Aug
21

And Life is Like a Song.

I am typing this from my death sick bed. My head is hot and throbbing, my sinuses leaden. I can’t breathe. My voice is barely audible, and trying to talk sends me into a fit of coughing, not that this stops me from occasionally croaking “EBENEEZER SCROOOOOOGE!” for sport, because I am easily amused. In fact, I think that should go on my headstone:

ALEXA STEVENSON

10-31-1979 to (I’m just guessing here) 08-21-2009

SHE WAS EASILY AMUSED

My throat requires the continuous presence of Ricola drops, the big, square, no-nonsense kind that taste exactly like what they’re made of, things like “elder” and “horehound.” I slept with these drops in my mouth all night, despite the obvious choking hazard, and still it took two tranquilizers and a bank of fortifying pillows to lull me to sleep. I am SICK, is what I am saying, and yet I am fairly oozing with—among other, less attractive, things—delirious, disbelieving joy.

I sold my book.
I SOLD my BOOK.
I SOLD! MY BOOK!

It will be in stores. Book stores. Right smack up against other books, by authors. It will have a cover, and pages, and some sort of barcode or something so that you can buy it, which you will all do immediately, of course. And it will be out sometime next year, though I don’t yet know my official pub date. “Pub date” is lingo we use in The Biz (that’s short for “the business”) (Of publishing). It means “publication date.”
I know! So much to learn! Are you writing all this down?

I got the offer a week ago, but then one must work out the details, and by “one,” I mean Danielle, the one whose response to the offer wasn’t to shriek “IT WILL BE IN STORES!” but rather to make sure I got a reasonable deadline—I still have to finish writing said book, you see—and was paid. If I had been drawing up the contract it would have said something about the party of the first part publishing the book of the party of the second part and putting it IN STORES. Book stores. And that would have been that, which is why God created agents.

But now it’s official. I thought about waiting even longer, until I had signed a physical piece of paper and locked it in a safe deposit box somewhere, but as Stefanie said, “It’s not like you had unprotected sex at the right time. You’ve seen two lines. It’s happening.” As an infertile who’s had three miscarriages and a stillbirth, the “two lines” analogy wasn’t the comfort it might have been, but I see her point. As of yesterday, I am free to shout it from the rooftops. Which I fully intend to do, as soon as I’m well enough to climb up there.

This morning, the following appeared in the Publisher’s Marketplace deal section, and I think I’d like to have the issue bronzed, like a baby shoe:

NON-FICTION: MEMOIR
Flotsam blogger Alexa Stevenson’s HALF BAKED, an irreverent memoir of life-long anxiety, with a focus on the author’s thirties which are visited by the dramatic triad of infertility, a miraculous pregnancy, and a preemie baby…

{Yes, initially I had the same reaction you did—thirties? Do they know something I don’t? Please tell me I’m not going to be visited by yet ANOTHER dramatic triad! But I think it is just that my wrinkly hands and fondness for puns confuse people into thinking I’m older than I am. Frankly, I haven’t felt a day under thirty since about the fifth grade, so they may be on to something.}

The submission process is emotionally disorienting. People are wildly enthusiastic, and then ultimately reject you, and this happens again and again. You are delightful, but unmarketable. Mothers are “out” this year. If it’s not about motherhood, what IS it about? What if it were altogether different? Could you try that instead?

It doesn’t take long before you start to wonder: am I doing the right thing? Am I writing the right book? Should I change it in this way or that way? What do I really want? Is it to sign with a prestigious house? Is it to make money? Is it to tell a story, and hey, what story was that again?
I think these questions ultimately strengthened the book, but it was exhausting. I was lucky enough, in the end, to find an editor who is not just excited by the project, but who, like Danielle, gets it, gets what Kate and I talked about at BlogHer—the tangle of comedy and tragedy in places where it seems like they oughtn’t to mix.

Incidentally, while I quite like the title, there is concern by some that it will be misunderstood, so I am trying to come up with a subtitle to clarify. All I’ve got so far is “Half Baked: THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT MARIJUANA (or pie!),” so if you have subtitle ideas, please send them along, and I will think of some suitable prize if I use one.
(Weed, probably.)
(Kidding!)
(Pie.)

Finally, I want you to know that the book will not be regurgitated blog entries. Obviously. Even had I wanted to do that sort of thing, which I did not, I don’t post often enough, and thus the story would have been full of holes, and also none of the links would work. This is not to say I won’t cannibalize a paragraph here or there, but while I may cover familiar events, it is with NEW material, and hopefully much better written material, at that. The book has a greater narrative scope and a cohesion that is different from the sort of diary I keep here.
I really, really, really hope you like it.

Now I writewritewrite, and the cover and such get decided upon, and then little salesmen go traveling around to bookstores to entice them to order many copies, and I know you think I’m kidding, but it’s true. There are actual, physical salespeople who actually, physically travel to the stores in their territories to sell the books on their publisher’s list, and if that isn’t the cutest thing you’ve ever heard, well, I can’t help you. So, if you see a dusty little man trudging down the road with a case of memoir samples, offer him some lemonade from me, won’t you?

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |