'sall good

A word about rejection—not Rejection with a capital “R,” but simple puny plain vanilla everyday mundane rejection. (Because that shift key does make a difference. Think about “right” vs. “Right,” for example. See?)

Okay, fine, for comparison’s sake let’s talk briefly about Rejection. Rejection of the capital variety--professional Rejection--is painful, but also expected and somewhat anonymous. Over time, you get used to agents scribbling “good luck with another agency,” or “not for us,” or, simply “NO!” (“Good God, no” is obviously implied) in the margins of your carefully crafted, blood-soaked and tear-stained queries. At some point (if you stick with it long enough), though you’re disappointed, you really do develop that duck’s back. The Rejections slide right off. I’m not saying you won’t harbor a vendetta against a particularly nasty agent or two, perhaps one who felt the need to say something akin to “how could I possibly sell this you stupid stupid fat smelly writer?” But I digress. Once you land an agent, you face publisher Rejections. These are the biggest and scariest of the big “Rs,” especially when you get the type of Rejection your agent labels the “kiss of death.” (As an aside, why is it a "kiss?" Bitch-slap seems more appropriate.) Which means the publisher “loves your writing style” but doesn’t know “how to sell the book.” In other words, “we dig the book you’ve forgone school plays and promotions and any hint of a normal sex life for, but not enough to go to bat for it.” And there’s nothing you can do to fix it, short of writing an entirely different book. Which is the opposite of awesome. But, again, though you may not like it, you can handle Rejection from these faceless powers that be who sit atop slush piles drinking Manhattans and mocking your font choice.

Lowercase rejection--that’s another animal altogether. It involves watching your mom’s face contort in pain as she reads your manuscript. It’s your friend asking how your “little project” is going before launching into details about her pug’s hemorrhoids. It’s posting your blog on Facebook and getting no love, while your drunken rant likening goldfish crackers to manna from heaven garners a host of thumbs-ups and a page of comments. It’s real and it’s painful and it plays into all your insecurities and fears and co-dependencies. And it sucks. Because I think we all can agree, rejection from someone you know is exponentially worse than a stranger’s rejection.

But I learned something this week. Somewhere along this crazy path to publication (or maybe to financial ruin and cirrhosis of the liver; the jury’s still out), rejection stopped slaying me. I have a friend--an uncommonly bright and talented friend--with whom I shared my work recently. I’d shared short stories and excerpts with her before but, I have to admit, only those I’d chosen carefully because I knew they fit her style—dark and gloomy and decidedly non-mainstream, bleeding into the margins of acceptable subject matter. I knew my current novel wasn’t her brand of artisanal whiskey. I knew that from the first time I told her about it over breakfast and she raised her eyebrows, impaled her pancake, and changed the subject to some new foreign film about excrement. But I sent her the first chapter anyway, just for shiggles. Because if you aren’t willing to put yourself out there, then what’s the point? Might as well keep your desk job.

I believe our subsequent conversation went something like this . . .

“Ummm . . . I read your chapter.”

“Yea?”

“Yea.”

Awkward pause.

“I’ll tell you what I did like about it. I liked the setting.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sniffle. Cough. Yawn.

“You write kind of flowery.”

“Yep.”

“Maybe if you, like, toned that down a bit . . . .”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Anyway, Lou and and I had an amazing time in Napa. We never left the bed, and let me tell you . . . .”

So, you know, essentially she hated it. I guess I should feel honored she said anything at all; she has a rule that if she can’t honestly heap praise, she keeps her mouth shut. (Clearly she’s not cut from the same “pleaser” cloth that I am.) Though I think she must have strained to find something nice to say. I mean, I appreciate the effort, but the setting? Really?

