Let Us Give Thanks

What do you get when you cross turkey, cigars, shell shock, and needles? My childhood Thanksgiving tradition, of course. For almost 20 years, my family eschewed the hyper-American ritual of dressing in Cosby-esque sweaters, gathering with extended kin, and gorging on roast beast and stuffing while the grunts and groans on the gridiron bellowed from the TV. Instead, we created our own tradition (or, more accurately, my parents did – I was too young to really have a say in such matters). Around 1984, my family and four other families decided to celebrate Thanksgiving together. The adults were a who’s who of our small town—educators and PTA presidents and business owners and lawyers and, importantly, a pharmacist, a doctor, and a nurse. That first year, sometime after dinner, when once-full wine bottles had turned into candle holders, the pharmacist, the doctor, and the nurse harangued the lone pregnant woman into taking them for a drive. They returned with more wine and . . . flu shots. The doctor and the pharmacist conversed about proper dosage, and the nurse administered a shot to each of us. Mind you, this was before flu shots were all the rage—before your local supermarket used flu shot clinics as an enticement. While we were still rubbing our shoulders, cigars appeared, courtesy of the lawyer. Those of us who had been at the kiddie table snuck outside with the adults and tried to blend into the darkness so the adults wouldn’t shoo us away. Under a haze of smoke, I heard my first Vietnam stories. My dad and the lawyer had both served during the war, but I’d never heard it mentioned at home. They joked and they laughed, but their vocal cords were strung tight. I didn’t realize until years later that my dad couldn’t talk about it with anyone but a fellow veteran—we just wouldn’t understand.

For the next two decades, each of the five families (sounds like the Godfather, doesn’t it) traded hosting duties. Sometimes one family couldn’t make it, but the tradition continued, nonetheless. Boyfriends and girlfriends came and went, some of us moved to the adult table, and I introduced first my husband, and then a third generation, to the mix. Still, the important things remained constant—turkey, cigars, Vietnam stories, and flu shots (administered in the later years by the second generation of doctors, while the second generation of lawyers nervously looked on). We haven’t had one of those Thanksgivings for 5 years. My parents divorced, most of the kids live out of the area, cigars are bad for you, and experts recommend getting the flu shot in October. But that’s okay – my husband and I have new traditions involving nephews, Santa pictures, board games, Rock Band, good red wine, and homemade bread. It’s a more standard way to celebrate the holiday, but it’s still lovely, and no one comes at me with a syringe.

Not so standard is “Jayne Lynne’s” Thanksgiving tradition. Oh yes, even though she’s only our pen name, she has her own Thanksgiving tradition. For four years, Kris and I, in Jayne Lynne’s name, have done the same thing every Thanksgiving . . . scrambled to get queries and manuscripts to the post office. The very first year of The Pecking Order, when Liza Dawson showed interest, we made ourselves sick putting the manuscript together late at night after working 16-hour days at the Firm. It was imperative that she received it before Thanksgiving, in case her tradition involved reading manuscripts by a crackling fire in Aspen. The next few years, we found ourselves somehow sending out more queries or responding to manuscript requests just before Thanksgiving. Nothing like giving yourself more to do before hosting dozens of people in your home. Last year, we reworked the manuscript at an agent’s suggestion over Thanksgiving. This year, we thought we were ahead of the game. We sent out queries in October (around the same time I got my flu shot). But, like the Velveeta commentary accompanying the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, some things never change. An agent responded this week, indicating she loved our voice, would like to read the manuscript, and might be interested in working with us on a revision. I think I now know what Jayne Lynne’s Thanksgiving tradition is all about – hope, faith, and keeping the dream alive. For the love of the Pilgrims, Hallelujah! And, whatever your tradition, blessings to you and yours.

High-Class Problems

Boy, if we had a nickel for every time someone asked us, “how do you write together?” Well, let’s just say we could buy our way into the publishing world, like Ethan Hawke or Jewel. (Though there may be some sort of monetary penalty for using that terrible “nickel” cliché.) It’s a good question, though, and at some point we’ll sit down and write (together, of course) a long, truthful answer full of insight, war stories, and a-ha moments (I’m referring to epiphanies, of course, not the awesome Norwegian pop trio). For now, let me just generalize. We write well together because we’re wired the same way. We’re both pleasers. We both thrive on order and organization (some might say we’re obsessed with order and organization, and to those people I say, let’s make a color-coded list of the salient points in your argument and address them one by one). And we both have anxiety issues.

Truthfully, to say Kris and I have anxiety issues is like saying David Beckham is kind-of-okay-looking. We’re strung higher than a boy-band falsetto. It’s tempting to blame this facet of our personality on the years spent slaving away at a big law firm. And yes, the firm, with its deadlines, impossible billable-hour requirement, partner power plays, and litigation disasters (which, as Abby will tell you in The Pecking Order, “appear out of nowhere like Midwestern tornadoes”) can surely be blamed for at least one or two of my permanent frown lines. But there’s a chicken and egg dynamic at play, as well. I think we both can now admit (after years of collective therapy and a large dose of much-needed hindsight) that we were drawn to litigation in the first place partly because of our anxious nature. We understand stress. When we were working at the firm, we bathed in stress. Stress sustained us like a drug. And, like a drug, it affected the non-firm aspects of our life. The book was no exception.

When The Pecking Order was still in its infancy, all shiny and cuddly and new, unmarred by criticism and rejection, we created anxiety. We fabricated problems which, looking back now (battle-scarred and thick-skinned by four years of rewrites, critique, refusals, and stagnancy) can only be described as high-class. I wish-I-may-wish-I-might actually have such problems today. We worried about whether the firm would sue us when our book became a success, because the fictional characters somewhat resembled our bosses and colleagues. We rented a P.O. Box near the firm so we could check it together, because we worried if we used a home address one of us would have the pleasure of reading the inevitable acceptance letter before the other. Then we worried our co-workers thought we were having a lesbian love affair because we snuck off in secret to check the box every day. When two agents showed interest at the same time, we obsessed over what to do if and when both wanted to represent us. We stayed up until 4:00 a.m. for an entire week after work, because we convinced ourselves all was lost if Liza Dawson didn’t have the manuscript on her desk before Thanksgiving. Because, you know, obviously she was going to read it on her private jet to the Bahamas or wherever fancy agents go during the holidays. We answered our phones at all hours of the day and night, during dinner, and at the movie theatre, just in case an agent had to reach us right then! We stressed about whether to take our children on the book tour with us, and what to wear on The Today Show. We fretted over the sex scenes, concerned about the impact on our mothers when the book hit the shelves.

Seriously. Sounds crazy, but at the time, these issues seemed so important, so real. The book consumed our thoughts, and created strong, sometimes irrational emotions - like a new love affair. The idea of the book was exciting, but it wasn’t grounded in reality. Now, we’ve eased into a comfortable kind of anxiety – a long-term relationship with real problems, like Liza Dawson's phantom e-mail, and the teeny-tiny little fact that we still don’t have an agent. But even these problems no longer nibble away at our stomach linings. The book stands on its own, we’re proud of it, and we’re working to get it published. If the firm sues us, we’ll deal with it. If two agents want us, we should be so lucky. If an agent gets our voicemail, he or she will leave a message (though if it's Liza, that message will no doubt be left as she's driving through a tunnel and we will be able to make out only her name). As for the sex scenes . . . Shoot, at this point we’d write porn starring our parents if it would get us published.

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.