So you’ve pitched successfully — now what? Part V: presenting your manuscript so its glory shines unfettered

I had to laugh, campers: remember Tuesday’s lengthy post on cover letters for submissions, and, by extension, on the many, many benefits of tailoring one’s communications with agents, editors, and the rest of us that read for a living in such a way that (a) one demonstrates a laudable ability to communicate clearly in writing, (b) one displays an admirable willingness to follow the directions given in the request for pages, and (c) one practices a level of courtesy that indicates not only that one would be a pleasure to work with, but also that one does not expect the manuscript-requester either to have been holding her breath, awaiting your submission, or to drop all of her other work to pay attention to your pages the instant they arrive? You know, the post in which I explained with meticulous care that since so many aspiring writers are inconsiderate in their submissions, it would be very much in your interest to be the one submitter that day that greets Millicent the agency screener with professional politeness? To be, in fact, the one aspiring writer out of a thousand that puts in the effort and thought to render herself easy to help?

Once again, as so often occurs, the universe rushed to provide me with further examples to illustrate a discussion already in progress here at Author! Author! Yesterday, I found myself devoting hours to an author that expected me to abandon any work-related plans I might have had for my afternoon to pay attention to an essay he had written — as a potential guest post here, as it happens — without any prior warning. That in itself is too common to be irritating; it frequently takes writers years to accept that their deadlines are not the only ones with which the pros deal. The fact that he had pulled the same stunt on Monday, while less ordinary, had already confirmed him in my mind as someone that would not be especially easy to help.

Being an easy-going sort of person, however (or at least as easy-going as it is possible to be in a deadline-based business), my first response to his popping up again — and so soon, too — was not to dismiss him as inconsiderate or unprofessional. I intended merely to give him a gentle hint that the next time he wanted my advice, he should plan on asking, nicely, to book my time a week in advance.

That was my plan, anyway, until it became clear that he was outraged about Monday’s editorial feedback. You know, the stuff I’d spent an hour thoughtfully compiling for him on a moment’s notice.

Which, again, is not in itself unusual enough to raise my delicate eyebrows much. What did throw me a little — and make me think of our ongoing series — was that the tirade the author saw fit to e-mail me was clearly his immediate response to my editorial suggestions. That indeed surprised me: by the time most writers make their way into print, they have generally learned that their first responses to revision requests do not always match up with their subsequent thoughts on the subject. An experienced author might still compose that irate e-mail telling the editor that she must be out of her ever-loving mind, but he usually has the presence of mind not to hit SEND.

Why bring this up in the midst of a discussion on submission, you ask, other than to plant the seed in your mind that a prudent writer will wait a few days before taking issue with an agent or editor’s revision request? Two reasons: to illustrate my earlier point that how writers present themselves sometimes discourages the pros from trying to help them — and to remind everyone that the manuscript is not necessarily the only part of the submission that an agent, editor, or Millicent will weigh in deciding whether to represent a writer. The writing is the most important element, of course, but the professionalism of a submission packet and submission behavior that demonstrates both courtesy and a willingness to follow directions will also go a long way toward convincing a pro that yours is the project out of tens of thousands to select.

Perhaps equally important for first-time submitters to know, this is a business in which politeness counts, as do reputations. Although it may appear huge and monolithic to a writer trying to break in, U.S. publishing is actually a relatively small and diverse world. People talk.

Why might a writer want to be concerned about what they say? Well, let me put it this way: I already knew when the soon-to-be irate author approached me with a request to guest-blog that he tended to overreact to editorial feedback. I’d heard stories.

To be fair, such stories abound. One does not have to hang around publishing circles very long to learn that as a group, writers have a reputation for being hypersensitive to feedback, if not downright resistant to it. We also, I’m sorry to report, have gained the image of reacting with equally violent negativity to any suggested revision, be it a request to alter a single paragraph in Chapter 2 or to rework the entire last third of the book.

“What do you mean, I have to add a comma on line 3 of page 147?” the faceless author of professional anecdote rails. “That would utterly destroy my artistic vision! And you want me to stop using adverbs to modify every appearance of the word said? Madness!”

Like most stereotypes, the writer that flies into an insensate rage over the slightest criticism is largely mythical, of course, and his ubiquity is certainly exaggerated. In my experience, most writers serious about their craft do try pretty hard to be open to professional critique. And that can be genuinely challenging, as almost every aspiring writer thinks of her first manuscript, at least, as part of herself.

So when even the best-intentioned agent or editor says something as self-evidently helpful as, “You know, your target audience might respond better to this character if he didn’t swear in every sentence,” it’s not entirely surprising that a writer new to revision might hear not a practical suggestion to excise a few dozen specific words over the course of a manuscript with a hundred thousand of them, but a blanket condemnation of her writing style.

It’s even less astonishing than such a misinterpretation would have been fifty or sixty years ago. Most aspiring writers today are not aware of it, but the submission system used to be set up, at least in part, to inure them to the fact that one of the ways the pros help writers is by offering feedback. How so? Well, in the bad old days, a writer would send a manuscript (often, unwisely, his only copy) to a publishing house, and he would receive a response from some kind editorial assistant. Most often, that missive would be a form letter, thanking the writer for his submission but informing him that it did not meet the publisher’s needs at that time.

If the manuscript demonstrated even the slightest hint of what at the time was called promise, however, that editorial assistant — or even an editor — might well fill that letter with feedback and professional advice. And not only in the instances in which the editor felt the manuscript had sufficient publishing potential that the letter included a request to revise and resubmit: astonishingly often, the pros would take the time to say encouraging words to those only beginning to tread the path to writing professionally.

That meant, if a writer kept at it, she would see a definite progression in submission response. At first, she might receive only generic form letters, but if she worked on her craft and presentation, the next time around, the rejection might take the form of a nice note. After that, she might receive a few general editorial suggestions to improve her work. If she took those seriously, her next effort might spark a letter with detailed feedback, along with a request to resubmit the manuscript after those changes were made. And then, if she was hard-working, talented, and lucky enough to have written something that might appeal to the current market, an editor might well have acquired the book, even if it still needed some polishing.

The writer had, in short, time to get used to the idea that writing professionally meant being expected to make revisions. That wouldn’t necessarily mean that she liked it, of course, or that she would feel that all of the feedback would improve the book, but at least an aspiring writer could use the process in order to become accustomed to professional expectations.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? “I’ll say it does, Anne,” feedback-starved writers everywhere sigh. “That system sounds as though it was not only much more pleasant for aspiring writers — once one became accustomed to receiving professional feedback, that is — but as though it would ultimately result in better books. Why on earth did they give it up?”

Well, not all of them did — there are still quite a few smaller publishing houses that at least try to adhere to this model. But even there, and certainly at the larger houses, the pressure not to give feedback or accept unsolicited submissions has been and continues to be immense: since the sheer number of writers actively seeking publication has risen astronomically since, say, 1952, it would be prohibitively time-consuming to respond to each manuscript individually.

Which is why, in case those of you that were shocked to learn the publishing industry doesn’t still operate like this had been wondering, most of the big houses had made the switch thirty years ago to requiring novelists to approach them through agencies. Before the mid-1970s, it was not at all uncommon for a fiction writer not to land an agent until after she sold her first book.

And it wasn’t always a minor book, either. According to editorial legend, Ordinary People was a direct acquisition, for instance. An editorial assistant discovered it in the slush pile, the immense stack of unsolicited submissions that used to build up to avalanche proportions in every major house.

Going through the slush pile took immense amounts of time, as you might imagine, so you can hardly blame publishers for being relieved when agencies took over initial manuscript-screening duties. And for years, the submission process in the latter echoed what used to happen at the publishing houses, at least in part: an aspiring writer’s progress followed a definite arc.

It was a longer arc, though, because agencies were not eager to generate slush piles; instead of accepting unsolicited submissions, they required prospective clients to query first. And although a great many of those queriers did receive form-letter rejections, it used to be unheard-of for a query not to elicit any response at all. As a writer’s understanding of the querying process improved, she might reasonably expect to begin to receive first encouraging rejections (“Although this is not for me, it’s an intriguing premise — keep trying!”), then requests for pages. Indeed, as recently as five years ago, agents could occasionally be heard opining at conferences that if a writer was receiving only form-letter replies, there must be something wrong with his query.

Seems so long ago, doesn’t it? Now, it’s downright common for agencies not to respond to queries at all if the answer is no.

Before ten or fifteen years ago, though, the submission process followed the earlier publishing house norms even more closely than querying did. Agencies would almost always ask for only the first few pages at first; if an agent requested the entire manuscript, it meant she was really excited about the book. If submitted pages received a form-letter reply, it meant that the agency did not consider the manuscript a serious contender for representation. If the manuscript showed promise, however, the rejection might still contain some form-letter elements (“I’m sorry, but I just didn’t fall in love with this book.”), but it might also contain a few sentences of praise and encouragement.

That way, the writer could learn something from the rejection. He could learn even more if he received what was known as a rave rejection, an apologetic letter explaining what the agent liked about the manuscript, as well as the reasons that she did not believe she could sell it. Although revise and resubmit requests became less common with the advent of the personal computer — which caused an increase in submissions beyond anything the publishing world had ever seen — agents would sometimes test a writer’s talent and flexibility by asking for specific revisions before signing him. More often, though, an agent would take a chance on a book that was nearly polished, reserving the revision requests for after the representation contract was signed.

So, again, while some aspiring writers did strike lucky with a first query or first submission, the norm was an ever-increasing level of feedback and much subsequent revision. Although having to land an agent typically added considerable time to the publication process, the savvy writer could learn a great deal about what it would be like to work with an editor.

Today, however, time constraints and constantly rising query numbers have resulted in both less feedback along the way and an expectation that a writer will already be producing perfectly-polished manuscript pages by the time of first submission. That’s a tall order, but not without justification: any reputable agency will receive too many clean, well-written, professionally-formatted manuscripts to worry much about the promising projects that don’t rise to that standard. A serious writer will pick herself up, dust herself off, and learn how to do better next time, right?

That’s Millicent’s belief, anyway. But since writers now are so seldom told why their submissions were rejected — indeed, it’s become common not to get back to the writer at all if the answer is no, even after a request for the full manuscript, something that stuns most aspiring writers to learn — it’s harder than fifty years ago to learn how to improve one’s submission. It’s harder than it was fifteen years ago. Heck, it’s harder than it was five years ago.

Which is why, as you might have guessed, I started this blog seven years ago — seven years ago next week, in fact, should anyone want to send flowers. And should any of you have thought, “My God, why would Anne put up with that guest blogger’s weird response to her feedback?” that’s also why I periodically ask established authors to share their experiences with you. It’s simply a whole lot harder than it used to be for aspiring writers to gain that experience on their own.

So let’s turn our focus to that most practical of matters, how to pull together a submission packet. And, while you’re at it, using that packet as a subtle means of demonstrating that not only are you a writer serious enough about your work to learn how to present it professionally — rather than, say, expecting an agent or editor to take the time to explain how you might improve your submission next time — but that you also would be a courteous, upbeat client careful about following directions, open to constructive criticism, and generally a joy to help.

Let’s start with the most obvious question: how do you get your manuscript to the agent?

Mailing your submission so it arrives looking good
At the risk of making those of you in love with online querying and submission groan, I should preface the practical by saying that most of what follows is directly applicable to the hard-copy submission of requested materials via mail. It’s also, to head off any misunderstandings at the pass, intended to advise only writers submitting book manuscripts and book proposals; other branches of publishing have different rules.

And please don’t tell me that simply nobody accepts mailed submissions anymore. Even in these mercurial days of e-mailed queries, electronic submission, and Hubble telescope photographs of far-flung celestial bodies (I’m a sucker for a nice snapshot of Jupiter), most agencies still prefer paper submissions. Heck, many still insist on mailed queries as well.

Why? Well, fear of computer viruses, for one thing. Every single e-mailed submission Millicent opens is one more opportunity for something nasty to infest the agency’s computer system. But there’s another reason that both Millie and a submitter might, given the choice, prefer hard-copy submission: it’s so much easier for an electronic submission to get lost.

