Bill Maher's New Rule: Nobel Committee Must Rename The Prize

Bill Maher's New Rule: Nobel Committee Must Rename The Prize

The Reader-Writer Covenant

In a blog posted at HuffingtonPost, Randy Susan Meyers asks, “What is the relationship between reader and writer?”  

Her answer: “I believe there should be a covenant between writer and reader. What it is that you, the writer, are offering to you, the reader? (Because I can't imagine a writer who is not also a reader.) Are you making a bargain with the reader and then keeping to it? Are you offering the reader the same qualities that you want when you're the reader? Are you offering them your very best?”

Alas, as someone who is going through the process of seeking an agent, I am painfully aware there are two other parties involved – the agent and, eventually, the publisher. Along the way, there must be offerings to them as well as to the reader.  It is a practical matter: without an agent and publisher, the covenant between writer and reader cannot be consummated.

I say this after having been rejected by thirty-five agents (yeah, par for the course). I also say this after having received some confirmation that the reader – writer covenant is more than a figment of my imagination. I asked a former writing instructor of mine, who has published several well-received novels, to review my manuscript. Her reaction:

“I first need to let you know how very much I love this book. It is exactly the sort of story I would have been thrilled by as a child. The characters are marvelous. It is playful, intelligent, imaginative, and even, at times, poignant. It functions on many levels, able to provide pleasure to both young readers and to their parents. And, ultimately, it offers a valuable message about individuality and creativity.”

Wow!  I have experienced the ultimate writer’s thrill: the visceral connection with at least one reader who loved what I had to offer. Even better, my writing instructor recommended me to her agent! (Alas, he doesn’t handle children’s books – which I understand, an agent needs to stay focused on what he does best).

Meanwhile, as I continue to query, Meyer’s observation leads me to wonder: what does the query letter have to do with the covenant?  

Let me elaborate with an additional observation from Meyers’s blog: “I want books that have dug deep, whatever the genre, and proffer those best hours of my day…Magic happens when writers tell their personal truth and dare to let their ugly out. That's when a writer has kept their covenant.”

Keeping the convent, eh? Well, one definition of the word covenant reads, come together – furtherance of cause.

Maybe I am just whining or allowing myself to be too easily discouraged – yeah, I should wait until the fiftieth rejection before feeling that way – but too often I have felt disconnected from the magic of my book during the querying odyssey. A query letter simply does not feel like a good first step for coming together in furtherance a cause – if indeed my book could ever become a cause.

Sometimes, in my darker moments, I look at my query letter and feel like a huckster, trying desperately to please an agent, any agent! I’ll use the finest clichés, proffer irresistible emotional hooks (however irrelevant to the plot) and even invent a new literary device (can I patent that?) to further my cause.

Then I realize I am perilously close to abandoning the magic and truth of my writing. If I continue on this course, I may end up like the narrator in Robert Pirsig’s Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, when he says:  “What I am is a heretic who's recanted and thereby in everyone's eyes saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin. I survive mainly by pleasing others.”

Sigh!

The Reader-Writer Covenant

One Hundred Years of Solitaire

The Demon pays homage to One Hundred Years of Solitude:

The world’s most talented and self-absorbed card player wastes his life.

One Hundred Years of Solitaire

Banned Book Week

The Demon gives a shout out to the American Library Association for their Banned Book Week project.

Banned Book Week

Obviously, my favorite section in a bookstore!

Obviously, my favorite section in a bookstore!

"The store exists for the reader, not for the publisher or the marketer.”

Here's a great article entitled, On Not Changing With the Times: How Manhattan’s Three Lives & Co. Bookstore Endures. The owner, Toby Cox,  puts it succinctly, “the store exists for the reader, not for the publisher or the marketer.”

And that's reminded me, as I send out query letter after query letter, my book exists, not for the literary agent, not for the publisher and not for the marketer - it exists for the reader.

'nuff said!

"The store exists for the reader, not for the publisher or the marketer.”

Another book cover reimagined

In an earlier post, the Demon remagined a dull book cover. Now it's time to offer an alternative to the cover for Joel Osteen's A Better You:

Another book cover reimagined

The alphabet revisited!

Normally we use pencils to write the alphabet...

but what if the pencils were the alphabet?

The alphabet revisited!

A book cover reimagined

Choose a book about a dull topic...

Tweak the cover just a little and voila!

Isn't that so much more interesting?

A book cover reimagined

George Orwell meets J.K. Rowling

Today, the Demon revisits a classic, Animal Farm:

Let's imagine a new version that combines the dystopian allegory of George Orwell with the magical imagination of J.K. Rowling...Animagus Farm!

George Orwell meets J.K. Rowling

Awful Library Books

From the blog, Awful Library Books, come these terrible tomes:

Awful Library Books

Blandness

Blindness by Jose Saramago is a fascinating tale.

So why not pay a humorous homage with the following?

 A mysterious plague causes everyone to lose their
sense of taste. Emeril Lagasse cries “Bam!” to no avail and
The Iron Chefs are reduced to nothing more than an
hour-long fury of cooking signifying nothing.

Blandness