The Query

My motto for this particular trip has been: Do It Differently. I didn't know what exactly I would do differently, I only knew that however I had been doing it - whatever IT was - wasn't working.

I used to mail out dozens of queries; this time I mailed out six. I used to check the mail eagerly every day; this time I let my wife get the mail. For my last novel, after nine months of trying and not succeeding to get an agent, I gave the book up for dead; for this novel, as of this writing, I have been querying agents eight months, and I feel as though I am just getting started.

As usual there is this: One agent liked the first three chapters and wanted to see more; another agent read the first three chapters and thought I should look for a writing class. I point this out not to show how clueless some agents are, but rather to remind everyone, from agents to editors to writers, that Life itself, not just publishing, is about preference and making choices, and while we would all LIKE to believe that our preferences are somehow unassailable, the plain fact remains that you wouldn't have to search long and hard to find someone who disagreed with you about your most dearly held belief, be it philosophical, political, or aesthetic - and that someone might very well be a good friend.

Pessimisstic? Not at all. Rather, it is critically important, in this sort of endless round of first dates, to remember the vast subjectivity of the process. Ask yourself, for instance, how many books you've read that, if you'd been an agent, you might have rejected.

How It Began

Before I can get to the long story that is the selling of The Teacher, here is a brief outline of how it came into being.

This is not my first novel. In fact, it is my sixth. It is, however, the first novel I have written in the first person, the first novel I have written that is conspicuously autobiographical, and the first novel during whose writing I ever thought, "I am so glad I get to write this novel." It certainly wasn't easy to write, but it was also the first story I have ever penned where I felt I was the only one on the planet qualified to tell it. So I did.

As I said, it wasn't easy. I broke out in hives after writing one particular sentence, I got strep throat twice, my back went out, and my sleep was intermittent. And I had never been happier.

Almost as soon as I started writing it, I thought, "No one will ever want to read this." This was very smart. It was a good trick to let me write it without worrying what anyone else would think about it. Once I was done writing it, however, I decided that since I liked it, there was a chance that someone else might like it too.

It was my goal, after all, to share the story. That's why I write them, that's why I tell them to my friends and family. The beautiful thing about sharing a story is that once it has left your lips or your fingertips, it is no longer yours exclusively, it belongs to the Mind of Man, because everyone consumes it and retells it in just their own way.

Here then, is my story of a story. If you're an old hand, then read and commiserate; if you're newer to the game, perhaps there are some lessons to be learned. Regardless, this is a story of how I learned to rely on perseverance and faith, the only two things you can depend on in this otherwise shifty business.