Why, you ask, your face a frozen mask of horror? Well, when Millicent gets on an online submission reading roll, she hits the DELETE key more than any other, right?. So it’s not too surprising that her finger would slip occasionally. Force of habit, really; the lady rejects a heck of a lot of manuscripts between lunch and checking out for the day.

For reasons both of tradition and prudence, then, a lot of writers are going to be in the market for shipping containers for their manuscripts. Yet as insightful long-time reader Jen wrote in to ask some time back, it’s far from self-evident what kind of container would look professional to Millie:

Sending off all those pages with nothing to protect them but the slim embrace of a USPS envelope seems to leave them too exposed. Where does one purchase a manuscript box?

An excellent question, Jen: many, many aspiring writers worry that a simple Manila envelope, or even the heavier-duty Priority Mail envelope favored by the US Postal Service, will not preserve their precious pages in pristine condition. Especially, as is all too common, if those pages are crammed into an envelope or container too small to hold them comfortably, or that smashes the SASE into them so hard that it leaves an indelible imprint in the paper.

Do I sense some of you scratching your heads? “But Anne,” head-scratchers everywhere ask, and bless their experience-seeking hearts for doing so, “once a submission is tucked into an envelope and mailed, it is completely out of the writer’s control. Surely, the Millicents that inhabit agencies, as well as the Maurys that screen submissions at publishing houses and their Aunt Mehitabels that judge contest entries, are fully aware that pages that arrive bent were probably mangled in transit, not by the writer who sent them. They can’t blame me for mashed mail, can they?”

Well, yes and no, itchy ones. Yes, pretty much everyone who has ever received a mauled letter is cognizant of the fact that envelopes do occasionally get caught in sorting machines, if not actually mauled by playful bands of orangutans with a penchant for playing volleyball with objects with pointy corners. Mail gets tossed around a fair amount in transit. So even a beautifully put-together submission packet may arrive a tad crumpled.

Do most professional readers cut the submitter slack for this? Sometimes, but if Millicent’s just burned her lip on that latt? she never seems to remember to let cool, it’s not going to take much for the next submission she opens to irritate her a little. Especially if the submission she happened to be perusing while reaching for her latt? was a revise-and-resubmit job that apparently did not take her boss’ thoughtful earlier editorial advice.

To coin a phrase, appearances count. You should make an effort to get your submission to its intended recipient in as neat a state as possible. How does one go about insuring that? The most straightforward way, as Jen suggests, is to ship it in a box designed for the purpose. Something, perhaps, along the lines of this:

Just kidding; no need for a medieval Bible box here. What most professional writers like to use looks a little something like this:

This is the modern manuscript box: sturdy white or brown cardboard with a lid that attached along one long side. Usually, a manuscript box will hold from 250 to 750 pages of text comfortably, without allowing the pages to slide from side to side.

While manuscript boxes are indeed very nice, they aren’t necessary for submission; the attached lid, while undoubtedly aesthetically pleasing, is not required, or even much appreciated at the agency end. Manuscripts are taken out of the boxes for perusal, anyway, so why fret about how the boxes that send them open?

In practice, any clean, previously-unused box large enough to hold all of the requested materials without crumpling them will work to mail a submission. Don’t waste your valuable energies badgering the manager of your local office supply emporium for an official manuscript box; you may only confuse him. Anything close to the right size will do, but err on the large side: it’s easier to pad a manuscript around the edges to fit in a big box than to bend it to squeeze into a small one.

My finely-tuned editorial senses are picking up some resistance, are they not? Some of you dislike the notion of using just any old box, rather than one specially constructed for the purpose, I’m guessing I’m not entirely surprised. I hear all the time from writers stressing out about what kind of box to use — over and above clean, sturdy, and appropriately-sized, that is — and not without good reason. In the old days — say, 30+ years ago — the author was expected to provide a box, and a rather nice one, then wrap it in plain brown paper for shipping.

These old boxes are beautiful, if you can still find one: dignified black cardboard, held together by shining brass brads. They were darned near immortal, too; I have several that members of my family routinely sent back and forth to their agents in the 1950s, back when sending a manuscript across the country entailed sending it on a multi-week trek. To this day, not a sheet of paper inside is wrinkled.

Ah, tradition. For sending a manuscript, though, there’s no need to pack it in anything so fancy — or indeed, anything extravagant. No reasonable agent is going to look down upon your submission because it arrives in an inexpensive box.

In fact, if you can get the requested materials there in one piece box-free — say, if it is an excerpt short enough to fit into a Manila folder or Priority Mail cardboard envelope without danger of wrinkling — go ahead. This almost always will work for a partial or the briefer stack of materials acceptable to send in a query packet.

Do bear in mind, though, that for either a query or submission packet, you want to have your pages arrive looking fresh and unbent. Double-check that your manuscript will fit comfortably in its container in such a way that the pages are unlikely to wrinkle, crease, or — perish the thought! — tear.

The chances of avoiding those dreadful fates are substantially higher if you print all of your submission packet materials on bright white 20 lb. paper or better. I favor 24-lb., myself. Yes, it costs a few dollars more, but it honestly is penny-wise and pound-foolish to use cheap paper for submissions. Not only does heavier paper ship better, but it’s less likely to wilt over the course of the multiple readings a successful submission will often see at an agency.

It’s also, let’s face it, more attractive. As we saw last time, if you can look at a stack of printed pages and see even a vague outline of page 2 while you’re examining page 1, your paper isn’t heavy enough.

Look for a box with the right footprint to ship a manuscript without too much internal shifting. To keep the manuscript from sliding around and getting crumpled, insert wads of bubble wrap or handfuls of peanuts around it, not wadded-up paper. Yes, the latter is more environmentally-friendly, but we’re talking about presentation here. Avoid the temptation to use newspaper, too; newsprint stains.

While I’m on the subject of large boxes, if you’ve been asked to send more than one copy of a manuscript — not all that uncommon after you’ve been picked up by an agent — don’t even try to find a box that opens like a book: just use a standard shipping box. Insert a piece of colored paper between each copy, to render the copies easy to separate. Just make sure to use colored printer paper, not construction paper, or the color will rub off on your lovely manuscripts.

I don’t have time to box-shop. I’m right on top of a submission deadline, possibly one that is self-imposed!
Fair enough. If you’re pressed for time, your local post office is probably your best bet for one-stop shopping will probably stock manuscript-sized boxes, as does USPS online. Post offices often conceal some surprisingly inexpensive options behind those counters, so it is worth inquiring if you don’t see what you need on display.

Do be warned, though, that the USPS’ 8 ?” x 11″ boxes only LOOK as though they will fit a manuscript comfortably without bunching the pages. The actual footprint of the bottom of the box is the size of a piece of paper, so there is no wiggle room to insert a stack of paper without wrinkling it.

Trust me, that’s not something you want to find out after you’ve already printed out your submission — or when you are right on top of a deadline. If you’re in doubt about the internal size of a flattened-out box (as they tend to be at the post office), fold it into box shape and try placing a standard sheet of paper flat on the bottom. If it doesn’t lie completely flat, choose a larger box.

Yes, yes, I know: the USPS is purportedly the best postal service in the world, a boon to humanity, and one of the least expensive to boot. Their gallant carriers have been known to pursue their appointed rounds despite the proverbial sleet, hail, dark of night, and mean dogs. They have also been, as an institution, saddled with some of the nation’s most difficult budgeting requirements, so we may well be seeing postal services reduced. I, for one, find that deplorable.

But when faced with an only apparently manuscript-ready box on a last-minute deadline, the thought must occur to even the most sympathetic postal patron: what do they expect anyone to put in an 8 1/2” x 11” box other than a manuscript? A beach ball? A pony? A small automobile? Why not just design the box to hold a ream of paper?

I’m trying to submit on a budget. Is there any chance that I might pick up something appropriate for free?
Actually, yes, but it does mean opting for slightly more expensive postage. It’s usually worth it, though: far and away the most economical box source for US-based writers are those free all-you-can-stuff-in-it Priority Mail boxes that the post office provides:

Quite the sexy photo, isn’t it? Downright ravishing, considering that it’s of an object made of cardboard? . If you don’t happen to mind all of the postal service propaganda printed all over it, these 12″ x 12″ x 5 1/2″ boxes work beautifully, with a little padding. (Stay away from those wadded-up newspapers, I tell you.)

Whatever difficulties you may have finding an appropriately-sized box, do not, under any circumstances, reuse a box clearly marked for some other purpose, such as holding dishwashing soap. As desirable as it might be for your pocketbook, your schedule, and the planet, never send your manuscript in a box that has already been used for another purpose. Millicent considers it tacky.

Don’t pretend you’ve never thought about doing this. We’ve all received (or sent) that box that began life as an mail-order shipping container, but is now covered with thick black marker, crossing out the original emporium’s name. My mother takes this process even farther, turning the lines intended to obfuscating that Amazon logo into little drawings of small creatures cavorting on a cardboard-and-ink landscape.

As dandy as this recycling effort is for birthday presents and the like, it’s not appropriate for shipping a submission. It’s unprofessional — and if there’s ever a time when you want your work to be presented as professionally as possible, it’s when you’re submitting it.

Think about it: do you really want your manuscript to prompt an allergy-prone Millicent to mutter between sneezes, “Why does this submission smell of fabric softener?” (One drawback of nicer paper: it soaks up ambient smells like a sponge. My memoir’s editor evidently smoked a couple of cartons over my manuscript, and even now, years later, the marked-up pages still smell like the employee handbook in a Marlboro factory. I knew better than to hit SEND on my reaction to that until weeks after my asthma attack had subsided. And even then, I edited out any references to coughing.)

“But wait!” I hear the box-savvy cry, “Those Amazon boxes are about 4 inches high, and my manuscript is about 3 inches high. It just cries out, ‘Stuff your manuscript into me and send me to an agent!’”?

A word to the wise: don’t take advice from cardboard boxes; they are not noted for their brilliance. Spring for something new, and recycle that nice Amazon box for another purpose.

How can I keep my manuscript from being mistaken for an unsolicited submission?
Every time you send requested materials, without fail, you should write REQUESTED MATERIALS in great big letters in the lower left-hand corner of the submission envelope. If you have been asked to submit electronically, include the words REQUESTED MATERIALS in the subject line of the e-mail. This will help your submission to land on the right desk, instead of in the slush pile or recycling bin.

Why might an agency receive unsolicited materials to confuse with yours? The submission guidelines on their websites, usually, as well as confusion amongst writers that believe publishing still works as it did fifty years ago. To be absolutely clear, what agencies list on their websites’ general submission guidelines does not constitute a request for those materials; that’s just stuff they want to have handy while they’re considering a query. So a Millicent working in such an agency might routinely process first chapters, opening pages, or a synopsis with a query — all of these would, in the industry’s eyes, be unsolicited submissions.

The logic runs thus: guidelines that recommend submitting extra material with a query are generic, aimed at any aspiring writer who might conceivably be considering sending a query. By contrast, a solicited submission, a.k.a. requested materials, is one that an agent is waiting to see because she has asked a particular writer to send it following a successful pitch or query. Because the agent expressed positive interest in seeing those pages, the lucky requestee is fully justified in scrawling REQUESTED MATERIALS in letters two inches high in the lower right-hand corner of the envelope or shipping box, just to the left of the address, to assure that the submission lands on the right desk instead of the slush pile made up of, you guessed it, unsolicited manuscripts.

Everyone clear on the difference between solicited and unsolicited materials? Dandy.

Yes, readers who have been wishing I would drop all of this talk of cardboard and focus upon your concerns? “This is all very helpful, Anne, but a bit superficial, literally. I want to know what goes inside that manuscript box and in what order.”

Okay, let’s pretend for a moment that you have just been asked to submit materials to the agent of your dreams.

What goes in the box?
The first thing you should do is take a very close look at both the missive in which the agent expressed the request and the agency’s guidelines. Why? Well, just as generic requests vary in what agents ask queriers to send, so do requests for solicited material. While every agency and small publishing house seems to have a slightly different idea of what constitutes a standard submission packet.

Remember, part of what you want to demonstrate here is your professionalism and courtesy. You’re also being given an opportunity to show you can follow directions. So send precisely what the agent has asked you to send, no more, no less.

What might you be asked to send, you ask? Good question. Here are the most commonly-requested constituent parts, in the order in which they are generally expected to appear in the box:

1. Cover letter
We covered this one last time, right? Any questions?

2. Title page
Always include a title page, if any manuscript pages have been requested — yes, even if you have already sent the first 50 pages, and are now sending the rest of the book.

Why? Long-time readers, chant it with me now: because the submission looks more professional that way.

Also, like the cover letter, a properly-constructed title page renders it easy for an agent to track you down. Believe me, if the agent of your dreams falls in love with your manuscript, you’re going to want to hear about it right away. As luck would have it, we discussed how to construct a proper title page earlier in this series.

3. The requested pages in standard format, unbound in any way.
The operative word here is requested. If an agent or editor asked you for a partial, send PRECISELY the requested number of pages. Don’t fudge here — even if your novel features a tremendous cliffhanger on p. 51, if the agent of your dreams asked for the first 50 pages, send only the first 50 pages, period.

Actually, in this instance, you should send only the first 50 pages even if they do not end in a period. Even if the designated last page ends mid-sentence, stop there. When an agent or editor asks for a specific number of pages, send that number of pages — no more, no less.

They mean pages in standard manuscript format, by the way. It’s impossible to over-estimate the desirability of sending professionally-formatted submissions. If you’re brand-new to reading this blog or have somehow avoided my repeated and vehement posts on standard format for manuscripts over the last seven years, you’re in luck: earlier in this series, I provided a quick reference guide to proper formatting, for your double-checking convenience.

4. A synopsis, if one was requested, clearly labeled AS a synopsis.
With fiction, when an outline is requested, they usually mean a synopsis, not the annotated table of contents appropriate for nonfiction. For nonfiction, an outline means an annotated table of contents. Most of the time, though, what an agent will ask to see for either is a synopsis.

5. Author bio, if one was requested.
An author bio is a one-page (double-spaced) or half-page (single-spaced) plus photo account of the submitting writer’s professional credentials. Typically, when an agent submits a manuscript or book proposal to editors, the author bio is tucked immediately at the end of the manuscript or sample chapter.

6. A SASE big enough to fit the entire manuscript.
For those of you new to the SASE, it’s an acronym for self-addressed, stamped envelope. For a submission, the SASE should be large enough to send back every scrap of paper you’re mailing to the agency.

Emphasis on the stamped part: always use stamps, not metered postage, for the SASE. That’s probably going to be a lot of stamps: due to the paper-consumptive rigors of standard format, one rarely, if ever, meets a full-length manuscript that weighs less than two pounds.

That means some luckless intern is going to have to tote it to the post office personally. Don’t make her life more difficult by sticking metered postage on the package.

If the requested pages fit in a Manila or Priority Mail envelope, it’s perfectly acceptable to fold a second one in half, stamp and address it, and tuck it in the submission package. But how does one handle this when using a box as a SASE?

Well, it would be impracticable to fold up another box inside. If you have been asked to send so many pages that you need to pack ‘em in a box, paper-clip a return mailing label and stamps to your cover letter, along with a polite request that the agent would affix both to the shipping box in the event of rejection. To be on the safe side, explain in your cover letter how you want them to reuse the box: peel the back off the mailing label, stick it over the old label, affix new postage, and seal.

You can also nab one of those tough little everything-you-can-cram-in-here-is-one-price Priority Mail envelopes, self-address it, add postage, and stick it into the box. If you don’t care if your manuscript comes back to you a little bent, this is a wonderfully cash-conscious way to go. Those envelopes are surprisingly tough, in my experience — what are they made out of, kryptonite? — and while the pages don’t look too pretty after a cross-country trip in them, they do tend to arrive safely.

And think about it: if you’re getting the manuscript back, it’s because Millicent’s rejected it. Who cares if the pages show up on your doorstep bent?

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not a big fan of writers over-investing in impressive return postage — or of aspiring writers shelling out the dosh to overnight their submissions. Neither is necessary, and quick shipping most emphatically won’t get your work read faster.

Or taken more seriously. Don’t waste your money.

7. Optional extras.
For a partial, if you want to send a second, business-size envelope SASE as well, to make it easy for Millicent to request the rest of the manuscript, place it at the bottom of the packet (and mention it in your cover letter.)

If you don’t want to spring for delivery confirmation, include a self-addressed, stamped postcard for the agency to mail to you to acknowledge receipt of the manuscript. They don’t always send it back, but usually, they do. To generate a chuckle in a hard-worked Millicent, I always liked to send a SASP that looked like this — although with a stamp attached, of course:

Don’t worry about this causing extra effort; it doesn’t, and you will have proof that they received it. This is important, because manuscripts do go astray from time to time. You can also have the post office track the box for a low fee.

8. Pack it all in a durable container that will keep your submission from getting damaged en route.
Again, any questions?

And that, my friends, is the low-down on the submission packet. Don’t forget that every syllable you send to an agency is a writing sample: this is a time to use impeccable grammar, punctuation, and printing, please. No smudges or bent corners, either. Make it all pretty and hope for the best.

And don’t forget to keep sending out queries — and, if requested, other submissions — while you’re waiting to hear back. If there’s one thing that veteran submitters have learned from experience over the past five years, it’s that they don’t always hear back. Yes, even on a full manuscript. Keep moving forward.

Above all, comport yourself at every point throughout like a professional writer ready and willing to be helped to publication. Try to think of the submission stage as on-the-job training in how to keep your cool and deliver the goods.

Yes, it can be a very frustrating process, but believe me, the more successful you are, the more often you will be asked to revise your work, do promotion, and engage in other activities that, given their druthers, most writers would choose not to do. It’s going to be tempting at some point along your learning curve to beard the heavens with your bootless cries over the abject unreasonableness of anyone but the artist having a say over how to manifest her artistic vision.

But remember, writing is not just for the writer — it’s primarily for the reader. Is it really so unreasonable to believe that agents and editors with years of experience shepherding books from the writer’s desk to a particular target audience might conceivably be able to give you some good advice?

And if you doubt that — and I sense that some of you do — please, for my sake, consider two more things. First, do you recall that irate author I talked about at the beginning of the post, the one that glanced at my feedback, raced to his computer, and shot off an e-mail in the first throes of injured ego? He thought I was telling him to do the precise opposite of what I actually advised.

I suspect that he realized that as soon as he calmed down; he’s a reasonable guy. I also suspect that even as I write this, he is bitterly regretting that he hit SEND.

More importantly from a professional point of view, he wasted what must have been an hour of his time venting at me because he just hadn’t read very carefully. And caused me to waste a couple of hours of my time soothing him to the point where he could hear what I was actually saying. How much easier and less stressful it all would have been had he not acted on his initial impulse — and how much more likely, frankly, I would have been to help him out when his next book comes out.

Writers usually learn this from unpleasant experience, but I like to help speed up that learning curve. Which is why I would also like you to consider this: reactions like our friend’s are the reason that writers as a group have gained a reputation for over-sensitivity to feedback. Agents and editors do have a pretty good reason to choose writers, as well as manuscripts, with care.

Be a delight, if you possibly can — or at least save your most vehement responses for the moments when it counts most. Remember, it takes only a few isolated tantrum-throwers to give the whole lot of us a bad reputation. Keep up the good work!

A memoir needs a story arc as much as a novel does? Is this an April Fool’s joke?

Of all the many, many mysteries that keep those of us who handle manuscripts for a living up at night, none is so recalcitrant — and, even more trying to the editorial mind, positively immune to diagnostic analysis — than why it so often seems to come as a complete surprise to memoirists to be asked, “What’s your book about?” From a publishing perspective, few questions could be more straightforward, or more predictable: presumably, something occurred in the memoirist’s life that he thought would make a good story on paper, right?

To your garden-variety memoirist, however, answering this inherently loaded question is complicated. Or so publishing professionals surmise, from the long pause that typically ensues. Often preceded by a gusty sigh and succeeded by a sudden avalanche of seemingly unrelated personal anecdotes.

That’s the standard response, by the way, regardless of the context in which a memoirist is asked what her book is about. Be it at a writers’ conference, in a social interaction at the bar that’s never more than a hundred yards from any writers’ conference in North America, at a party mostly peopled by non-writers (oh, we do manage to mingle occasionally), or even in a pitch meeting, people writing about their own lives tend to change the subject. Rather quickly, too.

If you’ll forgive my saying so, memoirists, that’s a pretty remarkable reaction, at least to those of us prone to hanging out with writers. Published and as-yet-to-be published writers are notoriously fond of talking about their work, sometimes to the exclusion of actually working on new projects. Heck, there’s even an old joke about it:

Aspiring writer at cocktail party: I hear you’re an agent. I’ve written a book…

Agent (instantly scoping the exits): I’d love to hear about it, but I’m afraid I have only an hour left to live.

Hey, I didn’t say it was a good joke, but it is reflective of the way the rest of the world views writers. A writer’s will to communicate tends to be pretty strong, after all; even a shy writer will often burst into chattiness when given the slightest encouragement to talk about his work-in-progress. So it just doesn’t make sense to the rest of the human population when someone writing about what should be the most absorbing topic of all, dear self, doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

Indeed, from the intensity of that sigh that’s always blowing those of us kind enough to inquire over sideways, the mere mention of it seems to be quite painful. As a memoirist myself, someone who recently wrote an explanatory introduction for somebody else’s memoir, a lifetime interview subject for biographies about the famous and semi-famous (I’d tell you about it, but that would involve blurting out my life story; oh, the pain), and a frequent editor of memoir, I think I can tell you why.

What we have hear, my friends, is a failure to communicate. What a memoir-writer hears is not the question, “So what is your book about, anyway?” but something closer to, “Sum up your life in fifty words or less. Kindly include a brief summary of the meaning of life in general while you are at it. Please bear in mind that how you will be remembered after your death rides on this answer. Ready — go!”

Just so you know, writers of the real: that’s not what’s being asked here. The Inquisition is not breaking out the thumbscrews, demanding a confession. Not at a cocktail party, not at a writers’ conference, and certainly not when anyone that might conceivably be able to help you get your memoir published brings it up.

So what are these fine folks asking? Precisely what they would ask any other writer. What they are hoping to hear is a short, cogent summary of your book’s story arc.

Imagine their surprise, then, when the memoirist abruptly clams up. Or starts muttering into her drink a shaggy dog tale about the summer of 1982 — a particularly effective evasive technique, as 1982 was for so many of us a year best forgotten altogether.

And those are the courteous responses. Sometimes, the well-meaning questioner will merely elicit a begrudging snort of, “Well, obviously, it’s about me.”

Of course, any prospective author is perfectly at liberty to shorten her list of friends to contact when her book comes out — oh, you thought the recipient of such a dismissive answer was going to break down the doors of his local indie bookseller to buy that memoir? — but you’d be astonished at how frequently agents and editors hear this type of comeback. Without, apparently, anticipating that the response to it will not be particularly gratified, “Well, thanks for filling me in, Noah Webster. Twenty years in publishing, and I had yet to learn the definition of memoir.”

Okay, so most publishing types’ mothers taught them not to be this rude to relative strangers. To the pros, though, any of these replies is perplexing, at best, and at worst, a sign of a complete misunderstanding of how and why anyone not already personally connected with an author might become interested in a memoir.

They have a point, practically speaking. To those who have never tackled the difficult and emotionally-draining task of writing their own stories, it’s well-neigh incomprehensible that anyone hoping to sell a manuscript or proposal could not instantly answer what is, after all, a question any agent representing the book, any editor acquiring the book, any publicist pushing the book, and any reader remotely likely to pick up the book would need to know right off the bat. Surely, having a story to tell is a prerequisite to telling it.

So how could one hope to market a book without knowing what it was about? Heck, how could one hope to write a book without having a clear idea of its story arc?

Actually, those questions puzzle most fiction writers, too, as well as the people that love them. Oh, novelists are not immune to that lengthy hesitation — combined, nine times out of ten, with a gusty sigh — in response to the more general, “So what do you write?” Yet fiction-writers usually manage to follow up with an account that bears at least some embryonic resemblance to the plots of their books.

Astonishingly often, though, memoirists do not — and sometimes seemingly cannot, even if they have already successfully proposed their books. Take Diane, for instance, a courageous memoirist who has recently sold a searing tale of self-revelation to a major publisher; she said that I could share her experience here on condition of changing her name, age, sex, height, weight, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, profession, familial background, and any other identifier that might conceivably render her recognizable to anyone she has ever known. Particularly her book’s acquiring editor.

A truly gifted anecdotalist, Diane has lead a remarkable life (about which I can, of course, tell you nothing); a skilled writer with substantial journalism experience (oops), she is likely to tell it well. Being familiar with how the publishing industry works, she had little trouble pulling together a book proposal, tossing off the requisite marketing materials in three weeks and polishing off a gem of a sample chapter in six. Her agent, Tyrone, fell in love with what was for Diane a new type of writing and was able to sell the book to an eager editor within a remarkably short time to Grace, a very talented editor with a great track record of handling personal memoir with aplomb.

The publication contract specified a not unusually short time in which to complete the manuscript: six months.

Well might you choke, memoirists. At that point, Diane had written only the sample chapter and the first three paragraphs of Chapter 2.

As is all too easy for those new to the game to forget, a book proposal is a job application: the writer makes the case that she is the best person currently occupying the earth’s crust to write a particular book, right? Implicit in that case, however, is the expectation that she will be able to produce that book by a deadline.

None of this was news to Diane, of course, at least not at an intellectual level. She knew that she was a fairly typical position for a first-time memoirist: she would need to write the book she had proposed on a not-unreasonable deadline — or what would have been a reasonable deadline, were advances still large enough to take time off work to complete a writing project. Not necessarily the easiest task in the world, certainly, given that it had taken her six weeks of nights and weekends to compose that nice sample chapter; at the rate she had been writing so far, it would only take another two years to write the book as she had conceived it.

But she did not have two years; she had six months. And Grace had, as acquiring editors of nonfiction so often do, asked for a few changes to the book’s proposed running order. As well as some minor tweaks to the voice.

Does the monumental gasp that just shook a nearby forest indicate that some of you memoirists were not aware that could happen? If so, you’re not alone: since writers so often work in isolation, it’s not at all uncommon for a first-time book proposer to forget (or not to know in the first place) that since the proposal is a job application for the position of writing the book, the publisher hiring the writer generally has the contractual right to ask for changes in that book. And that can be awfully difficult for personal memoirists, who have often spent years working up the nerve to write their life stories in the first place, much less to someone else’s specifications.

Fortunately, Tyrone had experience working with first-time memoirists; he had the foresight to warn Diane before he started circulating the book proposal that the book she had in mind might not be what precisely the acquiring editor would like to see in the published version. So when Diane received the news that Grace felt that the storyline was getting a little lost in the welter of chapters proposed in the Annotated Table of Contents.

“Just stick to the book’s major story arc,” she said, “and we’ll be fine. If this book sells well, we can always work the other material into your next.”

Stop that sighing, memoirists. The furniture in my studio is only battened down to the level appropriate for earthquakes, not hurricanes.

Still, Diane had worked on short deadlines before, and this one was not all that short. Besides, Grace clearly knew what she was talking about; she had spotted a legitimate flaw in the Annotated Table of Contents. Diane hadn’t really thought much about the structure of the book, beyond simply presenting what had happened to her in chronological order. Streamlining her story a little should not be all that hard, right?

Her opinion on the subject shifted slightly over the next three months: writing a personal memoir is notoriously prone to stirring up long-dead emotions. The brain does not seem to make a very great distinction between reliving an event vividly enough to write about it well and living through a current event. Understandably, Diane felt as though she had been going through intensive therapy in her spare time, on a deadline, while holding a full-time job.

Now, Diane saw her previously-manageable task as a gargantuan one. Presuming that she had the stamina to finish drafting the book by her ever-nearing deadline, something she was beginning to doubt was humanly possible, would she be writing it as she wished, or would she simply end up throwing words onto paper? Under those unreasonable circumstances, how could she possibly maintain sufficient perspective on that terrible period of her life to come up with a satisfying dramatic arc? She felt she would be lucky just to get the whole story into a Word file on time.

So she did what most first-time memoirists do: she just wrote the story of that period of her life in chronological order. She wasn’t altogether happy with the manuscript, but she did get it to Grace before the deadline.

Hard to blame her for embracing that tactic, isn’t it? Most of us don’t think of our own lives as having a story arc. We live; things happen; if we’re self-aware, we might occasionally learn something from the process. And when we talk about our lives out loud, that’s not much of a storytelling barrier: verbal anecdotes don’t require much specific detail, character development, or ongoing plot.

Nor does sentence structure typically make or break an anecdote. Summary statements can work just fine. Indeed, it’s not unheard-of for every sentence of a perfectly marvelous anecdote to begin with the phrase I was…

Unfortunately, as Grace pointed out to Diane after the first draft had winged its merry way to the publishing house, that particular type of storytelling, while fine in the right context, just doesn’t fly on the printed page. Memoir readers expect fully fleshed-out scenes, complete with dialogue; too many summary statements back-to-back can start to seem, well, vague. Could the text be more specific?

Then, too, just referring to a major character as my brother was going to get awfully tedious awfully fast for a reader; Diane was going to have to do some character development for the guy. Like, for instance, letting the reader know what he looked like and why, if he lived in Bolivia, he seemed to be dropping by her apartment in Chicago on every ten pages.

Oh, and while Diane was at it, could she be a trifle more choosy about what was and was not important enough to the central story arc to keep on the page? “I raised this concern about the proposal,” Grace pointed out, and rightly. “I know it’s hard to think about yourself as a protagonist in a book, but you have to remember that is how the reader is going to think of you. While a side story might seem vital to how you, a member of your family, or one of your friends would recall this part of your life, you’re not writing the story for people who already know it.”

While this was, from a professional perspective, pretty terrific advice — after all, the art of memoir consists as much in deciding what to leave out as in what to include — Diane felt overwhelmed by it, as well as by her two-month revision deadline. Completely understandable, right? Here she was, frantically rewriting some of her favorite passages and slashing others (oh, her mother would be furious to see her favorite scene in Chapter 5 go!), and now that Grace had forced her to contemplate it, she had to admit that she still had no clear notion of what the overall message of that period of her life was. Why wasn’t it enough to present what actually happened, directly and honestly?

Come to think of it, wasn’t it just a touch dishonest to cut out things that had actually happened? Didn’t she owe it to the reader to give a complete picture, even if that meant boring Grace a little? Wasn’t it compromising her vision as an author to mold her work to the specifications of an editor who was…oh, my God, was Grace asking her to change the story of her life?

Naturally, she wasn’t asking any such thing, as I told Diane when she called me in a panic. Grace, like all conscientious editors, was merely being the reader’s advocate: prodding the writer to make the reading experience as entertaining and absorbing as possible on the printed page.

Need you sigh with such force, memoirists? You just blew my cat across the room. “But Anne,” some of you protest, “doesn’t Diane have a pretty good point here? She had envisioned her story a particular way, crammed with everyday detail. That kind of slice-of-life writing can be very effective: I like a memoir that makes me feel that I’m inhabiting the narrator’s world. So isn’t she right to fight tooth and nail for her earlier draft?”

Ah, that’s often a writer’s first response to professional feedback: to regard it as inherently hostile to one’s vision of the book, rather than as practical advice about how to present that vision most effectively. But that’s usually not what’s going on — and it certainly wasn’t in this case. Grace was genuinely trying to make the book a better read.

And, frankly, she was right about limiting the proportion of the book devoted to depicting Diane’s everyday life vs. the extraordinary events that interrupted it. Grace believed, and with good reason, that as a non-celebrity memoir, the audience for this book would be drawn far more to the dramatic, unique parts of the story than to the parts that dealt with ordinary life. Let’s face it, just as everyday dialogue would be positively stultifying transcribed to the novel page , quite a lot of what occurs in even the most exciting life would not make for very thrilling reading.

Oh, you thought that “Some weather we’re having.” “Yeah. Hot enough for you?” “Sure could use some rain.” was going to win you the Pulitzer? Grace was quite right in maintaining that the art of memoir very largely lies in selecting what to leave out — and that Diane’s very gripping first-person narrative was getting watered down by too many scenes about…

Wait, what were they about? It was hard for the reader to tell; they seemed to be on the page simply because they had happened.

I know, I know: that’s not an entirely unreasonable selection criterion for, say, a blog. As the Internet has demonstrated time and again, people like to get a peek into other people’s lives. That does not mean, however, there’s a huge book-reading audience out there potentially fascinated with what any given writer had for breakfast, his interactions with his cat, and how he sweeps dried mud from his shoes.

Sort of seems like sacrilege to say it, given how the media tends to celebrate the Twitterverse these days, doesn’t it? Yes, there are plenty of venues where it is perfectly acceptable — nay, encouraged — to share even the smallest details of one’s personal life, but by and large, strangers do not pay to find out what Writer X had for lunch today.

Oh, sure, your Facebook friends might like to hear about it, but it’s hard to imagine plowing through 400 pages of printed-out status updates, isn’t it? I hope it has not escaped your notice, memoirists, that by and large, the people vitally interested in those day-to-day specifics are not total strangers, but those who already know you personally.

In case I’m being too subtle here: the no doubt well-deserved loving attention of your kith and kin to the contrary, writing down everything that happens to you seldom works in a book. Real life is too random, and, frankly, it’s lousy at plot development.

Indeed, reality is not always even particularly believable, at least on the page. As Mark Twain liked to say — wow, I’ve been quoting hi a lot lately, have I not? — truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Sorry to break that to those of you who had been following those gusty sighs with, “Well, this really happened to me.” Of course it did. You’re writing a memoir. The mere fact that you lived it doesn’t excuse you from making it one heck of a great read, does it?

Or, to put it another way, the simple fact that something really happened does not render it inherently interesting for a reader; that’s the writer’s job. Agents and editors like to say that it all depends on the writing, but for a memoir, I would add that it also depends upon understanding what is and is not essential to the story you’re telling.

The reader does not need to know what every cobblestone on the street looked like in order to be thrilled by the scene when bloodhounds chased you from one end of that street to the other. (Oh, did I bury the lead there? That’s also a pretty common problem in memoir manuscripts: the most important element is hidden in the middle of a paragraph ostensibly about something else. Rather like this piece of advice: annoying for a skimmer, isn’t it?) To entice a reader to keep following a protagonist, real or not, through hundreds of pages, a narrative needs to convey a sense of forward motion based upon dramatic development, not just the progression of time.

“But Anne!” social media enthusiasts shout, and who could blame you? “Celebrities tweet about mundane personal details all the time, and I’ve heard that publicists tell the famous point-blank that posting about real-like activities (especially with pictures!) is one of the best ways to build up a social media following. People like to feel they are in the know — and while we could quibble about whether anything said to People magazine could be construed as private, there’s certainly a demonstrable market for it. So while I agree that quite a lot of it is stultifying, both on the screen and on the printed page, you can’t deny that celebrity memoir often does get down to the what-I-ate-for-breakfast level. And those books sell.”

Good point, enthusiasts, but from a publishing point of view, celebrity memoirs that dwell upon the ordinary sell despite containing ho-hum specifics, not because of them. What causes a reader to pick up the book is already being familiar with the author, at least by reputation. The ability to draw that type of instant recognition is integral to a celebrity author’s platform.

