Book Deal!
In third grade I wrote this really hideous poetry. There was a poetry book in my classroom, and I’d look in the Table of Contents for titles of poems, then write my own based on each title. I can recite at least one from memory. You be the judge:
THE DRAGONFLY
“Sam? A dragonfly?”
Said my dog as we passed by.
“Why Sam is so helpful that,”
Quote said my cat,
“He is in love with a bat.”
Thank you, thank you, please hold your applause.
Then in fifth grade I had the enormous good fortune of getting Mr. George as a teacher. By then I was writing a little better–I had switched to prose, which seemed to help–and Mr. George always liked my stories and had me read them out loud. The stories usually involved a girl named Jane and her talking animals–dog, bird, etc.–and they would go solve mysteries a la Scooby Doo.
Mr. George did the greatest thing for me at the end of the school year. He gave me the latest version of Writer’s Market, along with a note (which I kept) saying he looked forward to reading my books in the future.
The future is today. Or is at least starting today.
I don’t know if Mr. George is alive anymore. I tried to find him recently, but the school district doesn’t have information going that far back (come on–not that far back), but I’ll keep trying. Because today I got (drum roll)
MY VERY FIRST BOOK DEAL. EVER. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS. OMG.
I now have a two-book deal with Knopf/Random House, starting with my novel The Theory of Evolution, which I believe will be published in Fall, 2007. Stay tuned.
The thing that’s so great about all of this is I spent many years trying to avoid it.
I did “practical” things. I wanted to major in English in college, but I kept switching to left-brained stuff like accounting and computer science. I switched my major eight times. I finally ended up back in English, duh, like I always should have.
Then instead of going for my Master’s in English, I did the next practical thing, which was go to law school. But I should have known something was up when instead of studying for finals every semester, I ended up spending all my time writing the school’s comedy show. Hmmm . . .
Once I graduated I had to pretend to be a lawyer for a while, and that lasted more than a few years, until it finally occurred to me as I drove to work one morning feeling like I was going to throw up all over my car, that maybe I wasn’t cut out for a life where I woke up every day just to go fight with people. A lot of lawyers love their jobs and don’t take them personally. Me? Not.
So I quit the law and had to find something else to do to avoid being a writer, so I started my own business and ran that for a while. And that was fine until I started noticing that in all my free time I was still writing, even getting magazine articles published, and there’s only so long you can keep avoiding your real life before you finally can’t take it anymore.
So I quit everything. Closed the business, stopped socializing, stopped bathing (kidding) (mostly), took to my computer and just wrote, wrote, wrote.
And wrote some more.
And now, just like they always said would happen, hard work and persistence has paid off.
Why do people find that so boring? Some people like to act like I’ve won the lottery–”You’re getting a book published? Lucky!” Not lucky. Just really, really stubborn. And always hopeful. Plus, I happen to love writing so much, I’d do this (and have) even when people weren’t reading it or paying me for it. Some people love to surf, some to whittle, some to trade stocks and bonds, I love to write. So it’s especially wonderful now to have a place to send it and to know that somewhere in the not-so-distant future anyone who wants to can read it.
Many, many thanks to my agent, Laura Rennert, and to my new editor, Michelle Frey at Knopf. Please don’t tell them about the poetry. It would so change their minds.
Technorati Tags: Writing, Publishing
Robin Brande is my new favorite author. Rah! Congrats!