The Call

In light of the amazing publishing news I posted last month, I want to post about different parts of the process. Mostly, that’ll entail looking back at how I got my manuscript ready for submission, but today I want to talk about the call. It’s important to me to be as transparent as possible, especially for other writers reading this.

I was home sick from work. A bug had been rampaging through my grad program, and it was my turn. So I’d gone to bed early the night before. This was a good thing, because when I woke up, I had an email from Jill McCabe Johnson, the publisher at Wandering Aengus Press, sent the night before, asking if we could find a time for a call so she could ask me something.

After running through about fifty-three thousand possibilities, I settled on suspecting what she wanted to discuss would be something like, “We’d like to publish your book, but…” I couldn’t imagine she wanted to call me just to reject me–I remembered how when I was applying to medical school, a call meant you were getting in, and if they wanted to reject you they’d do it with an email or a notification posted in their online portal–and the need to ask me something wouldn’t likely apply to a straight-up acceptance.

Mostly, I was shocked that they could have an answer for me so quickly. I’d expected to wait until April, at least.

When we finally connected on the phone, a few hours that felt like centuries later, it turned out my mental deductions were spot on. It was a “Yes, but…” call. I’d split my manuscript into four sections: Part 1 with five essays, Part 2 with four essays, Part 3 with three essays, and Part 4 with two essays. The nonfiction editors had loved the first section more than the rest and wanted to publish just Part 1.

As Jill talked, the book morphed quickly in my mind, but what I saw wasn’t just Part 1, but Part 1 with the two essays from part 4. The last two essays were admittedly my favorite children. I’d saved them for last to be the closers, but I could also see that maybe they’d been drowned out by parts 2 and 3, which were already jettisoning in my mind.

And I countered. I still can’t believe I did that. My longest dream was coming true and I was pushing back. Anyone who knows me knows how conflict avoidant I am. But I had to try. I knew even if WAP rejected my counter offer, I would go forward with Part 1 only. I wasn’t going to turn it down, no way no how, but a new vision of the book crystallized for me instantly and I wanted to at least float the idea. So I proposed a book of seven essays, which felt righter length-wise, and that we get rid of section dividers.

Jill agreed to run this by her nonfiction team, and I told her I’d sign on either way, and we moved forward with all the details and she sent me the contract.

Later that night, Jill emailed that both of her nonfiction editors were in support of including the last two essays. I was glad I’d asked, glad I’d been in possession of my faculties enough to even think of it. I’d advocated for my favorite children, and it’d paid off.

All that day, I was in a daze. It was probably part illness and part shock. I couldn’t sleep that night. My mind was racing with excitement and elation and nerves. The next morning, I woke up feeling sicker, and part of that was surely because of how poorly I slept.

I went to my first writers conference in 2007. It was an amazing experience, and it was the first post on my old blogspot, which I later imported here. This actually ended up being the only writers conference of this kind (where you pitch to editors and agents) I ever attended – they’re expensive.

While I was there, I watched and listened to panels and met with writers. A lot of people talked about what it felt like when their first book got accepted for publication. Not the book launch itself, but the call, the email, the news. I got anticapatorily teary-eyed imagining that one day that would be.

I never expected it to take eighteen years. And to be fair, I’ve done almost no book-length submission between the couple months following that conference and this past January, but still my anticipatory teary feelings were spot-on accurate.

And, I must say, the real thing is so much better than all the imaginings.

Song Note: This post title comes (loosely) from the song “Parasol” by Tori Amos, the opening track from The Beekeeper.