I hear some of you grumbling about how celebrity-chasing limits the number of publishing slots available for non-celebrity memoir, but honestly, public attraction to the private lives of celebrities is hardly a recent development. Cartoons of Marie Antoinette’s alleged palace escapades were hot sellers in the years leading up to the first French Revolution. A satire of Julius Caesar’s relationship with a prince he’d bested in battle enjoyed wide circulation. Cleopatra’s P.R. people worked overtime not to get the word out that, unlike her dim-witted brother, she spoke so many languages that she could conduct treaty discussions with foreign dignitaries herself, but to convince regular folk to regard her as the incarnation of Aphrodite. Just ask the hundreds of spectators who showed up to watch her have dinner on a boat with the earthly embodiment of the war god, Marc Antony.

I venture to say, however, that just because the world is evidently stuffed with people willing to read half a page about a celebrity’s breakfast-eating habits because they hope that the following page will talk about something more glamorous, it does not render that half a page inherently exciting. Unless the celebrity in question happens to wake up one day and decides to consume something genuinely remarkable — like, say, an elephant or the cornerstone to the Chrysler Building — it’s just ordinary stuff.

I say this, incidentally, as someone who regularly gets accosted by biographers trying to find out what certain literary luminaries preferred in a breakfast cereal. Which just goes to show you: the more famous a writer becomes, the more likely he is to be judged by something other than his writing.

There are, of course, quite a few genuinely interesting and well-written celebrity memoirs and biographies; I don’t mean to cast aspersions on those book categories. I’m merely suggesting that it might be quite a bit easier for someone who already has a national platform to get an ordinary breakfast table scene published than it would be for anyone else.

Like, say, Diane. I think that Grace was doing her a favor, actually: most memoir readers would be more critical than she of a memoir that got bogged down in mundanties. When is it better for a writer to hear a hard truth like that, do you think — early enough in the publication process that she can do something about it, or after the book comes out, in the online reviews?

Speaking as a person who would rather identify and nip problems in the bud, rather than the more popular tactics of ignoring them or waiting until they have grown into trees to chop them down, I must admit that I’m a big fan of the former. Yes, it’s nice to hear nothing but praise of one’s writing, but to improve it, trenchant critique is your friend.

Which, I am happy to report, Diane did quickly come to realize. Grace’s revision requests were not unreasonable; they were aimed at making the story they both loved more marketable. Together, they managed to come up with a final version that this reader, at least, found pretty compelling. Streamlined to within an inch of its life.

What may we conclude from Diane’s story? Perhaps nothing; like so many real-life sagas, it may well be just a series of events from which a bystander can learn little. It’s also possible, I suppose, that this tale was just my heavy-handed, editorial-minded way of saying hey, writers, you might want to consider the possibility that your editor is right. It has been known to happen, you know, and far more frequently than revision-wary aspiring writers tend to presume before their work has had the benefit of professional feedback.

No doubt due to my aforementioned fondness for tackling writing problems as soon as they pop their green shoots above ground, I believe that Diane’s problem evolved from that lengthy pause and gusty sigh after being asked, “So what is your book about?” Like the overwhelming majority of first-time memoirists, she simply hadn’t thought about it much — not, that is, until writing on a deadline and to a publishing house’s expectations forced her to contemplate the issue.

So in the interest of saving you chagrin down the line, I ask you, memoirists: what is your book about? What is its essential story arc? And how can you sift through the myriad events of your fascinating life to present it to the reader as fascinating?

Why, yes, those are some mighty big questions, now that you mention it. Would I really be doing your book a favor if I asked easier ones?

To forearm you for the moment that most good memoirists face, the instant when you honestly cannot tell whether a particular detail, scene, or relationship adds to or distracts from your story arc, let me leave you with my favorite memoir-related image. It requires some set-up: while autobiographies consist of what the author can remember (or, as is common for presidential memoir, what ended up in a journal) of a particular period of time, memoir frequently concentrates upon a single life-changing event or decision — and the effects of that occurrence upon one’s subsequent life and world.

Imagine that event or decision as a stone you have thrown into the pond of your life. Show the reader that stone’s trajectory; describe it and the flinging process in as much loving detail as you like. Make the reader feel as though she had thrown it herself. Then, and only then, will you be in a position to figure out which of the ripples on the pond resulted from shying that rock, and which were caused by the wind.

Keep up the good work!

Pet peeves on parade, part XXII: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to Millicent.

Ooh, we have a burgeoning buffet of professional readers’ pet peeves on the Author! Author! sideboard today, campers. Let’s begin with a personal least-favorite of mine that I hope and pray will shortly be a least-favorite of yours.

In anticipation of that happy day, may I ask a favor of all of you involving the eradication of an unfortunately ubiquitous query letter pet peeve? Would those of you who have been sending out queries containing the phrase complete at X words kindly erase them?

Right now, if it’s not too much trouble. I’ve just seen my 500th query this year to include the phrase, and while I pride myself on being a tolerant, writer-friendly professional reader, I’m sick of it. It’s clumsily phrased, unoriginal, and it’s not as though it will do a query any good.

Yes, you read that correctly: this phrase can only harm a query packet’s chances of success. Stop it, please, before it kills again.

Is that giant collective gasp an indication that this phrase is lifted from some soi-disant foolproof online boilerplate? As those of you who have been hanging around Author! Author! for a while are already aware of how I feel about those pernicious one-size-fits-all query patterns, I shan’t reflect yet again on their overall efficacy, but even amongst those who don’t moan, “Why do all of today’s queries read identically?” on a regular basis have been perplexed by this awkward phrase’s sudden rise in popularity. It popped into usage only fairly recently — one seldom saw it before ten years ago — but it is far too pervasive to have been passed along by word of mouth alone. Since it contains a piece of information anyone who has taken a conference course on query-writing should know does not need stating, this stock phrase is unlikely to have originated from the writers’ conference circuit.

So whence, the pros wonder, did it emerge? Some doors mankind is not meant to open, I guess.

More importantly for pet peeve-avoidance purposes, why might this innocent-seeming phrase set Millicent the agency screener’s teeth on edge? Simple: if the manuscript being queried is fiction, any agency employee would presume that what the writer is offering is a finished version of the book. First novels are sold on complete manuscripts, period; it would not make sense, therefore, to approach an agent with an incomplete draft. Using precious query letter page space to mention something so obvious, then, is a quite reliable sign of inexperience.

“Besides,” Millicent grumbles, “isn’t part of the point of the query to impress me with one’s writing skills? How on earth am I supposed to be impressed with a writer who stuffs her letter to the proverbial gills with uninspired stock phrases? Show me your phrasing, not some canned clause lifted from the same allegedly sure-fire template half of the queriers who will contact my boss this week will be using!”

Through the whish-whish-whish of frantic erasing on query letter drafts all over the globe, some faint cries of protest arise. “But Anne,” those of you who habitually tuck the phrase into your opening paragraphs argue, “I just thought that was the professional way of including the word count. I realize that Millicent wants to see some original writing, but honestly, isn’t this information to express as quickly as possible and move on?”

The short answer is this: why include it at all? (And the long answer is W-H-Y-I-N-C-L-U-D-E-I-T-A-T-A-L-L?)

No, but seriously, folks, word count is not a standard, necessary, indispensable part of a query. Yes, some agents do prefer to see it up front (and if they have expressed that preference in public, by all means, honor it), but as including it can only hurt a submission’s chances, I’m not a big fan of mentioning word count in a query letter at all. Don’t lie about it if an agency’s guidelines ask for this information, of course, but don’t volunteer it.

And don’t, whatever you do, assume that because some agency guidelines request word count that every agent will expect to see it. As those of you familiar with last autumn’s Querypalooza series may recall, it’s very, very common for an individual agent’s personal preference, once expressed in passing at a conference or in an interview, to be broadcast by well-meaning aspiring writers as the newly-revealed universal key for landing an agent.

But individual preferences are just that: individual. Pretending that every agent currently accepting clients in the United States wants to see word count in the first paragraph of the query letter (and, the accompanying logic usually goes, will automatically reject a query that does not announce this information within the first three lines), despite the fact that the majority of posted submission guidelines do not ask for it, makes about as much sense as including the first 5 pages of text in your query packet as a writing sample just because one of the fifteen agencies you decided to query last week called for you to include it. Out comes the broken record again:

When querying, as when responding to a request for materials, send precisely what that particular agent wants to see — no more, no less. Because part of what a querier is demonstrating in a query packet is the ability to follow directions — a perennially agent-pleasing trait — there is just no substitute for checking every individual agency’s submission guidelines every single time.

Or, to quote the late, great Fats Waller, find out what they like and how they like it — and let ‘em have it just that way.

It’s a matter of respect, really. Adhering to any given agent’s expressed querying preferences is a laudable means of demonstrating from the get-go that you are serious enough about your writing not to want just any agent to represent it — you want a specific agent whom you have determined, based on his past sales record, would be a good fit for your book.

According to this principle, an aspiring writer’s including word count is a courtesy to those who ask for it. Offering it unasked to those who do not is, while certainly not required, something that Millicent is likely to regard as a positive blessing — but that doesn’t mean it’s in your best interest to do it.

Why? Knowing from the get-go that a manuscript is too short or too long for its stated book category can save a query-screening Millicent masses of time. Shouting, “Next!” is, we all must recognize, quite a bit speedier than sending out a request for materials, waiting for them to arrive, then seeing first-hand that a manuscript falls outside the length norms.

Heck, if the querier followed the extremely common precept that complete at 127,403 words should appear in the letter’s opening paragraph, she might not even have to read a single additional sentence; if her agency happens to adhere to the belief that 100,000 words is the top cut-off for a first novel — as is the case in most fiction categories — she would have no reason to request the manuscript.

“How kind of this writer,” she murmurs, reaching for the never-far-off stack of form-letter rejections, “to have waved that red flag up front. This way, there’s no possibility of my falling in love with the text before realizing it’s too long, as I might easily have done had I requested pages.”

That one-size-fits-all boilerplate is no longer fitting so comfortably, is it? Typically, agencies that request word count up front like to see it for precisely the same reason a Millicent at a non-requesting agency would be so pleased it appeared: it enables them to reject too-long and too-short manuscripts at the query stage, rather than the submission stage. In essence, it’s asking the writer to provide them with a means of speeding up her own rejection.

But should you include it in a query, if the agency guidelines ask for it? Absolutely: it’s a matter of respect.

I hear you grumbling, campers, and who could blame you? But you might want to brace yourselves, complete at… users; you’re going to like what I’m about to say next even less: many queries rejected for on the basis of excessive word count are actually not too long for their chosen book categories. The listed word count merely makes them appear too long.

“How is that possible?” word count-listers everywhere howl, rending their garments. “I’ve been including what my Word program claims is the actual number of words in the document. By what stretch of the imagination could that number be misinterpreted?”

Quite easily, as it happens: that 100,000 word limit I mentioned above does not refer to actual word count; it is an expression of estimated word count. Although actual word count is appropriate to list for short stories and articles, it is not the norm for book manuscripts — but again, individual agents’ preferences do vary. Therein lies the miscommunication: the overwhelming majority of the considerate souls busily typing complete at… up use actual word count, not estimated, leading Millicent to conclude that a long manuscript contains quite a few more pages than it really does.

Why would she assume the word count is estimated? Respect for the traditions of her industry, mostly: before the rise of Word and its automatic word-count function, estimating was hours more efficient than laboriously counting each and every word. Just as magazines and newspapers used a standard number of words per line, the publishing industry came up with an average for the two most common typewriter key size’s words per page: 250/page for Elite, 200/page for Pica.

With the rise of the home computer, that expectation carried over to the most similar fonts: the standard estimation for a standard manuscript in Times New Roman is 250 words/page; for Courier, it’s 200 words/page. Since TNR is the industry standard, when Millicent sees 100,000 words, she automatically thinks 400 pages.

I see some of you shaking your heads and calling her a Luddite, but for the agency’s purposes, an estimate is more useful than a toting-up of every word. Think about it: since the number of words that appear on a page can vary wildly, actual word count does not tell an agent or editor how many pages to expect, does it? That’s legitimate information for Millicent to consider: the page count is part of the publication cost calculation generally included in the paperwork an editor has to fill out before taking an exciting new project before an editorial committee.

