Looking For Love?

The reason people get a dog is they want something to love them. They might also want to love something but those are two sides of the same biscuit. Dogs satisfy a human need and sometimes they do it better than other humans do. Or, at least, more reliably.

In fact, you don't even have to do much for a dog to love you. You just have to be that dog's person.

How much a person needs love can be reflected in their dog situation. Some people who need a lot of love get a lot of dogs, but it isn't necessary. They could just get one Golden Retriever. Because some dogs, like Golden Retrievers, need our love more than other dogs. Our old dog, for instance, was perfectly suited to us. Our dog loved us and enjoyed our company and also enjoyed the company of anyone willing to share their breakfast, so she wasn't an exclusive sort of dog. And we didn't want to be looking after our dog's emotional needs every second of the day. 

 

We spent a lot of time training her when she was a pup. She trotted at heel without a lead, sat when we stopped, stayed when we told her to stay, and came when we called every single time, even if she didn't really want to. What we didn't think to teach her was "Don't climb the fence paw-over-paw" because we didn't think she could do that. But a five-foot fence was no impediment whatsoever to a twelve-inch dog if she was on one side of it and the neighbor's plate of sausage and biscuits was on the other side.

She took care of her own needs.

And--this is probably telling--we didn't necessarily notice when she was missing. Once, during fireworks season, which used to last three months around here, Dave's mom called from a mile down the hill. "Is Boomer with you?" she said, and we said Yeah, we think so, although we couldn't actually lay eyes on her right that second. "Because I think she's at my back door," she said. And she was.

It was a little embarrassing the number of times people returned our dog to us when we didn't know she needed returning.

Anyway we were emotionally a good fit. A Golden Retriever would have been too much dog, needing too much affection. On the other side of the scale, there was my friend Fred, who lived with a perfectly wretched bunwad of a Pekingese, a flat-fronted wheezer with an asthmatic growl, a dog that would sneak up on you just to staple you with its face. Sometimes it bit Fred. "Why do you like that dog?" we asked, because he did, and he said "Well, if this dog likes you, you know you're really special." And after its own fashion, that dog did like Fred. Fred was chewy.

People have different emotional needs. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to get a dog so something loves you. In fact, it's the best reason. You shouldn't get a dog to threaten other people. Or to guard the yard on a long chain. Or to match your purse.

But if you really want affection, if you really need affirmation from across the globe, if you want to be an object of desire, if you want to get fan mail all day long and be pursued by millions, without feeling any obligation to reciprocate? Skip the dog.

Become a literary agent.

Fish On!

I recently wrote about fishing, and how it's just like life--because maybe nothing at all will happen, but maybe something exciting will happen in the very next second, and you just never know. That also makes it like diarrhea. Here's what fishing is even more like: finding a literary agent.

You can grab your best pole (fishing pole, guys) and fling that baby out there time after time after time, and a lot of the time you reel it back in and there's nothing but weeds on the line, or you think you get a big bite and it turns out you're snagged on a log, or you get your hook stuck in the tree behind you on the back-cast (that would be when you write a masterful query letter to one agency only to realize you have addressed it to an agent in a whole different agency), or, most often, you do this for weeks and months on end and hear nothing at all. And after you've done this enough times, you begin to wonder about your worm (fishing worm, guys). It was a nice stout worm when you

started casting, pink, eager, and wriggly, but now it's kind of sad and unappetizing, and you start thinking maybe  you aren't a good judge of worms. You start thinking, maybe there's something wrong with this worm. Maybe it's, like, the worst worm in the world. All raggedy-ass and bloated with too long of a preface and not much of an arc and an over-reliance on adverbs and little yellow bits gooshing out of it. That kind of worm. Or maybe you don't have a good hook.

But you keep casting, because every now and then you get a nice bite and you can play it for a while.

I've tried to get representation for more than one book. I've got two novel manuscripts all ready to go. But most recently I tried querying agents for the most recent one I've written, a humor book about birds.  Things started out pretty well. A lovely woman with her own agency and a professed fondness for birds told me, Listen. You're a marvelous writer. My colleague read your sample chapters and said "I'd read anything this woman writes." I just have no idea how to position this. Is it a bird book, or is it a humor book?

Um. It's a funny book about birds?

She squinched up her face. That's not a thing.

I didn't ask why a person would say they'd read anything I wrote, but not have any idea why anyone else would want to.

