The Call—Not THAT Call—But A Call All The Same

I remember getting the call on my birthday, that I had been accepted into Eliza’s fiction writing workshop. I had heard about Eliza’s class from a successful local author, who stood before a room of wannabee writers and tossed out Eliza’s name as a way to better one’s craft, “but it’s really competitive to get in.” She looked out at the 100 or so needy faces and said— “Statistically only 3 of you will ever complete a novel.” I cringed at her words. I made a point to prove her wrong.

The timing of Eliza’s call was perfect. A few months before this, I’d handed over my completed novel, my masterpiece, to the two women in my local writer’s group for critique. It was a big deal for me to write a novel—something that spanned beyond the 800 word columns I wrote for the local paper—and I had gone over the thing many, many times—all 50,000 too short words of it.

I was sure they would find it practically flawless.

It was Judy who began her written commentary with the following:” For a first draft this is really well done…” and if I recall correctly, my face turned red and my hands went numb. First draft? WTF? This is not a First Fucking Draft!

And so I licked my wounds and did the only thing I could think to do— retreated into reading writing books. BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES & ENDS, SCENE & STRUCTURE, SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS. I began what I considered a thoughtful revision. I particularly liked Noah Lukeman’s THE FIRST FIVE PAGES, so I worked on those suckers until they shined. At some point, I signed up for a writer’s conference to have my first 20 pages critiqued by an agent—a twenty minute, $120 investment. I needed to press ahead. I needed to know if I was kidding myself with this whole writing thing.

Of course, I was incredibly nervous. I sat in the waiting room chatting with the woman who had the appointment before me. I watched her go into her meeting and I watched her come out of her meeting. I watched her say, “I hope you have more luck than I did, Liz,” as the agent, my agent, trailed behind her. A perky young thing with blonde hair, she reached out her hand to me, smiling. “You must be Liz, come on in and have a seat.”

She held my future in her mind.

I sat across from her with a frozen smile on my face. This is all I remember:

“You’re funny. This had me in hysterics!”

“You get right into it.”

“If you could just keep this level of humor up—“

"Send me the first fifty pages.”

My writing had passed the straight face test. I left the meeting ecstatic.

It seemed I was good to go for querying. So I sent out those fifty pages and then got around to sending out some more queries, often including my shiny Noah Lukeman pages in the package. I got some requests for the manuscript. And things seemed good—I was optimistic—until that day I checked my mailbox on the way to the post office to send out a request, and found those fifty pages back from Ms. Writer's Conference Agent. Across the tops she had scrawled: “Don’t have time to comment.”

And I knew—I knew—I was done.

I think I sent out 20 queries, tops. And from the requests I granted, I was lucky to receive some suggestions, actual letters of critiques and encouragement. The fact that I hadn’t been completely ignored took the sting out of the rejections. The fact that these agents had bothered to respond to me at all meant that I must have the start of something.

And then I knew—I knew—I was not done.

What I had was a FIRST DRAFT** A 50,000 word skeleton that needed bones.

Which brings me to Eliza’s class—the next step in not being done—the next step in my quest to complete a novel—a legitimate novel—one that would hopefully, some day, pass the straight face test.

……to be continued.

**Yes, Judy, you were right.

Liz