While there is not a one-to-one correlation between the number of pages in a manuscript and the number of pages in its published form — most submission manuscripts shrink by about two-thirds by the time they hit hard copy — page count is hugely important in figuring out how expensive it will be to publish a book. The more pages, the greater the amount of paper and ink required, obviously. Perhaps less obviously, longer books are substantially more expensive to produce than shorter ones: at about 500 pages (an estimated 120,000 words), the binding costs rise dramatically.

Starting to see why our Millie might reject a query that told her in line 3 that it was complete at 127,403 words?

Unfortunately, the majority of queriers who use actual word count, as would be appropriate for a short story or magazine article, are unaware of this publishing reality. Compounding the problem: almost invariably, this number is higher than the estimate would lead one to expect: it is well within the realm of possibility that 127,403-word manuscript would be closer to 400 pages than 500. (Which is why, in case those of you who already have agents had been wondering, agents representing long first novels generally leave the word count off the title page.)

The actual number of pages is irrelevant at rejection time, though, if querier and query-reader are operating on different sets of expectations. While the last digit in that actual count might tip off a professional reader that the writer is using actual count, not an estimate a Millicent in a hurry — and with good math skills — is prone to spot that number and mutter, “509 pages! That’s far too long for a first novel in this category! Next!”

It makes the muses sad enough if the title page prompts this reaction. Imagine, then, how bitterly the muses weep when a good novel gets rejected in this manner because the writer thought the first paragraph of her query needed to contain the words complete at…

Just take it out, willya? I’m tired of listening to the old girls bawl.

Speaking of notorious query-related pet peeves that often engender a cry of “Next!” — and speaking of ungraceful phrases; that segue was a lulu — it would be remiss of me not to mention two others. Since they are such perennial favorites, annoyances to Millicents dating back to at least the Eisenhower administration, let’s haul out the broken record player again, shall we? Nothing like a one of those old-fashioned phonographs when one wants to dance to the oldies-but-goodies.

When approaching an agency with several agents who represent your type of book, it’s considered rude to query more than one of them simultaneously. Pick one — and only one — to approach in any given year.

In publishing, as in so many other areas of life, no means no. If an agent has rejected your query or submission, it’s considered rude to re-approach that agent with the same project again, ever. If the agent wants you to revise and submit that particular manuscript, he will tell you so point-blank; if he likes your voice, but does not think he can sell the manuscript in the current market, he may ask to see your next book.

The second is fairly well-known, but aspiring writers new to the game are constantly running afoul of the first. In a way, that’s completely understandable: if one doesn’t take the time to learn what each agent at a particular agency has represented lately — and few queriers do — it can be pretty difficult to tell which might be the best fit for one’s book.

“I know!” the aspiring writer says, feeling clever as it occurs to her. “I’ll just send it to both of ‘em. That way, I can’t possibly guess wrong which is the agent for me.”

And then both of those queries appear in the inbox belonging to those agents’ shared Millicent. What do you think will happen?

Hint: it has to do with respect. And if you were about to say, “Why, Millicent will weigh carefully which agent would be the most appropriate for my work and forward my query accordingly,” you might want to reconsider you answer.

I don’t care who hears me say it: this is a business where politeness counts. Sending queries to more than one agent at an agency or over and over again to the same agent is, quite apart from self-defeating behavior, an annoyance to those who have to deal with those queries and manuscripts. Need I say more?

Oh, I do? Okay, try this explanation on for size: no one, but no one, likes to be treated as a generic service-provider. Most agents pride themselves on their taste, their insight into current market conditions, and their client list. So when an aspiring writer targets agents with side-by-side offices, as though it were impossible to tell the two of them apart, it’s tantamount to saying, “Look, I don’t care which of you represents me; all agents look alike to me. So what does it matter that one of you already said no?” The same logic applies when a writer queries the same agent who has already rejected that book project: respect for an agent’s choices would dictate honoring that no the first time around.

Speaking of respect issues, let’s not forget the single most common screeners’ pet peeve of all: unprofessionally formatted manuscript submissions. While this is seldom an instant rejection trigger all by itself, not presenting one’s writing in the manner in which the pros expect to see it does mean, effectively, that one is walking into the submission process with one strike against the book.

See why that might prove problematic, in a situation where a manuscript seldom gets more than two strikes before being tossed out of the game?

While veteran members of the Author! Author! community sigh with recognition, those of you new to this blog look a trifle bewildered. “Whoa!” perplexed agent-seekers everywhere cry. “How is formatting a respect issue? Baseball metaphors aside, how on earth could how I choose to present my words on the manuscript page be construed as in any way indicative of my general attitude toward the agent to whom I am sending it? Or, indeed, toward the publishing industry?”

Fairly easily, from the other side of the submission envelope. As it may not be entirely astonishing to you by this point in the post, when Millicent spots an improperly-formatted manuscript, she sees not only a book that needs at least some cosmetic revision to bring up to professional standards, but a writer who does not have enough respect for the industry he aspires to join to learn about its expectations and norms.

“Oh, presentation doesn’t matter,” Millicent imagines the brash new writer saying as he doesn’t bother to spell-check. “That’s my future editor’s job to fix. All that matters is the writing, right?”

Actually, no. Any good agent receives far, far too many beautifully-written manuscripts from aspiring writers who have taken the time to present them properly to waste her time with those that do not. This is such a common rejection reason that there’s even a stock phrase for it.

“That writer is talented,” publishing types will say to one another, “but he hasn’t done his homework.”

Yes, this is often said of talented writers who have yet to develop technical skills, but as any Millicent could tell you, rejection reasons are like wolves: they tend to travel in packs. Improper formatting is merely the quickest indicator of a lack of professionalism to spot. Since all professional book manuscripts and book proposals in this country look alike, adhering to a standard format distinct from what is de rigueur for short stories, articles, academic writing, and even many contests, Millicent can often literally identify a submission from someone who hasn’t done her homework at five paces.

To a literature-lover who handles manuscripts for a living, that’s a genuinely astonishing authorial choice. Unhappily, not doing one’s homework is infinitely more popular than doing it — which, when you think about it, doesn’t make a great deal of sense as a long-term strategy for publishing success. Even the most naturally talented baseball player doesn’t expect to hit a home run the first time he steps up to the plate, after all; he knows that he must learn the rules and hone his skills before he has a chance at the big leagues.

Many, if not most, aspiring writers, by contrast, seem to believe that the New York Yankees are going to sign them the first time they pick up bats and don gloves. Can you really blame Millicent for feeling that’s just a trifle disrespectful to all of the great authors who have invested the time in learning to play the game?

“But Anne,” those of you new to querying and submission point out huffily, “why should it surprise anybody that a first-time novelist, memoirist, or book proposer should not already know every nuance of how the industry works? Why is being new a problem to a business ostensibly concerned with seeking out what is fresh and exciting?”

Good question, neophytes. To those used to dealing with professional manuscripts, everything that appears on the page is assumed to be there because the writer made an active choice to include it. By that logic, a typo is never just a typo: it’s either a deliberate misspelling for effect, a proofreading omission, or evidence that the writer just can’t spell. The same holds true for holes in a plot, voice inconsistencies — and yes, formatting.

As I may seven or eight hundred times recently, good agents are inundated with fresh, exciting manuscripts that do not have these problems; clearly, then, it is possible for a writer brand-new to the biz to learn how to avoid them. So when a promising writer has not taken the time to burnish her submission to a high polish, it’s likely to look an awful lot like an assumption that his future agent is going to do all the work of bringing that manuscript into line with professional standards for her.

In other words, not formatting a submission in the manner Millicent has been trained to expect will effectively mean that she will start reading it already assuming that it is not the final draft. How could a manuscript that does not adhere to professional presentation standards be considered a completely polished manuscript?

It’s not as though the agent of your dreams could submit it to an editor that way, after all. An agent who permitted her clients to deliver work in any of those formats would have to waste her own time changing the cosmetic elements so it would be possible to take it to a publishing house. For this reason, Millicent regards incorrectly-formatted work as indicative of a writer not particularly serious about his work .

Or, to put it a trifle more bluntly: she’s not judging it on the writing alone. Necessarily, she has to consider how much extra time her boss would have to invest in a writer who would have to be trained how to put together a manuscript.

I see those of you who worked your way through last autumn’s mind-achingly detailed Formatpalooza series rolling your eyes. “Yes, yes, we know, Anne,” veteran format-contemplators say wearily. “You walk us through standard format at least once a year, addressing at length the digressions from it in which aspiring writers all too frequently unwittingly indulge at great cost to their books’ submission chances. I now no longer add a row of asterisks to indicate a section break, allow Word to alter my doubled dashes with spaces on either end to emdashes bridging the space between the words before and after, nor embrace the AP style practice of capitalizing the first word after a colon, as if it were the beginning of a new sentence. Heck, I even know what a slug line is. I still secretly agonize in the dead of night because another website — one that does not draw a firm distinction between the correct format for a book manuscript and how a short story should be submitted to a magazine, perhaps — says I should place the chapter title on the line directly above the first line of text, as is proper for a short story, rather than on the first line of the page, as is appropriate for a book manuscript, but overall, I feel pretty good about how professional my submissions look. Why keep nagging me about it?”

Actually, my frequent reminders of the importance of adhering to standard format are not aimed at you, conscientious researchers, but toward those who have not yet learned to emulate your laudable example. Aspiring writers who have taken the time to learn the expectations of the industry into which they are trying to break are not, generally speaking, those whose submissions make Millicent grind her teeth down to nubs. If you’re already following the rules, chances are good that she is judging your manuscript on your writing.

Congratulations; that’s a relative rarity. Unfortunately for the overall happiness of aspiring writers everywhere, most submissions reflect an almost complete lack of awareness that standard format even exists. Oh, most are double-spaced and feature page numbers (although you would be astonished at how often the latter are omitted), but beyond the application of one or two isolated rules, it’s quite obvious that the writers who produced them think presentation doesn’t matter.

Surprised to hear that’s the norm? You’re in good company — Millicent is flabbergasted. Despite a wealth of formatting advice floating around the Internet — some of it accurate, some of it not — the average manuscript landing on her desk displays a blithe disregard of standard format. It’s almost as though it’s daring her to like the writing in spite of the careless presentation.

It is, in short, disrespectful. And we all know how Millicent, the industry’s gatekeeper and thus the person who sees far more promising writing gone wrong than anybody else, tends to respond to that: “Next!”

I’m bringing all of this up in the middle of our ongoing discussion of craft not to say that presentation is more important than the writing quality — no one who dealt with manuscripts for a living would argue that — but to remind everyone that to a professional reader, everything on that page matters.

There are no free passes for careless omissions; with any given agency, there are seldom even second chances after an insufficiently-polished first approach. Yet despite the vital importance of making a good first — and second, and third — impression, most good writers become so impatient to see their words in print that they start sending out queries and submissions half an hour after they type THE END.

Sometimes even before. Had I mentioned that it’s considered disrespectful to query a manuscript that is not yet completed? (It is, perversely, acceptable to give a verbal pitch at a conference under the same circumstances, however. Agents and editors who hear pitches know how stressful it is; most would agree that a practice run at it a year or two before one is doing it for real isn’t a bad idea.)

As exciting as the prospect of getting your baby published may be, sending it out before it’s ready to meet Millicent is not the best long-term strategy. At least not now, when personalized rejection letters have become exceedingly rare: while up to about a decade ago, an aspiring writer could hope to gain valuable and useful feedback from the submission process, now, the volume of queries and submissions is so high that the manuscript that prompted Millicent to mutter, “Oh, here’s another one who didn’t do his homework,” and the carefully-polished near-miss are likely to receive precisely the same form-letter rejection: I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I can place this book successfully in the current tight literary market.

The wording may vary slightly, but the sentiment is the same. Aspiring writers are not the only population fond of boilerplates, apparently.

Choose your words thoughtfully, take the time to learn the rules of submission, and treat your future agent — and his Millicents — with respect. Believe me, once you are working with them on an intensive basis, you’ll be glad you did.

