of granola or other such INTERN-friendly snack.

Thanks again, and please do write to say hello.

Now get out of here and go revise something before INTERN gets emotional. You'll all do great.

5 thoughts on book promotion

2010-07-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

After being detained in Dame Murderpool's bone-chilling basement cell for the better part of two weeks, INTERN escaped and has returned to North America, leaving Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor in Elmira's capable hands. (it's a long story. INTERN will save it for a rainy day).

Anyway, INTERN's book (still a secret) has been out for almost three months now, and while shivering in Dame Murderpool's cell, INTERN had the time to collect her thoughts on some things she's learned in that time.

-It helps to be friendly.

As opposed to being demanding, arrogant, vain, mean, prima donna-ish, or, in the words of INTERN's editorial assistant friend, "a f&^#ing psychopath." INTERN has been told this holds true outside of publishing too, but so far this has been unconfirmed.

-It helps to have people.

Mention you've just had a book published, and suddenly everybody you've ever met becomes your greatest spokesperson without you even needing to ask. INTERN's landlady spammed all 1,400 of her nearest and dearest e-mail contacts when INTERN told her about her book, and the librarians in INTERN's hometown all but took out a full-page ad in the local newspaper. It's not about "networking" or schmoozing up important-looking strangers at cocktail parties—just knowing people, pretty much any people, is fantastically useful. (PS: It helps if those people like you, or at least feel a kind of vague semi-approval in your direction—see previous point.)

-It helps to be innumerate.

As in, it helps to be so extraordinarily bad at math that you can blithely ignore the fact that for the time you spend promoting your book by maintaining a new blog, website, twitter and facebook page, getting up at 4 AM for radio interviews on the other side of the country, and having a nervous breakdown over your selection of outfits for a 15-second national TV spot in which you look like an anemic weasel, you will make approximately 75 cents per hour unless the sales are really, reaaaaally good.

-It helps to be available 24/7.

One of INTERN's publicist's favorite tricks is to call when INTERN is still in bed and say "Why haven't you written back to my e-mail yet?" in a voice that floods a very groggy INTERN's body with terror and adrenaline. Some radio and TV opportunities literally can't wait, and if you don't answer the phone on the first ring or hop in the first cab to the airport or whatever, there's no second chance. It can be hard to wrap your mind around the extent to which you're expected to be "on call" for potential media events, even several months after the book's release. But it's also a good sign, because it means your publisher's still pouring energy into your book.

-It helps to see everything as hilarious.

Book sales awesome? Hilarious!
Bizarre and possibly sinister Amazon review? Hilarious!
Radio host invents a sexy and outlandish bio for you on the fly? Hilarious!

So much of a book's success or failure depends on things you can't predict or control, so it's easier just to laugh at everything that happens in equal measure rather than get really psyched about the wins and really stressed about the downers.

**

And that's about all INTERN can think of for now.

Mystery and Deception and Manuscripts: part 3

2010-07-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

The new intern has just arrived at Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor Castle, where INTERN is holed up trying to save her great-uncle's ailing publishing house.

The new intern was a striking young lad of only sixteen. He strode in wearing a newsboy cap and smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe. He proffered his hand and INTERN shook it, impressed by the youth's confidant air.

"Manley Blacksmith, youngest son of Peter Blacksmith, at your service. Are there any query letters needs reading, then?"

Young Manley didn't waste any time. INTERN nodded approvingly.

"Welcome, Manley. As a matter of fact there's a whole pile of submissions that need sorting. You can work on that until The Gales of Thistledown Moor turns up, at which point the full range of your talents will be required."

INTERN was surprised to find herself speaking in such a formal manner. Perhaps the castle was getting to her.

She turned to Buckley, who was squinting at young Manley as if trying to figure out one of those Magic Eye pictures.

"Buckley?"

He ignored her. Instead, he pounced on the young intern, knocking off his cap. A pair of long red braids tumbled down from where they had been coiled, and Buckley let out a little yip of victory.

"I knew it—this intern is a fraud! Peter Blacksmith gave his youngest son to the monastery. This interloper is none other than the village milkmaid. I shall eject her from the premises at once."

He grabbed the young intern's arm.

"Stop that right now!" said INTERN. "She seems clever and efficient. She'll make a fine intern."

Buckley released her, his expression pained.

"But Miss INTERN—she's a girl."

INTERN arched an eyebrow at him and he rolled his eyes, reading her mind.

"You don't count, Miss INTERN, you're North American. Things are different here in Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor."

At this point, the young villager stepped up with her chin held high.