But here’s the upshot (to borrow one of Kris’s favorite phrases) . . . it didn’t bother me. I get it. It’s not her style or a subject matter that interests her. And I am a flowery writer. I lean toward the verbose and I never met a metaphor I didn’t want to whisk off to Vegas. I think it works for this book and the demographic I’m wooing. I’ve been writing long enough and had enough input over the years to feel secure in my vision. That doesn’t mean I won’t take another look at it with her comments in mind--criticism is always helpful. I may tone it down a bit, but I don’t anticipate a major overhaul. One person’s excrement is another person’s art and vice versa. It’s nice to finally live here, in a place where rejection doesn’t sour me on my work. In fact, I might even invite my friend over for pancakes when the book is published.

Ms. Reality Check's Proof Statement

Well, we did it again. We started writing without a Proof Statement. Know what that is? Yea, we didn’t either. We wrote our rambling, plot-thin, 94,000-word first draft of The Pecking Order without having heard of a Proof Statement. (Well, that’s not entirely true. I think I may have heard of a Proof Statement in high school geometry, maybe. Then again, I’m not sure. I became a lawyer partly so I wouldn’t have to think about math.) After a couple of rounds of rejections we had our first meeting with the local professional writer who agreed to give us a private workshop—let’s call her Ms. Reality Check. We drove to her house in the country, handed her a cool grand, and perched on the edge of our folding chairs like baby birds waiting for mama’s return. We waited for words of wisdom, for insight into our manuscript. For the name of an agent. “What’s your Proof Statement?” she asked us. We looked at each other and stammered inaudibly for a few moments. You’d think two litigators would feel comfortable answering a question on the spot, but this didn’t come from the bench. Now we had to defend our own personal work, our passion, our proverbial baby. And we were afraid she’d kick us to the curb (or the gravel road, as it were) when she found out we were mere amateurs; that we didn’t even know what a Proof Statement was. (A ridiculous fear, really, because who else would pay for a professional writer to butcher their life’s work if not an amateur? I doubt Stephen King pays the Castle Rock junior college English professor to give him pointers). Ms. Reality Check elaborated.

“Every written work must have a Proof Statement. Every single word in your manuscript should support your Proof Statement. You should write it down and tape it to your computer. It should state, ‘I am writing this to prove that . . . .’”

My heart stopped.

“So,” she continued, “what’s your Proof Statement? Why are you writing this book?”

Kris and I glanced at each other. I’ve never asked her, but I can bet some of my initial thoughts were somersaulting through her cerebral cortex, too. We’re writing to prove we’re more than litigators. We’re writing to prove law school was just a stepping stone on the path to bigger and better things. We’re writing to prove it’s possible to pay down mountains of student loan debt without selling our souls to the firm. We’re writing to prove that tax law and the rules of intestate succession and the elements of inchoate crimes didn’t suck all the creative juices from our marrow.

But I responded, “We’re writing to prove you can’t have it all.”

Kris’s eyes met mine in an ocular high five. We leaned back in anticipation of Ms. Reality Check's praise.

“That’s not a Proof Statement,” she said. “It’s a truism. Try again. Come back when you have one.”

Oh crap. We had toiled, for years, over 350 pages that had no proof statement and, therefore, no purpose. We struggled for two weeks to come up with a Proof Statement, and finally landed on, “We’re writing to prove that everyone has to make difficult choices when they try to have it all.” She loved it. Now, why our first stab was a truism, but this was a Proof Statement is still a bit filmy, but I’m over it at this point. And I will say, despite my initial grumblings (I seriously considered asking for a refund and vowing to only show my work to family members who would, no doubt, lavish it with praise), the Proof Statement helped us have a focal point, especially when our writing felt forced. More often than not, when we struggled we’d come back to the Proof Statement and realize the scene didn’t shore up the book’s theme. Many well-written, witty sentences became victims of the delete key because they didn’t fit the Proof Statement. At least one character lost her fictional life—erased from the pages forever because we realized she was superfluous. The Proof Statement solidified our vision . . . who knew? I, for one, will never sit down to write another piece without taking that pivotal first step. And yet, we didn’t come up with a Proof Statement before beginning this blog. So why are we writing? To feel relevant? To work together again? To satiate our lust for the written word? Probably all of the above, but if I had to distill it down to one overly broad thematic sentence . . . we’re writing this blog to prove that there’s life after rejection . . . even if we have to artificially create it.