Next time, we’ll wend our way merrily back to the Short Road Home. Keep up the good work!

Pet peeves on parade, part IV: wait — what just happened?

Once again, I am delighted to begin with some happy news about a member of the Author! Author! community: a gigantic round of applause, please, for Harold Taw, whose first novel, Adventures of the Karaoke King, will be released through Amazon.com’s new imprint, AmazonEncore, in April. Congratulations, Harold, and may the book be a monumental success!

I’m particularly pleased to make this announcement, as I have been charmed by this story since it was at the pitching stage. It’s a story that, to put it mildly, sticks in one’s mind. From Harold’s website:

Seattle’s Guy Watanabe is a quiet thirty-something man who is marginally in touch with his Asian heritage and completely out of touch with his own needs and desires. Recovering from a divorce, Watanabe is unsure of himself and his future. When he wins a local karaoke contest, he discovers not only a newfound confidence, but the courage to take risks. With the victor’s medallion in hand, he seizes the moment, and his life changes dramatically…although not as he might have hoped. From a weekend romp with Megumi, a former hooker, comes a physical beating and the loss of his beloved medallion. Stung by this humiliation, yet able to muster a courage long dormant, his quest begins. From the Pacific Northwest, down to the Southwest, and on to Asia, with a return trip in a shipping container, Guy Watanabe is on a wild ride. Along the way he woos a hard-drinking Korean barmaid, teams up with a closeted gay man and a heavily-armed dwarf, and crosses paths with a patricidal Chinese businessman who will stop at nothing to create a global karaoke empire. So many people seeking the meaning of life and desperate to attain their dreams, and at the heart of their internal struggle is Guy Watanabe’s quest for truth, hope, and self-discovery.

He had you at heavily-armed dwarf, didn’t he? Or was it the phrase global karaoke empire? This is a great example of how a writer can use surprising details to enliven a book description.

Harold’s road to publication is one of those offbeat success stories that occur so seldom that they seem like lightning strikes when they do happen. Like many of you, he entered this manuscript in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest — and didn’t win. But the fine folks at Amazon noticed the freshness of his story, and the rest is publishing history. (I’d tell you more, but I’m hoping to blandish Harold into telling you about it himself in front of my interview camera. Stay tuned.)

My, we’ve had a lot of success stories lately, have we not? Keep them rolling in, folks — I love reporting my readers’ triumphs. Go, Team Literate!

Speaking of literacy and its many charms, last time, we focused our attention upon how an over-reliance upon phrases in common use — nodded his head, shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, waved a hand, to name but four — word repetition, and other uninspired narrative choices can water down even the strongest authorial voice. Because so many writers use them so often, our pal Millicent the agency screener tends to have a visceral negative reaction to them.

“Oh, no,” she murmurs regretfully over the 76th iteration of he pointed at X she’s read that day, “another writer who fell into the trap of believing that the sole point of narration is to show what is going on, as if it didn’t matter how that action were described to the reader. Why in heaven’s name do so many talented writers waste page space with stock phrases like this, rather than seeking to impress me with original wording?”

That’s a great question, Millicent. In my experience, the reason tends to be threefold: aspiring writers often don’t understand just how fierce the competition to get published is these days; because they are busy people, they slap their stories down on the page in a tearing hurry, on the theory that it’s more important to crank out the pages than to refine the prose. Then they begin querying the instant after they complete their first drafts, rather than going back over them with an eye to revision.

The result, unfortunately for literature, is all too often that a promising voice telling a potentially interesting story becomes obscured by catchphrases, clichés, and word repetition that the writer herself would probably find distracting if she sat down and read her manuscript IN ITS ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and OUT LOUD. Having skipped that essential step, it’s hardly surprising that Millicent’s scrutiny gets caught up in the submission’s problems, rather than its strengths.

Yet aspiring writers are continually being caught off guard by this development. “But I’ve worked so hard writing this book!” they exclaim over form-letter rejections. “Why isn’t anyone picking it up?”

I hate to break the hard, hard truth to these already bruised souls, but in the current literary market, books do not get published simply because someone wrote them. That’s true of literally every submission Millicent and the agent who employs her sees. From an agency perspective, it’s assumed that good writers work for years on their first manuscripts; even for the most naturally gifted writer, learning the ropes of constructing a narrative takes some time.

Hey, I warned you that it was a particularly hard species of truth. Those of us who have been in the business for a while would never consider submitting our first drafts of anything — if a story is worth putting down on paper, it’s worth revising. It’s worth going over with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, to make certain that the phrasing is original and pleasing to read. And it’s definitely worth ascertaining that all of those carefully-selected words are spelled correctly.

One of the most common types of spelling error, believe it or not, is the misspelling of proper nouns. Place names are particularly susceptible to mangling.

Oh, you may laugh at the notion that a writer familiar enough with Berkeley, California, to set a story there would not consistently spell its name correctly. But my version of Word’s spellchecker would also accept Berkley as a proper noun, as in Penguin’s imprint, the Berkley Press, or the cities of that name in Massachusetts and Michigan. It would also accept Berklee, a very fine school of music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And isn’t there a Congresswoman Berkley from Nevada?

See the problem? Spell-checking alone will not necessarily catch that our hard-working writer typed Berkely when he meant Berkeley. Even if it did, a tired writer sneaking an hour of writing into a busy day after the kids are in bed — or a super-excited writer who had just received a request for pages from an agent — might easily hit IGNORE once too often during an extended spell-checking session. Heck, all it would take is a single slip of the hand to CHANGE ALL.

If that horrifying possibility didn’t send you running for a pencil and your manuscript, consider this: when Millicent — or Maury the editorial assistant, or Mehitabel the veteran contest judge — encounters Berkley instead of Berkeley on the page, she won’t have any clue about the sordid late-night hand-slippage that brought it there. As far as she knows, that misspelled proper noun could just as easily mean that the writer just had no idea how Berkeley is spelled.

And apparently didn’t take the time to find out. Tell me, if you were Millicent, how serious would that writer seem about his craft?

Uh-huh. There’s a reason that professional readers so often murmur, “This might be a good book after the next revision,” as they reach for a photocopied form-letter rejection. They simply assume that writers who are serious about getting published will respond to no by hunkering down, honing their craft, and submitting a more polished work next time. Happily for Millicent, any reputable agency receives many, many times the carefully-revised submissions it needs to fill its few new client spots in any given year; they don’t need to dip into the not-quite-ready-yet pool.

Oh, dear. Should I have advised those of you new to the game to sit down before I said that?

If the news that Millicent is specifically trained not to cut a new writer any slack comes as a shock to you, you’re certainly not alone. Thirty years ago, writers of promise, as they were known in the industry, were treated quite differently. Back then, the agent might have had the time to read each submission personally, or even to give a specific reason for rejecting a particular manuscript. If a book seemed as though it was a revision away from being marketable, the agent might have taken the time to give the writer specific feedback, advising him to revise and resubmit.

Now, that same submission would typically have to make it past Millicent before the agent would even know of its existence. If it wasn’t print-ready, the writer would receive a form-letter rejection that read something like Thanks for sending this to me, but I just didn’t fall in love with it or While another agent might feel differently, I do not believe I can sell this in the current highly competitive market. Not a word about having spelled the name of the town Berkeley half the time and Berkely the other would be mentioned; the writer would simply be dismissed with polite platitudes.

That vaguely-worded form response is the usual result, incidentally, whether the submission was so peppered with misspellings that Millicent gave up three sentences in or if she read the entire submission before deciding that it wasn’t for the agency. Even if she actually did fall in love with the story, approve it, and send it on to her boss, the submitter might still end up shaking her head over Pardon an impersonal response, but our agency receives too many submissions for me to respond to each individually.

That’s right: the writer very seldom learns why her submission gets rejected. All the more reason, then, to go over the manuscript IN ITS ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and preferably OUT LOUD, to ferret out any presentation reasons Millicent might have for shouting, “Next!”

Is that cacophony of voices bouncing around the ether an indication that a few hundred thousand aspiring writers are grumbling about how cold and impersonal the publishing world has become toward new talent? I hate to tap-dance on anyone’s oversimplification, but actually, we’re sorry, but this manuscript does not meet our needs at this time is a golden oldie. Pre-typed rejection slips were in common use at agencies by the mid-1950s; I’ve met writers who received one or more in the 1920s.

Admittedly, the manuscripts that made it farther in the winnowing-out process often did receive personalized rejections. The practice of giving those who were only a draft or two away encouragement and advice lingered long enough that even today, one does occasionally hear long-established publishing types insist that if a writer has sent out ten queries and received only form letter replies, there must be something wrong with the query. Or that if the writer comes up with a query good enough to garner requests for pages, yet receives nothing but form-letter rejections, the manuscript must necessarily be deeply flawed.

It might be, of course, but impersonal rejections — or, almost as common these days, no response at all if the answer is no — are no longer reserved for those queries and submissions too poorly written or formatted to receive serious consideration. Now, the sheer volume of queries and submissions often renders it impossible for the agency to respond to even the near misses personally.

Wait — haven’t I heard that somewhere before?

Call me zany, but if a genuinely talented writer is going to get rejected, I would prefer that it be for the reasons those form-letter responses claim: because the premise actually would be difficult to market in the current literary environment, books like this have not been selling well recently, or because the agent didn’t fall in love with the writer’s voice, but was sure that another agent would be delighted by it. I hate to see writers of promise give up hope because they submitted their work before it was polished.

Or, as is astonishingly often the case, before the writer has clutched that proverbial comb while giving serious thought to how the reader will respond to what’s on the page, as opposed to how he responds to it himself. After all, the writer already has a vision of the book in his head — he’s not necessarily going to look at the kind of generic activity we saw last time and think, “Hey, is it clear what’s going on here? Is there enough detail on the page that I can picture these characters, the ongoing conflict, the room in which it all takes place? Is this storyline continually engaging enough for me to want to keep reading?”

One does not need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict that for 99.9% of aspiring writers, the answer to all three of those questions is going to be yes. And for good reason: if a writer doesn’t find his own story engaging, he’s unlikely to invest the considerable energy and time to complete even a first draft, right?

But that doesn’t mean that a reader new to the story — like, say, Millicent — would look at what’s on the page and answer all of those questions positively. Which she would have to do, in order to accept a submission.

It may seem self-evident, but a professional reader can only judge a manuscript by what actually appears on the page. Not what the writer intended to be on the page, or what he hopes the reader will fill in for herself, or what he would have typed had he not been writing at the end of a very long and hectic day. Just what is there in black and white.

Shouldn’t we want it to be that way, after all? No writer wants Millicent to read her own meaning into his submission, right? We all want our work to be appreciated on its own merits.

So if words are misspelled, Millie is forced to conclude that the writer misspelled them; what else could she think? If the grammar is poor or inconsistent, she unavoidably draws the conclusion that the writer either didn’t proofread well or — brace yourself — didn’t know the rules in the first place. If the manuscript presents enough evidence of these problems within the first page, it is not, by professional standards, unreasonable for her to conclude that (a) the rest of the manuscript suffers from similar difficulties and (b) it could stand some polishing.

And what is the logical (c) in this progression, campers, at least within the current literary market? That’s right: “Next!”

I’ve been sensing some of you squirming in your desk chairs throughout the last few paragraphs. “Okay, Anne — I get it. I need to proofread before I subject my work to Millicent’s scrutiny, preferably IN MY SUBMISSION’S ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and OUT LOUD. I even realize that I need to commit right now to doing that before the next time I submit, because, let’s face it, I’m probably going to be pretty excited when an agent asks me to send pages. I might jump the gun. But since you opened this series with a paean to proofreading, why today’s cheerleading on the subject? I had thought we had moved on to concrete examples of Millicent’s pet peeves.”

So we had, verbose squirmers. For the rest of this post, I shall be talking about the things that bug Millicent when they aren’t in the manuscript.

Chief among them, and very much a proofreading issue: omitted words. Writers often don’t notice them, but professional readers tend to regard them with some asperity. Why? Well, take a gander at a typical instance.