"Take me on, Miss. If you send me back to the village, I'll have to marry Hugh Hunchback and take care of his herd of cows, and he's eighty-five years old and his cows are even older. Plus I'm a hard worker and I'll do Spür Haus proud."

INTERN was relieved to hear her pronounce the house's name as it was intended to be pronounced. She smiled.

"What's your name?"

"Elmira Shackleton."

Buckley was shaking his head in disgust. INTERN ignored him.

"Well, Elmira Shackleton, welcome on board."

"Thank you ever so much, Miss."

Elmira paused for a moment, then her eyes lit up and she spoke again.

"I'd like tuppence a week."

"What's that?"

"Tuppence a week. Elmira Shackleton doesn't work for free, Miss."

INTERN grinned. This kid would go far. Before she had a chance to answer, Buckley exploded:

"Tuppence a week! Are you mad, girl? Interns don't get paid. You ought to be in the cowsheds swabbing dung!"

"That's quite enough Buckley!" said INTERN. "Elmira shall have her tuppence a week. And if she proves clever, she shall have sixpence. After that, two guineas!"

Buckley looked like he was about to faint. Elmira and INTERN exchanged a nod.

"Right then. I'll get started on those submissions," said Elmira, and set to work straight away.

INTERN turned to Buckley.

"Now Buckley, we'd better get started on that manuscript that's supposed to become a bestseller and save our publishing house. Where is it?"

Buckley scowled.

"You meanThe Gales of Thistledown Moor? I suppose the old lawyer didn't explain it, then."

"Explain what?"

"The manuscript was stolen by Dame Murderpoole on the day of your great-uncle's death."

"Who is Dame Murderpoole?"

Buckley rolled his eyes, still bitter at INTERN.

"None other than the notorious literary agent whose clients your great-uncle spurned for years."

"Is there a fast horse in the stable? Are her headquarters to the east or to the west?"

"I'd be careful if I were you, Miss INTERN. When Dame Murderpoole stole the manuscript, she also vowed to stop at nothing until every last descendent of the Baron's was dead as a spindlecob."

"But the Baron's last descendent is—"

"You," said Buckley. "Yes, Miss INTERN, the Baron's last descendent is you."

***

Will INTERN and co. retrieve the missing manuscript, or will it turn up on tomorrow's Publisher's Lunch? Will Dame Murderpoole fulfil her grisly vow? And how will Buckley adapt to the new, progressive culture at Spür Haus?

Mystery and Deception and—no, breaking news!

2010-07-09T05:30:00.001-07:00

When we left off last time, a mysterious rhyming intern had just arrived from the village.

However, INTERN cannot update you on the events at Shamsbury-pon-Spoor Castle because her head is still reeling from news of the vicious memoir battle that is rocking the UK.

Says the London Evening Standard:

New Labour may be well and truly dead but the memoirs fight is raging in a summer that will pit the former Labour leader against his oldest and closest ally.

Lord Mandelson has effectively scooped his former boss, Tony Blair, by giving an exclusive interview to tomorrow's Times after selling his memoirs to the pugnacious literary queen Victoria Barnsley at HarperCollins.

Meanwhile, at Random House, Tony Blair's recollections of his time at the top, The Journey, will be published in September by Gail Rebuck, the newly honoured Dame, who has social connections across politics and publishing and among London's cultural elites.

The £4.6 million deal has been long publicised but any details are treated as a state secret.

Dames! Queens! Secrecy! Deception! MANUSCRIPTS!

INTERN just heard on the radio that the parties involved have agreed to settle the matter by duel.

Dueling memoirists keep stiff upper lips.

Mystery and Deception and Manuscripts: Part 2

2010-07-05T12:29:00.000-07:00

When last we left off, INTERN had just stumbled into her late great-uncle's publishing office, located behind a trick bookshelf in a crumbling Cornwall castle. Will INTERN succeed at fulfilling her great-uncle's dying wish, and claim her rightful place as Baroness Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor?

INTERN heard the bookshelf grind into place behind her. Before her lay the wood-pannelled offices of Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor Editions. A lithe old man dressed entirely in tweed with a beard that reached down to his knees jumped up from his place behind an antique rolltop desk and came hurrying towards her.

"Oh Miss INTERN, I am so frightfully glad you've arrived. You're the spitting image of your great-uncle the Baron, God slather his soul with butter. I'm Buckley, the editorial assistant. At your service."

With those words, the old man took an elaborate bow. INTERN looked him over skeptically. Editorial assistant? The poor chap must be two hundred years old! INTERN's great-uncle must have been stingy with promotions.

"Your office is right this way, Miss. I've just put fresh candles in the candelabras. Do follow me."

