“But” is a Four-Letter Word

“It shows promise, but…”
“I liked it, but…”
“I had a good time, but…”
“You’re very talented, but…”

Admit it. You laughed at the title of this post till you read those examples. I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of “but”s, and none of them ever followed this pattern:

“We checked our records, but we were wrong. Your lottery ticket is the prizewinner after all.”

When Force of Habit was on sub to editors, I was on the receiving end of many “but”s. They were complimentary. They were polite. They were always professional. And they were the worst messages I ever read.

I’ve heard a lot of “but”s in my life. The guy who dumped me on my college graduation night (“I used to love you, but…”). The stage roles I didn’t land (“Your audition was very good, but…”). I often walked away from them feeling like I'd been thrown in the boxing ring with Muhammad Ali.

To be fair, while there were a lot of theater “but”s, there were also many “you got the part”s to compensate for them. And there was a wonderful contract from Midnight Ink that more than compensated for the on-sub "but"s.

My “but” compensation strategy involved chocolate and therapeutic housecleaning. One very useful takeaway from my convent years was learning to take out anger and frustration on dirty floors or walls or anything that required long, hard scrubbing.

What’s your “but” compensation strategy? I’m always on the lookout for new techniques. Because right now I’m starting to think about giving the cats a bath when the next “but” arrives--because there's always a next "but". Save me from certain injury, please!

P.S. This will be my last Inkspot post for a few months. I need to focus on book writing. I'll still be hanging around, though!

The Croton Rejection

By Joe Moore
I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago. I would get up a 4 AM, sit in a dark corner of my living room and type on something called a Magnavox VideoWriter. While my family slept, I worked away until it was time to shower and be off to my day job. For over three years I put in every spare moment, taking away from my family, friends, everything. The day came when I finished my masterpiece, an action adventure novel that I felt would knock readers on their butts. I could easily see my name on the bestseller lists just above Clive Cussler, Dale Brown, Jack Higgins, Tom Clancy, and all my heroes. It was just a matter of time before the critics would call me the next Clive-Dale-Jack-Tom guy.

I picked the biggest NY publisher of action adventure blockbusters I could find and spent countless hours tweaking my query letter. Finally, off it went. And to my amazement, I got a reply back from one of their editors asking to see my entire manuscript. Man, this writing thing was way too easy!

I printed the manuscript, packaged it up and sent it overnight costing me more in shipping than I could afford. Then I sat back, basking in the glow that my plan was on track. I was about to be rocketed into the action adventure stratosphere and worshiped far and wide.

A week went by. Two weeks. Three, then a month. I theorized that they must be passing my baby around to all the editors, marketing guys, cover artists, and publicists to see who wanted to work on the next major bestseller.

Then one day, I was working in my yard. I had thick crotons growing up against the front of my house, and it was time to trim them back. As I clipped away with the hedge cutters, I noticed a stained, yellowed shipping envelope shoved back behind the crotons. It was addressed to me and was from that big NY publisher. The mail carrier must have put it there to protect it from the weather. Checking the postmark, it had been mailed back to me less than a week after I sent the manuscript out.

I went inside, opened the package and pulled out my weather-worn, damp, rumpled, moldy pages. Written across the front of the title page in red were three words: Not for us.

I had spent 3 years working on that book and over a month fantasizing what I would do with that 6-figure advance. But with just three short words, my dreams ignited like a piece of magician's flash paper. It hurt. Even thinking back on it today, it still hurts.

Somewhere out there is a guy who decided to write “not for us” on the front of my manuscript many years ago. I’d like to thank him. Looking back, that book was not for primetime. And anytime I need a reality check, all I have to do is walk out my door and look at those crotons. They’re still growing and, hopefully, so am I.

What was your first rejection like? How did you deal with it? How long did it take to get over it and back on track?

Chop Count

My newest Darcy Cavanaugh mystery,

MAI TAI to MURDER, was released yesterday. Take a peek at the great cover by Kun Sung Chung. And the very cool back cover blurb by talented Midnight Ink copyediting diva, Michelle Krueger:

"Knives, poison, strangulation…ER nurse Darcy Cavanaugh is about to show-and-tell all kinds of deathly dos and don’ts for a mystery writers’ workshop at sea. Teaching the Nurse’s Guide to Murder seminar was a small price to pay for a Caribbean cruise in paradise. If only she didn’t have to share deck space with her boyfriend’s uptight mother! Aspiring novelist and wife to a powerful Virginia judge, Mrs. Skyler wishes her son had better breeding prospects than a redheaded Yankee from California. To make matters worse, the Skyler matriarch wants to submit her novel to a merciless agent whose biting criticism is matched only by her squawking, sailor-tongued parrot.

In a crazy twist, a real murder takes place and the judge’s wife becomes the main suspect. To protect her boyfriend’s mother, Darcy scrambles to peg the real killer from a tangled and nutty cast of desperate writers, overzealous fans, and distracting male cover models with killer abs."

It was a hoot to write this madcap parody of the publishing industry because--face it--this crazy business is fertile ground for clashes of ego, paroxysms of angst, hyper drive ambitions, and deep pits of desperation. (Who, us?)

And I loved creating the nasty, ruthless character of Theodora Kenyon, the cleaver-swinging literary agent who hosts the shipboard “CHOP or SHOP” manuscript critique session. Because we’ve all been there, right? Sending our stuff out to agents and editors, knowing that we could easily be “chopped” by rejection?

In fact, rejection is so universal to aspiring authors, that the LULU Publishing Company will (for the hefty price of 90 dollars) print your rejection letters on TOILET PAPER. Swear. They claim it will let you “put them behind you." Not that easy for the killer in MAI TAI to MURDER.

So--question of the day: How many “Chops” have you endured so far in your publishing journey? Any favorites? Any worthy of framing on your office walls?

(Gad, this sounds like that scene in “Jaws” where everyone shows their scars. Beer, anyone?)

Seriously, let's brag about our tenacity in the face of staggering odds. I’ll start:

49 rejections until I matched the right manuscript with the right agent. Can anyone beat that?