Humor is a weird genre. You can't even reliably put it in the non-fiction category. I mean, I've got a lot of really good information about birds in my book, but if I tell you that an ornithologist once rendered two-thirds of a DeSoto through a working turkey before being fatally pecked, well--you can't necessarily take that to the bank. Although it's a lot closer to the truth than you might think.

It takes a certain amount of confidence to keep plunking away with an obviously defective worm. The kind of confidence you get when your beloved blog readers keep saying nice things about you, no matter what. So you spruce up you worm and drop it back into the big, dark lake. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the pole just bends over.

Yes, friends, I have an agent! Her name is Barbara Poelle, from the Irene Goodman Literary Agency, and you may all refer to her as Ma'am Yes Ma'am. And I don't want to say I was (finally) a genius about this or anything, but I really did choose to query her for a whole different reason than I did the others. What I'd been doing is going methodically through the list of agents who were looking for "humor" and maybe "science/nature." Barbara represents fiction, almost entirely. But she claimed she'd look at anything that had a unique voice. And when I looked her up on the internets, I will be damned: she was funny. She, personally, was funny. And I took a shot.  I can work with a funny person. Turns out, so can she.

This doesn't mean I've got a book coming out, but it puts me a lot closer, and I owe it all to you guys for keeping my spirits up. Well, not all.

The Volunteer

Volunteer Food

I decided to attend the Willamette Writers Conference on the cheap by volunteering. When you volunteer, you work for half a day and have the other half free to attend workshops, pitch to agents, hob and nob. There's even a rumor that the agents like to mill about in the cocktail lounge and they can be accosted there. That seems like a terrific plan if your object is to annoy your quarry.

For two days I was assigned to be a "Floater in the Pit," which sounds like something I've seen almost every morning of my life. Also, I'm naturally buoyant: I figured it would be a snap. The Pit is the room in which the agents are quarantined, and at fifteen-minute intervals a new crop of carnivores is let into the room to pitch their novels and screenplays to them. Among other things, the floater mans the gates and helps with the herding, and chases down agents who manage to escape. The floater also has the opportunity to memorize the faces of individual agents to pester later. It's a plum job.

The Volunteer is also expected to help with any problems that come up and assist conference attendees. She is able to answer all manner of questions simply by donning a magic black vest with STAFF printed on the back, which transforms her perplexity into knowledge. My own vest didn't appear to come pre-loaded with knowledge, but I was soon able to helpfully point at other people: talk to him.

So it was all going well until the day I was directed to sit at one of the computers and help people purchase or change pitching opportunities. Everyone agreed the system software was virtually foolproof, but I am sixty years old, and I know what "virtually" means, and was prepared to demonstrate it. I replaced an even older woman who was wearing a look of abject terror and departed the scene with an alacrity you don't normally see in someone of that vintage. I sat down, logged in with my name, and called for my first victim. The software was indeed smooth. I felt young again.

Specifically, I felt the age I was when I got my first computer. Remember how you'd type something up and try to move things around and all of a sudden your page vanishes utterly? And how you keep punching buttons until all your documents and websites are whipping around in an invisible cyclone and you have no idea how to holler them back? And you burst into tears, abundantly and often? That age.

My first victim wanted to cancel one pitching appointment and buy two more. I'd make some progress

and then the screen would disappear. I couldn't find the end of the string to pull to haul it back again. I wasn't sure if I'd accomplished anything so I'd click on things twice, or harder. By the end of the process, I couldn't tell if I'd charged him five thousand dollars, failed to secure his appointment at all, or ordered him an XL tunic in seafoam green. There was a long line waiting. I began to have heart palpitations.

It took about an hour to get the hang of it, and then only if it was an easy transaction. But sometimes people would show up and ask to cancel three appointments, switch two more, and scoop up some new ones, and then ask for a refund because they'd missed one yesterday but it wasn't their fault because their cat had pooped in their shoes that morning, and wasn't there a way to get more agents representing Middle Grade S&M? And I'd say, oh, honey. You are SO in the wrong line.

Fortunately I was soon back in my floater position. Helping people out. Giving directions, soothing the nervous. "I don't think I can go through with my pitch today," one woman whispered, quivering. I gave her shoulder a squeeze.

"You can do it! Hey, what's the worst that could happen?"

"I could throw up," she said.

Something about this scenario seemed well within the bailiwick of the Floater.

"Talk to him," I said, pointing.