The Liza Dawson Effect

What causes two up-and-coming litigators at an international law firm to morph into angst-ridden artists? I think Laura and I can soundly blame New York literary agent, Liza Dawson, for the the fact that we now embody the cliché of neurotic aspiring writers. Were we not also room mothers, soccer coaches, yoga junkies, and nutrition freaks, I’m pretty sure we’d both be cloaked in black with cigarettes wedged permanently between our fingers. We would no doubt pass hours in a gritty coffee shop debating existentialism and mocking the mainstream. On the other hand, had no one shown interest when we sprinkled the literary world with our The Pecking Order query over 4 years ago, we likely would have cashed it in and dove back, headlong, into the billable hour abyss. We would have continued killing ourselves for the large law firm . . . continued whittling away our souls . . . but at least we would have been the richer for it – Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin richer, not Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle richer. Oh, and how a new pair of heels rivals a deep downward dog any day of the week. But someone did show interest. The “I’d be happy to read the first 100 pages” Liza scribbled in the upper right hand corner of our query letter sucked us in like Facebook and there was no turning back.

It turns out, though, that Liza Dawson is like my high school boyfriend. Technically, I’m still going out with him (and therefore cheating on him with my husband of 10 years) because we never officially broke up. Instead, we simply stopped speaking to each other after five years of dramatic, adolescent love. The break-up is clearly implied and/or understood, but I’m a lawyer, and I can’t help but stick to the formalities. It’s the same thing with Liza. We readied the manuscript, held it like a newborn as we handed it to the post office employee, and then proceeded to check e-mail and cell phone messages incessantly. We calculated time down to the last minute, trying to guess who opened Liza's mail, at what time, and what would happen if the manuscript arrived on a Friday. Did she work on the weekend? Would she shove her desk clean when it arrived and devour our manuscript like the delicacy that it was? We built a one-sided relationship with this woman – one in which we swept off to New York to sign papers, sip champagne, and mingle with Liz Gilbert and Lauren Weisenberger, because that is clearly what happens when you actually land a literary agent. As time passed, we began to spin out scenarios that became less like new love and more like a desperate break-up. We were the raw and rejected, the what-not-to-do girls, the How to Lose an Agent Who Never Actually Represented You in 10 days girls. We refreshed our e-mail incessantly, counted the calendar days obsessively, called and hung up, called and left messages. We even spoke to her once. She was very kind, said she was looking forward to reading our work and would be back with us soon. Four years later, we have yet to receive a clear message from Liza.

But for all the insufferable waiting, the rejection, and, most importantly, the initial interest, we thank her. Oh sure, there have been agents since Liza. Agents who summarily rejected us, agents who praised our work, even an agent who gave us detailed, constructive criticism and then was kind enough to read the manuscript again after we re-wrote it entirely. Those agents have shaped our work, certainly. With them we have had our hopes raised and dashed and raised again, enough to continue writing despite full-time jobs, to continue sending The Pecking Order into the world, continue churning out short stories, blog entries, and the beginning of another novel. But it all comes back to Liza and those few scribbled words - "I'd be happy to read the first 100 pages." With her came the genesis of hope, the pursuit of a dream. For that we thank her and from her we need nothing more.

We did finally receive an e-mail response from Liza Dawson, just a few months ago. After living a lifetime of emotions in milliseconds, we opened the e-mail to find nothing there. It was as if someone just hit reply and then send, without writing any text in the message. I suppose one could argue that rejection was implied, kind of like with my high school boyfriend, but on the other hand, someone who’s really inspired by the work might actually have been too excited, too anxious, and accidentally hit send before crafting the e-mail, right? So we wrote her back. Just to make sure. And I’m sure she’ll e-mail any day now.