“You don’t have the ring?” Phaedra searched frantically amongst the velvet pillows of her fainting couch. “But it’s not, either!”

To paraphrase Millicent’s reaction, huh? What on earth does that last sentence mean?

Does that forest of hands that shot into the air indicate that some of you can guess the missing word? So can I. What the writer intended was this:

“You don’t have the ring?” Phaedra searched frantically amongst the velvet pillows of her fainting couch. “But it’s not here, either!”

“So what’s the big deal?” those who squirmed previously inquire. “It was pretty obvious what the missing word was. Any reasonable reader could have figured it out.”

Ah, but it isn’t Millicent’s job to figure it out. How do I know that? Because a professional reader can only judge a manuscript by what actually appears on the page.

Since the word’s not there, our Millie cannot legitimately fill it in for herself, then judge the paragraph. That would be cheating — and unfair to all of those conscientious submitters who, unlike the writer penning the adventures of Phaedra, actually did proof their manuscripts IN THEIR ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and OUT LOUD.

It’s not as though any of us hasn’t dropped a word every now and again, either; this is a virtually universal first-draft phenomenon. It’s understandable: when a writer is in a hurry to get sentence or a scene down in writing, the creative brain does sometimes move faster than the fingertips. It’s easily caught in revision.

Provided that there is revision, of course. An unreviewed first draft enjoys no such oversight.

Dropped words, or even sentences, are also quite common in what I like to call Frankenstein manuscripts: a text that has received multiple partial revisions, but that the writer has not had the time (or perhaps the inclination) to go through from beginning to end, to make sure that all of the old and new sections flow together smoothly. A classic symptom of a Frankenstein manuscript is one where the narrative voice is different in one section than another, because the writer changed her mind about the tone of the book. Other standard attributes at the book level include a character’s name that changes throughout the book (she’s Sarah in Chs. 1, 17, and 19-25, but Sara in Chs. 2-16 and Sally in Ch. 19, because the latter remained unchanged from the first draft), a subplot that comes on strong in the beginning of the manuscript, but seems to be forgotten thereafter, and references late in the story to revelations earlier in the book, although those earlier scenes have been cut.

Hey, I wasn’t kidding about the possibility of Millicent’s being as annoyed by what isn’t on the page as what is.

On the sentence and paragraph level, however, the telltale sign of Frankenstein revision practices is often missing verbiage. It’s very, very common for a reviser to import a sentence or two from another part of the page (or even another part of the manuscript) and plop it down amid existing text, intending to smooth out the transitions between the old and the new later. But then, other paragraphs beg for her attention, or the phone rings, or Junior suddenly remembers that he needs 42 cupcakes to take to school tomorrow morning, and before the writer knows it, the incomplete small-scale revision is forgotten.

The result, I am sorry to report, appears on the page like this.

Arnold turned out his the pockets of his pants pockets. They were empty. “I told you that I didn’t have your silly ring.”

Clear enough what happened here, isn’t it? The first sentence originally read Arnold turned out his pockets. Upon mature reflection, our revising friend decided that the sentence should run Arnold turned out the pockets of his pants. So just before Junior comes flying into the room ten minutes after his bedtime, waving the note from his second-grade teacher, the reviser starts to type the new text — and never gets a chance to delete the old.

Completely understandable, of course. And it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem at submission time, except — feel free to chant along at home, campers — a professional reader can only judge a manuscript by what actually appears on the page. Millicent can’t legitimately just pick the wording she likes best out of the plethora of possibilities in that first sentence, any more than she could make an executive decision that your protagonist was Sarah, not Sara or Sally.

Those kinds of decisions are up to you. You’re the writer, after all.

And that’s Millicent’s dilemma when what is on the page makes it fairly clear what the writer’s intention actually as. Sometimes, the missing verbiage is so crucial to the scene that poor Millie is left guessing.

“That’s not the only place you could have hidden it.” Phaedra ran her hands across his polyester-covered shoulders, stopping abruptly at the ends of his epaulettes. “Shall I search you?”

Arnold smirked. “I’m not armed. I can’t stop you.”

“So you claim.” Swiftly, she Phaedra turned the muzzle on him. “And I trusted you!”

Wait — what just happened? That awkward cut in this Frankenstein scene renders it impossible to make a credible guess.

“Honestly,” Millicent mutters. “Is it my job to write that missing section? I can’t even tell how long it was, much less predict its subject matter. Next!”

You must admit, Millie has a point here: it isn’t her job to fill in missing text. Pull out your hymnals, campers, and we’ll sing about why: a professional reader can only judge a manuscript by what actually appears on the page.

That’s not even the worst of it, from the submitter’s perspective. (Well, okay, so it’s the worst of it as far as Phaedra’s chronicler is concerned; “Next!” unfortunately, is the end of the line for requested materials, at least at that agency.) Because Frankenstein manuscripts are so common, writers of spare narratives sometimes find their work mistaken for it.

Seriously, to a skimming eye, scant narration can look as though there is some text missing. Take a gander.

“I’d always heard that you were the strong and silent type.” Angelica ground her spent cigarette into the gravel with her stiletto heel. “I see that I was not misinformed.”

Vern said little — nothing, in fact. He barely blinked at the blur flying through his peripheral vision.

Angelica didn’t thank him for saving her life. She lit another cigarette. “Apparently, you’re a handy fellow to have around.”

Seem like an outlandish omission? It isn’t, really: plenty of narratives veer away from the action at crucial moments. I’m not a big fan of it, personally, but it’s a recognized style, borrowed from TV. (In television drama, it’s fairly common for a major scene to come to a screaming halt just after a major revelation, but before the characters can react to it. Time for a commercial!)

It doesn’t work so well in print, but to be fair, a careful reader with time to kill could in fact figure out what happened between those last two paragraphs: some creature/person/deadly object soared toward Angelica, and Vern’s swift-yet-undefined action prevented it/him/her/it from killing her. The writer probably considered the fact that Vern is so cool that we never even see him move his eyes, much less his body, to avert the threat as humorous, not vague.

Yet on the page, there’s no denying it would be vague. As such, it’s hard to blame Millicent for doing a spit-take with her latte and crying as she dabs frantically but ineffectually at the spreading stain on her shirt, “Wait — what just happened?”

Oh, she might actually go back and re-read those two paragraphs. But once a submission has landed her with a $43 dry-cleaning bill, the rest of the text would have to be awfully compelling to make up for it.

I can hear all of you spare narrative-huggers out there jumping up and down in your seats. “I’m all ears, Anne. How can I revise my text to eliminate the possibility of Millicent’s choking on her latte?”

I do have an answer, but the sparer you like your text, the less satisfying I suspect you’ll find it: include enough detail that any reader, even a swiftly-skimming one, can easily follow what is going on.

A professional reader can only judge a manuscript by what actually appears on the page, after all. Millicent is entirely justified in believing that it is not her job to guess that a cheetah in a sapphire-encrusted collar leapt off a passing Model T, well-manicured claws aimed squarely at Angelica’s face, only to be caught in mid-air by the tail, squashed flat, then tucked into Vern’s inside jacket pocket, along with a half-finished roll of Mentos and a daguerreotype of his sainted great-grandmother.

You know, what any other reader might have figured out occurred, given enough time to figure it out from context.

Fill in the blanks for Millie; she has a hard job, even when her omnipresent latte isn’t attacking her wardrobe. Make absolutely certain that you’ve given her all the necessary words not just to be able to guess what you might have been envisioning in a scene, but to know for sure. Trust me, your ideas will shine much, much brighter if she sees them in their full glory. Keep up the good work!

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the premiere of Author! Author! Interviews: a chat about literary fiction with Bellwether Prize winner Heidi Durrow

Welcome back, campers! How was your week? Mine was, as predicted, hectic, but the niece is married, the dishes washed (no mean feat, considering the family produced a five-course sit-down dinner for the wedding reception), and we are now living on leftovers.

How stressful was it all? Well, let me put it this way: my doctor offered to write me a note to excuse me from all of this ostensible frivolity.

But off with the shackles of the past — on to a monumental new development in the ever-evolving Author! Author! community offerings. Today, I am delighted to bring you the first in what I hope will be may in-depth conversations with wonderful recently-published authors about not only their books, but also the art and craft of writing itself.

You know, the kind of chat that writers find fascinating, but disillusions non-writers and those who would prefer to believe that good writing simply falls from the heavens into the author’s mind, with no actual work involved.

In this series, I’m going to be talking with these authors about the actual work of writing. I’m very excited about this, not only because I suspect that these conversations will prove inspirational and educational to members of the Author! Author! community — and to that end, please feel free to post questions and comments; I shall forward them to the authors — but also because, frankly, when a book comes out, 99% of interviewers will ask precisely the same set of questions.

All of us who read author interviews are familiar with the standards, right? So how did you get the idea for this book? Is this novel autobiographical? How did you get started writing in the first place? Did you always want to be a writer — as opposed to, say, a fireman? Are any of the characters based upon real people? What’s your next book about? No, really, what part of this novel is based upon real life?

It’s all fun and interesting for the author the first dozen or so times, but after that, one begins to feel that one’s part in the interview process could very adequately be played by a tape recorder. Nor is this phenomenon new: I spent a large part of my childhood and adolescence helping science fiction author Philip K. Dick prepare for interviews — oh, you thought that established authors didn’t rehearse? In what sense is an author interview not a public performance? — and believe me, in any given year, we could count the original questions interviewers asked on the fingers of two hands.

Believe me, we longed to be able to start counting on our toes.

So part of my goal in this interview series is to allow good authors more latitude than they are generally allowed in literary interviews — because, let’s face it, what is likely to interest other writers about a book is not necessarily what will fascinate other readers. These interviews will be by writers, for writers.

Are you picturing yourselves chatting with me when your first book comes out? Excellent — you’re in the perfect mindset to enjoy my January 11, 2011 conversation with the exceptionally talented Heidi Durrow, author of the recent literary fiction debut, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, now available in paperback.

If Heidi’s name sounds familiar, you’ve probably either been perusing Best Books of 2010 lists or were hanging out here at Author! Author! in recent months. For those of you who missed my glowing tribute to what I consider the best debut of last year, allow me to introduce you to a writer I believe is going to be remembered as one of the greats. Take a peek at the publisher’s blurb:

Take a gander at the publisher’s blurb:

Durrow book coverRachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop.

Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African-American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity.

This searing and heartwrenching portrait of a young biracial girl dealing with society’s ideas of race and class is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice. In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John,Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, here is a portrait of a young girl—and society’s ideas of race, class, and beauty.

The book has developed something of a cult following amongst lovers of serious literary fiction. How much do its fans respect it? Well, let me put it this way: when I first discovered the novel in a wee bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky, the clerk nearly knocked me over, so eager was she to rush to my side to recommend the book.

Apparently, that enthusiasm was catching, for by the time my plane was over the Rockies, heading home to Seattle, was already raving about the book to everyone in the seats near me. Flight attendants will remember that as the time two of them sidled down the aisle to ask, “Um, why are all of you talking about falling from the sky? Flying is perfectly safe, you know.”

The intriguing mystery of just how and why an entire family fell from a Chicago apartment building’s roof — yes, veteran interviewers, based upon a real-life incident — may be the unusual premise of the story, but the core of the writing is centered upon the growth and development of incredibly real-feeling characters.

As I mentioned before, Heidi pursued character in a completely original manner, calculated to delight those intrigued by the interesting use of language: via punctuation in dialogue. THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY depicts social class and intellectual development through such subtle nuances in the characters’ speech patterns that at first, I kept having to re-read lines to make sure I was not imagining it.

I wasn’t; it’s one of the most brilliant uses of dialogue I’ve seen in years. (And trust me, I read a lot of dialogue in any given year.) Join me, please, for a discussion of it, conducted at the ever-fabulous Third Place Books, just north of Seattle.

A quick technical note before you click on the video: my apologies for the background noise; the Author! Author! staff did not realize that the microphone would pick it up so well, or that it should have been placed a trifle closer to Heidi. Turning up the volume on your computer before you start watching might prove helpful.