INTERN followed Buckley to the back of the room, where a carved oak door opened onto a smaller, even more richly furnished office with a massive desk. Silver candelabras burned at either ends of the desk, dripping white wax onto the mahogany. Manuscripts written on parchment paper littered the floor. She turned to ask Buckley a question, but he was already retreating from the room.

"If you'll excuse me Miss, I'll go make you a pot of tea. The intern should be arriving from the village any day now, but it's a day's walk to the castle and I suppose this dreadful weather's held him up. Make yourself right at home. I'm sure you'll set the press' finances right as rain in no time—the late Baron always said you would."

With that, Buckley disappeared. INTERN sank into the Louis IV chair behind the desk, overwhelmed by the task ahead. Buckley was clearly counting on her to save the press. But where was the manuscript for The Gales of Thistledown Moor?

INTERN reached down and began to sift through the piles of manuscripts on the floor. There were dozens of seafaring how-to manuscripts written out in a shaky hand, a few Gothic romances and etiquette manuals, and what seemed to be a 2000-page family saga with long slashes of red pen through most of its paragraphs.

The Gales of Thistledown Moor was nowhere to be found.

Forbidding herself to succumb to despair, INTERN did what any reasonable newly-minted executive editor would do: she took out a fresh sheet of paper and a pen and started to draft a press release.

If Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor Editions was going to succeed, thought INTERN, things would have to change. The whole joint was clearly stuck in the MIddle Ages, and it didn't stand a chance in the digital age. First thing to go, thought INTERN, would have to be the name. Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor Editions was too wordy, too stale. How could she bring it into the modern world while acknowledging the press' history?

Sham²? ShamPoSpo? SPTS2010? House of Spoor Editions?

No.

Suddenly, INTERN had a flash of inspiration.

Spür Haus.

It was short. It was modern. It looked vaguely like something you'd buy at Ikea.

INTERN took up the quill pen that was lying on the desk and wrote the press release announcing the relaunch of Spür Haus to the world.

When Buckley came back with the tea, INTERN thanked him and assigned him his first task: proofread the press release and send it out. Buckley seemed inordinately pleased to be given something to do.

"Right away, Miss INTERN. Oh, it's been years since we've sent out a press release, this is exciting."

Half an hour later, INTERN wandered out of her office to check on Buckley's progress. He was standing behind a mimeograph machine from the 1887 which looked strangely futuristic in the midst of the even older office furnishings. He handed her a copy of the press release eagerly.

When she saw it, INTERN blanched.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEAfE: fHAMfBURY-PON-THE-fPOOR HOUfE If PLEAfED TO ANNOUNCE THAT IT WILL BE RE-LAUNCHING IN FALL 2010 as fPUR HAUf.

INTERN hardly had to read further than the first line to realize what Buckley had done. He had proofread it, yes—but proofread it according to his own antique standards.

"Buckley, you haven't already started sending these out, have you?"

"Why of course, Miss. Two hundred copies have gone out to all the London newspapers, a hundred to Constantinople, and hundreds more to the rest of the Empire and the New World. Is that a problem?"

Buckley looked so anxious and earnest that INTERN didn't have the heart to tell him what he'd done.

INTERN was now the executive editor of a failing publishing company called Fpur Hauf, and there was no taking it back.

Before she had the chance to decide what to do next, there was a loud knocking on the trick bookshelf. A low, rough voice called out, "Oi, I'm the nocturne and cistern!"

INTERN looked at Buckley in puzzlement. He bowed slightly. "It seems the new intern has finally arrived."

***

Will INTERN be able to steer Fpür Hauf into modern waters? Will Buckley ever be able to make the cut as a 21st century editorial assistant? Who is this rough new intern from the village? And where, oh where, is The Gales of Thistledown Moor? Find out next time INTERN has internet access from this rocky and desolate coast.

Mystery and Deception and Manuscripts: Part 1

2010-07-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

Three days ago, INTERN arrived in England under Mysterious Circumstances—but even INTERN could not fathom just how mysterious they would turn out to be.

She was met at Heathrow by an anemic-looking footman dressed in purple velvet, who conducted her by stagecoach all the way to Cornwall, the stallions' hooves trampling the heather flat. At midnight, they arrived at a huge but crumbling castle, where the footman left INTERN without a word of explanation and took off at a gallop.

Inside the castle, INTERN climbed a stone staircase, her path lit only by the white LED on her keychain. At the top of the stairs was a wooden door. She opened the door to reveal a dimly lit office. An elderly man with slicked-back hair and a frilly lace collar looked up from his desk, narrowed his eyes, and said in a grating voice "So you've made it after all, INTERN—or should I say, Baroness Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor."

