GONE ARE THE DAYS - PUBLISHING IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

        CONTINUING MY ATTEMPT TO PUBLISH A MEMOIR

Many of you Gatherers have been following my progress -or lack of it -in attempting to publish my memoir. I have done this not only because I find my odyssey to be an interesting story in and of itself but also because many of you are also aspiring writers who too wish to be published by a major publishing house. Perhaps in following my journey from idea to competed memoir, to finding an editor/agent, to submitting four proposals and receiving four encouraging but ultimately failed rejections you might be better prepared than I was in knowing what is likely to be in store for you.

CONTEXT AND CONTENT:

My memoir is derived from journal notes I kept as the self appointed scribe of Odyssey House - an innovative therapeutic community treating heroin addicts - in New York City from October, 1967 through April of l969. As a budding psychotherapist I was hired to be a psychologist on staff and was promoted to the title of Assistant Director.

For the first few months I was enthralled with virtually everything about my job working with like minded professionals and ex addicts on the front lines of the "war on addiction'. It was truly an idealists dream come true. However as events unfolded there came to be a totally unexpected dark side in the community which stirred major doubts, not only about the quality of the progam and especially its psychiatrist/lawyer director, but about my sense of reality as well.

Leaving after 17 months propelled me into an eleven year psychoanalysis 3 times a week, on the couch with no insurance. For the first two years I was preoccupied with fantasies of revenge. My wise analyst suggested I first work through my conflicts and when I could sufficiently differentiate what was the organizations problems from what were my own then I could attempt to objectify this life defining experience in a book.  

It has taken twenty five plus years to have reached the point where I feel I have done literary justice to this most complicated personal and professional life defining experience. The proposed title of my book was: SMACK IN THE MIDDLE: MY ODYSSEY TREATING HEROIN ADDICTS IN THE SIXTIES - A MEMOIR - Completion of step I.

Step II was finding an agent/editor who could help me to at least get guaranteed readings with top tier publishing houses, and guide me in making critically important judgments concerning structure, balance, pacing, dialogue, chacterization, and the like. Perhaps most important is preparing an effective submission package to entice a prospective publisher to give me a contract.

Step III was deciding on what publishers to send the manuscript to that might be expected to best resonate to the material. I include in this step the passage of time waiting for the verdicts to be handed down - in my case all essentially negative. 

Step IV has been bearing up under the strain of the disappointment that rejection, even if encouraging, is in fact discouraging. This is particularly so if what is said in the way of a brief note is both hopeful and vague.

All four publishers felt my work was "compelling" with three of them adding "but we don't love it enough." {Ok - I concede the point but what is it I have to do to be lovable enough?}

The net result of the rejections was to deflate the intensity of my high excitement making me aware that publishing my memoir is like being in war in Iraq. That is, whereas I hoped that my own brand of "shock and awe" would net me a quick contract, the reality is that although victory may still come, I had better be prepared for a lengthy campaign of  'house to house' struggle.

Step V has been to regroup carefully reading between the few lines we received to see if we could tighten and refocus the proposals to increase our chances for probable success.

We decided there are four areas  we could rework. These are:

• Relevance - To show how treatment of  addicts thirty five years ago is still relevant today.
• Authenticity - To underscore the fact that the content of my odyssey is derived from verbatim diary notes.
• Marketing - To spell out in small detail how the publisher might profitably utilize my 85 page marketing plan.
• Re title - to change the first few words of the title {SMACK IN THE MIDDLE - although catchy is perhaps too ambiguous} to INSIDE REHAB - which says precisely what the essence of my odyssey is all about. The odds are that if accepted the publisher may well change the title again.

So the new title reads: INSIDE REHAB: MY ODYSSEY TREATING HEROIN ADDICTS IN THE SIXTIES - A MEMOIR.

Step VII. More submissions will go out at the beginning of this week.

Coincidentally  I read a book my daughter was reading for a highschool english course that was perfectly timed called: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius By A. Scott Berg.

Max Perkins is universally considered to be an editor's editor. Reading the pages of this excellent autobiography I knew after the first few pages this is the kind of person I need to connect with. I am certain that I am not alone in this belief.

He worked at Scribners flourishing  as the senior editor from the twenties, thirites, and forties. He specialized in discovering and working with troubled but talented unpublished authors. Additionally, said Berg: "His heart went out most readily to the person who desired  to be a writer but who could not produce a good book."

His philosophy was that the editor should be in the background but always there and available to the author. "An editor does not add to a book. At best he serves as a handmaiden to an author. Don't ever get to feeling important about yourself, because an editor at most releases energy. He creates nothing." ..."Before an author destroys the natural qualities of his writing – that's when an editor has to step in. But not a moment sooner."

He was a maven of structure, dispensing invaluable advice to each of the authors in his stable. For example advising a writer about non fiction he said: "make every person a character and make every action an event."

He insisted on each author's final authority saying "the book belongs to the author."

He had an immense respect for each of his troubled authors to struggle with struggling to order their personal chaos in the books they wrote. He had a life long "compassion for troubled writers."

Among the authors he discovered and intimately worked with include: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, Thomas Wolf, Ring Lardner, Alan Paton, Majorie Rawlings, and James Jones.

I was particularly impressed with Berg's statement that Perkins' "... many letters articulated an informal credo for publishing in America and conveyed his editorial criteria:

       "The ideal of publishing would be a forum where all sections of humanity could have their say, whether their object was to instruct, entertain, horrify, etc. Nevertheless, there are certain rules of quality and relevance, which can only be determined by some sort of selection and thus the publisher, representing humanity at large, attempts – with many mistakes – to make. Or, to put it differently, artists, saints, and other more sentient representatives of the human race are, as it were, on the frontiers of time – pioneers and guides to the future. And the publisher, in the capacity mentioned, must make some sort of estimate of the importance and validity of their reports, and there is nothing he can base this on but the abilities to judge that God has given him."

Most touching was his life long friend's comment on his death: "I have known people who were considered pillars of strength and loved to be leaned on… but Max poured strength into people and made them stand on their own feet."

I don't know if Max Perkins would have loved my work enough to publish it, but I am certain that he would have been the kind of editor at a publishing house I would have loved to have worked with.

I can only hope {and if  religious would pray} that I might come across another Max Perkins in my continuing odyssey to resonate with (loving) a publisher who simultaneously loves my work enough to give me and my agent a book contract.

Onwards and upwards. More to  follow....................