Position This

Listen. We're so excited to have you on our team. We're all so excited about this novel! It's for a niche market for sure, but we're very confident we can position this. We're just now running your manuscript through Editmaster to get all your adverbs stripped out. So it's time to talk marketing.

Oh good--I was wondering where you were going to send me on the book tour.

We send you! We send you? Omigod, you're precious. Now, we certainly want to encourage you to do as many readings as you can. And keep in mind it doesn't have to be in a book store. It could be in a coffeehouse. It could be in the subway. Use your imagination. How's your platform coming along?

Platform?

You mentioned you started a blog. How's it tracking?

I haven't thought of anything to put in it yet.

Oh that's easy. Just break it down into thirds. You have a cat?

I do.

That's one-third right there. How easy is that? And then for the second third you can do rants, you know, things that happened to you in the parking lot, or the grocery store line, etc., etc., or you could take pictures of what you had for dinner--or both, you could divide the second third into two, and that would make it, what, fourths?

Not even. Evenly. Sorry for the adverb.

So then that leaves you the last third for building buzz for your book. You don't want to hit this too hard. You want to bring them in for the cat pictures and then make sure they know you have a book coming out. You want to make them yearn for that book. Little excerpts, or mini-stories featuring your main characters. You could even have a little weekly feature, "what would Mrs. Cartwright do?" You know, set up a scene, and then ask your readers what they'd do if they were in Mrs. Cartwright's sensible shoes. They're going to know Mrs. Cartwright. They're invested in Mrs. Cartwright.

I guess...

And then you'll need a twitter account. You're going to want to put in at least five tweets a day. I can see that look right over the phone, missy! Listen, you don't have to like it. You just have to do it. I'm going to ask you to grow up a little and do your part. It's easy peasy. You can set them up to fire off in advance.

I don't even get why anyone looks at twitter. I just don't get it.

Doesn't matter. It's easy peasy. One of your daily tweets could be linking to someone else's cat picture. That's 20% right there. 

I don't know.

Or, I know! You say you don't like twitter, so out-twitter them! The heck with 140 characters. You're a word person, right?

I guess.

You could do your favorite words.

You mean, verbs?

Verbs, sure! You like verbs, you get known for your verbs. Put in five tweets a day, all single verbs. Plummet. Honk. Wangle. Pretty soon, you've got people wondering, what is this girl up to? And then they start to figure it out. They're all verbs! Now you're the Verb Lady.

I am?

You are! And then with Facebook, that's easy. Just set aside a half hour a day to comment on other people's threads. Pretty soon their friends know your name even if they're not your friends. Start to work it into conversations. "Well, call me the verb lady--but that cat of yours sure knows how to sashay."

I don't know.

And ask everyone to like your book page.

Really?

Oh, honey. They don't have to like it, they just need to "like" it. Trust me, darling. Now. Can you dance?

Can I what?

Dance. Doesn't matter. Even if you can't dance, it can be cute. In fact, it's even cuter. There you are, dancing kind of wacky, and people start to notice. I mean, lots of people have videos of themselves dancing. But bad dancing? Those are the ones that get shared.

Where am I dancing?

Oh, use your imagination. Manhole cover? City Hall? Mt. Rushmore? There you are, just hopping in circles on one foot, flapping your arms. It's your signature. People will wonder where you'll show up next. Ooo! You said you have a cat. Can you hold your cat up in the air and hop around on one foot?

Maybe once.

No, we need consistency. Think. What else?

I have chickens.

Yes! You're a creative genius, that's why we love you! Hopping around on one foot holding a chicken above your head! Omigod, that's perfect. You'll be the chicken lady. The Chicken Verb Lady.

I don't see what this has to do with my novel.

It has to do with buzz, my darling girl. You're building buzz. Before long, people are wondering, where is the Chicken Verb Lady going to dance next? Can we get a picture of the two of us together and put it on Facebook?

But my novel has nothing to do with chickens.

It has nothing to do with vampires, either, darling, but we're publishing it anyway. We're going out on a total limb for you, sweet cheeks, don't forget that. Try to work with us here.

I'm sorry. I'll try. But my novel is about two sisters who grow apart and then realize that their differences are just two sides of the same coin of contending with their difficult mother, and they come to an uneasy truce over her long-term care.

[silence]

And at the end there is some intimation that their own daughters are falling into the same patterns. Are you still there?