At that moment a bat squeaked, and INTERN noticed the pile of legal documents sitting on the desk. Noticing her surprise, the elderly gentleman continued.

"Ah. I see that the news of your great-uncle's death comes as a shock to you. The old baron died of lead poisoning. You are his only heir. This castle will be yours, and the lands surrounding it too—if, of course, you can meet the condition."

INTERN looked around, taking in the rich furnishings and the antique stonework. With a castle of her own, and income from the peasants' rent, INTERN wouldn't have to do so many odd jobs. Techie Boyfriend wouldn't have to write another line of code. They could grow turnips in the courtyard and eat all the boiled nettles they liked.

"Sounds good!" said INTERN. "What's the condition?"

The lawyer cleared his throat and adjusted his tie with a leisurely, self-satisfied gesture.

"Your great-uncle was the executive editor of a publishing house."

"HOW COOL!" squealed INTERN.

The lawyer smirked.

"A failing publishing house. Not a single book published by Shamsbury-Pon-the-Spoor Editions has ever sold through. At the time of his death, your great-uncle muttered ceaselessly about a manuscript-a manuscript which he believed would be so commercially successful it would save the house. He died before he could publish it."

INTERN interrupted here to inquire: "What kind of manuscript? What was it called?"

The lawyer looked pained.

"Young Adult. Working title The Gales of Thistledown Moor."

INTERN cringed.

"That title will have to go. But the category's hot."

Not looking amused, the lawyer went on.

"The condition of your inheritance is that you save Shamsbury-pon-the-Spoor Editions from bankruptcy by making a bestseller. Then—and only then-will the castle be yours."

"Done and done," said INTERN. "When can I get started?"

The old lawyer said nothing but gestured to a bookshelf. Thinking he was indicating the location of the manuscript for The Gales of Thistledown Moor, INTERN strode to the bookshelf and yanked out a blue folder.

A hidden mechanism within the bookshelf began to whine, and the bookshelf rotated slowly to reveal a hidden publishing office on the other side. As more of the hidden office came into view, the old man behind the desk stuffed his pipe with tobacco and lit it with a match. Smoke filled the room.

INTERN stepped through the passageway and the rotating bookshelf ground into place behind her.

Now, she was locked in—but where was the manuscript?

hither and yon!

2010-06-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say that INTERN has been summoned to England very abruptly and will attending to Important Matters in the Mother Country until mid-July. Specifically, INTERN is going to Penzance (yes, as in the Pirates of Penzance...tra-la-la!)

INTERN will try to update a few times from abroad, perhaps to report on The State of Publishing in Great Britain or maybe just to complain about her books getting rained on while waiting for one of those double decker buses.

Long story short, INTERN requires three things from you, knowledgeable readers:

1. Tell INTERN which book she absolutely must read on the plane. INTERN only has about forty-six hours to figure this out, and it is a matter of CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE!

2. Alert INTERN to any amazing bookstores she absolutely must visit in Penzance and/or Saint Ives.

3. Alert INTERN to any mysterious old hermit writers living in Penzance and/or Saint Ives who might be interested in having a cup of tea with INTERN. Pirate writers especially wanted.

Off to pack!!!

discoveries whilst packing

2010-06-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, the lease on Casa de INTERN+Techie Boyfriend/Hippie Roommate/Vampire Roommate is up at the end of this month (there is, in fact, already a craigslist post out there trying to snare the next renter with extravagant promises of vibrant white walls and sometimes-functional power outlets). Hippie Roommate has already decamped for her biotech manfriend's more upscale digs, leaving behind packets of millet flour and organic apple cider vinegar which INTERN is scrambling to use up in the next two weeks. Vampire Roommate's worldly possessions consist of a bare mattress and a giant bong in whose glassy chamber he could almost certainly take up residency if it weren't so wet. INTERN has been vigorously putting things into a Giveaway Pile, and Techie Boyfriend has been removing things from the Giveaway Pile with about 3.7 times as much vigor.

This morning, INTERN was putting together a box of the free books she's collected over the course of her various internships, and out fell a page of scribbled notes from her "orientation meeting" with Executive Ed. INTERN is not much of a note taker:

"Amazon = bad"

and

"No books based on Peace Corps!!!"

The rest of the page was covered with doodles of squids.

In a weird way, those two statements, plus the squids, could be said to sum up the entire editorial policy of Venny McPulitzer.

Anyway, INTERN had better wrap up this post so she can bike down to the used bookstore and offload what feels like Venny McP's entire catalogue in exchange for some sweet, sweet store credit.

INTERN is feeling very happy today! Thank you to all of you for being so charming and delightful!

acquaintances don't let acquaintances be awkward about free books

2010-06-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, INTERN got an e-mail from a reader who had a question about the etiquette of asking recently-published acquaintances for a free copy of their book. This reader has a family friend whose first book has just come out in (oh, snap!) hardcover. "Is it cool," inquired the reader, "to just ask her for a copy? Or would that be awkward?"

Good question. Really good question. Question to which there are many possible answers.

Possible answer #1:

If you were a recently-published author, which of the following would you rather hear from a family friend:

a) "I bought your book at the local independent bookstore and simply devoured it, dah-ling!"

or

b) "Soooooo, where can I get a copy of your book?" (eyes stack of review copies on author-acquaintance's desk meaningfully**).

Not only does answer (a) knock a few dollars off the advance your family friend is trying to earn out, but it reassures her that you are actually interested in the book as a book and don't just want a copy as a novelty because you happen to know her—a novelty that may well go unread.

However, as per INTERN's previous post, new books are freaking expensive. The situation is made more awkward by the fact that many non-writerly/publishy people assume that authors get unlimited free copies of their books, and can therefore dispense them like Pez to anyone who's heard about the book (landlord, distant relatives, former students/teachers, etc). In fact, authors get a limited number of copies (sometimes as few as twenty-ish) and need to give them out (nay, deploy them!) strategically.

So what to do if you really want to read your acquaintance's book but can't afford to buy it?

Ask to borrow a copy. Read it right away, and when you return it, tell your acquaintance about all the fabulous people you recommended it to who are at this very moment blowing up Amazon with orders. Another thing you could do is ask your acquaintance to sell you a copy at cost (most publishers let authors buy cases of their own books at 50% off the cover price). Another thing you could do is say you're broke but very interested in the book and ask for a free copy***. Another thing you could do is wait and see if your acquaintance offers you a free copy of her own accord.

There are many options, and none of them need to include terrible awkwardness.

**A surprising number of people have asked INTERN this question since her book was published, and they always act surprised when she tells them they can find it in, you know, bookstores. Why is this surprising? If INTERN were a barber, would people look at her all skeezy-eyed and ask, "Soooooo, where can I get my beard trimmed?" At the barber shop of course!

***This works best when you are a highschool or college student and your acquaintance is significantly older than you.

hardback mountain

2010-06-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, INTERN read an essay (a rather irate essay, if INTERN recalls correctly) by an author who argued that nobody who doesn't buy new, hardback literary fiction at its full price should be allowed to write literary fiction (or at least, try to get it published). This author set the minimum new hardback purchase quota at something like twelve books per annum. Her reasoning was that authors and publishers of literary fiction rely on hardcover sales to make the whole kerfuffle worth kerfuffling, and that one is simply hypocritical (and a big meanie!) if one wants to see one's name in big letters on a hardcover book but, er, declines to buy them.

INTERN still thinks about this essay from time to time, especially when she's in a bookstore ogling and then regretfully putting down someone's luscious new hardcover. Confession: INTERN has not bought a new, fullprice hardcover since...hmmm....definitely not in the past few years....or the few years before that....well, basically since she was 12 and had a $50 bookstore gift card from Grandma to play with. In fact, even allowing herself to pick up and hold one of those beautiful hardcovers at a bookstore feels like driving through a fancy neighborhood in a beat-up car: it's obvious to everyone that she of the cracked windshield and rusty doors is not really in the market for the mansion with the pineapple-shaped swimming pool.

INTERN supposes that this is where she should enter the fraught discussion of e-books versus print. But what interests INTERN more about this situation is the way that guilt has somehow become a significant feature of INTERN's experience of books, writing, and publishing. INTERN can't stroll into (or rather, out of) a bookstore without feeling guilty, stopped submitting to literary journals she doesn't subscribe to after reading an editorial diatribe against said practice in a literary magazine at the library, and has a very real sense that she's personally contributing to the much-trumpeted Demise of Publishing.

Isn't that weird? People who don't eat at fancy restaurants don't feel like they're responsible for the Demise of Fine Cooking. People who shop for used clothes don't feel like they're responsible for the Demise of Fashion Design. But somehow, not buying those twelve new hardcovers per annum feels tantamount to INTERN personally allowing the poor innocent baby goat of Publishing starve to death.

Is this some weird former-Catholic guilt trip, or do other people feel guilty about books? Is it readers' responsibility to take care of the publishing industry, or should the market just be allowed to do its thang? (INTERN knows precisely zero about economics, but has heard that in some instances, the market is prone to the doing of thangs.) Is it OK to just write and not worry about how many books you've bought, or do writers have a financial responsibility towards other writers?