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Notice, I left the gate open.
I was rewriting old novels, editing. I don’t know if they’re real novels or practice ones, so far, they haven’t caught an agent's attention. Some say it’s harder to get an agent than it is to write the book in the first place, or even to get a publisher. But folks, if you are a writer, remember most of the books that make it have been rejected numerous times, even Harry Potter. Can you imagine those agents who rejected Harry Potter crying in their soup nightly because they missed it? Fifteen percent of a zillion bucks is what? Probably a billion.
About 20 years ago, when we lived in California, I took a workshop from a Screenplay agent in LA. At the time, my daughter and I were toying with a script. That agent, with her young daughter standing beside her the entire talk, said that agents invite a bunch of creative writing students to go through the slush pile. (Their stack of unsolicited manuscripts). First, they set them all in a room, throw in a pizza and packet of rejection slips, and lock the door.
That’s it.
I suspect it’s about the same with books. Maybe it has changed since publishers have more competition now that many authors are self-publishing their books and Indie publishers have best-sellers. I have the problem of thinking that few people want to spend the money on books with price tags publishers demand, but readers of Harry Potter must have forked out that money when the Harry Potter books were first released. And hey, who doesn’t want to believe in magic?
The success of JK Rowling and Harry Potter are not to be tampered with.
I don’t know why I began this blog as I did. I guess I am following my own advice to my grandson. Just begin writing, I told him, and see where it takes you.
He came up with a brilliant idea but doesn’t know how to implement it. He had compared what he calls “Culture,” meaning the youth of today, which includes artists, furies, Trans, and computer game creators, with religion. He says both wanted to give the people hope, and while religion says you can have it, you can find God, peace, salvation, all of those, he says Culture wants the same, but they believe it’s impossible.
That was so sad, a defeatist attitude, to want to express yourself only to believe you will never be successful at it.
That is the legacy we have given our young people.
He says he wants to give people HOPE.
That’s what I want too.
When I was editing those novels, and at home discussing theme, plot, the deciding moment, and the old saying that without conflict you have no story, I thought, I need to write a new book maybe it will hit the refresh button on my brain.
What if I, instead of following the convention that you must put your protagonist through hell, write a book where things work out? Yeah, yeah, I know, one must struggle first before events work out. But isn’t hope what we want? Don’t we want to believe that good is waiting for us—that life will get better? And what about attitude and the belief that much is accomplished with a glad heart? Did we lose sight of those?
Is that boring? Think of the book Chicken Soup for the Soul. It stayed on the Best Seller List for 4 years. What about Robert Fulghum's book, Everything I Know I Learned in Kindergarten which stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for two years. And I loved the recent book Theo of Golden, basically uplifting—not that people didn’t have troubles, or were sad, but it was enchanting. You think people don’t want good news?
Every time I open my computer, it spits something depressing at me. I’m tired of the Government's rabble. I’m tired bitching, snipping, and arguing. I want something that shows the goodness in people.