Okay, we don't want to stress all that. We're trying to build buzz for your book, not put people to sleep! All right. I think this market plan is shaping up. We've got six months before the book comes out, plenty of time to get this show on the road. Whenever anyone Googles "dancing chicken verb lady" they'll get sent right to your book page. Your blurbs, we'll have a bit of flash animation of you dancing with the chicken across the top. Oh! And we'll send you to the World Series.

I love baseball! You're sending me to the World Series?

There's nothing in the marketing budget for airfare or tickets or anything. So you get to the World Series somehow and you make your way down to the first base line and hop around on one foot with your chicken in front of the dugout. Everyone in America will see you. I think we can get Publicity to cut loose enough money to set you up with a hotel room.

That's it?

We can probably get enough out of Legal for your bail. But not too soon! Buzz, baby, buzz!

I Got Yer Content Right Here

I'm fresh off the Willamette Writer's Conference here in Portland, where upwards of 800 other brilliant, ignored writers convened to learn the intricacies of subplots, polish their prose, and conspire to make sure no agent enjoyed an unmolested moment. Every attendee harboring a screenplay or a novel was desperate to find that one missing piece: the champion that would recognize the worth of her output and grease her path to acclaim. We are writers, with massive if mythical audiences, and we lack only the final link of representation to stand in the golden sunbeam of glory that is our due.

Well, close. Turns out we are content producers, and we lack only the will to tweet. In workshop after workshop we were implored to become web wranglers, riding the range of publicity and gathering our herds. Today we tweet! Tomorrow we will honk, or gabble, or yawp, or chase whatever tumbleweed will have replaced Twitter after it rolls out of favor. The news left the cohort in my general age group a little deflated. Our brains have changed since the days they were open to learning. They have already undergone a sort of fossilization process wherein the soft young spongy parts are gradually ossified into kernels of rigidity and grumpiness. All right, tweet we shall, if tweet we must. But there's a daunting array of buttons to push to make this happen and we're not at all clear about how this is supposed to work anyway. I did what comes naturally when I'm faced with a lot of stuff I don't understand. I retreated to something I did understand. I went off to take a dump. The toilet has always been the scene of some of my most reliable content production.

The bathrooms at the Sheraton are shiny and clean and freakishly eager. Anything you walk by is liable to go off. Paper towels grope towards you, water shoots out and soap oozes and beckons. I tried waving my hands in front of the mirror but my youth and acuity did not return. I chose a stall and sat down to ponder my literary fate. When I got up again to recombobulate my underwear, the toilet flushed for me. I should be grateful, but I am disturbed. I prefer to be more closely in charge of the flushing decision. There is only a thin line to cross before my appliances begin to judge me, and I get enough of that attitude from my computer. Worse, the toilet made only a half-hearted horking hairball sound. It was a premature evacuation; it didn't quite do the job. So I looked for a handle or button.

No handle or button. Obviously some kind of movement, other than the one I was trying to get rid of, was required. I waved at the back of the toilet. Nothing. I turned around in the stall. Nothing. I tried replicating the original motion of backing into the toilet. Nothing. I waggled my fanny at it as though I meant business. It was unimpressed.

There's something about this situation. Even though I was the producer of the contents of the toilet bowl, and had been in their immediate vicinity not a minute earlier, somehow I was loath to actually sit back down on the seat. Evidently we achieve emotional separation from our effluent very quickly, because I was now looking at it as though someone else were to blame. I did a version of the chicken dance and prepared to give up, timing my exit such that there would be no witnesses. But in the act of opening the stall door, the toilet, which is probably still chuckling with its buddies at its own convention, went ahead and finished the job. "And then I got her to waggle her fanny at me," it says, munching on a toilet cake. "Dude," its buddies say.

The fact is, there are certain things, and one thing in particular, for which you want your home toilet. Your home toilet might not be as good, but you're familiar with it. You have mastered the details of handle-jiggling and the toilet's own digestive limitations. And if something goes wrong, it's just between you and your plunger, and no one else needs to know. One of our toilets is delicate. The handle is more of a nipple and needs to be stroked upwards with a precise degree of care. Strangers using this toilet are more apt to yank on the handle, causing them instant regret and an intense yearning for their own home toilets.

There is no reason to expect the toilets at the Sheraton to stay mired in the past just to soothe my aging sensibilities. Time marches on, in the writing and plumbing worlds. I might think my shit is good, but I'm going to have to learn where all the new buttons are to get it to go anywhere.