Publishing a Story About Publishing Stories(Interview Sample)
This sample is from a class project we called The Mercenary, which featured profile pieces, reviews of literary journals, and reviews of self-publishing venues and resources. We self-published our collection of interviews but only printed about sixty copies, so you might find it difficult to get your hands on one. Of course, I can always lend you my copy if you’re that interested.
This sample is in my portfolio as a way to highlight my familiarity with conducting interviews and doing basic journalism writing. I also recorded and transcribed the experience, which helped me further hone transcription skills.
11-28-17
Publishing a Story About Publishing Stories
By Daniel Deshaies
The clicks and clacks of typing can be heard from outside Julie Dugger’s office as she works. The Western professor of eleven years is surrounded by counters coated with thick folders, stacks of papers, and her blue and white tea pot set that she never uses. She sips from her ceramic mug as she reads emails under a series of shelves which hold up her collection of books. A long-tailed kite, which is draped all around the room, colors the space rainbow. The mother of two has been publishing academically for almost three decades while she works with her agent to get her fiction books published. She has been working on getting her fiction published for over six years, but has yet to break through. This hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm, though. Her infectious passion for her work permeates every aspect of her personality.
Q: What was your first publishing experience like?
A: I got published in a newspaper when I was in highschool; A little newspaper. I had a scholarship to go to Washington DC and to do some seminar, and when I came back, in order to make up for my english class, my teacher said, “oh, just write up something you did.” Then when I wrote it up, she said it was really good and sent it to a newspaper. And of course one of the newspaper’s major advertisers had funded [the scholarship]. The big company, which I will leave unnamed, paid the scholarship for me. And of course it doesn't hurt newspapers to, you know, be in good with the local businesses in town because they have ads and so forth. I’m probably being overly cynical, but at any rate the newspaper was happy to publish this account. And so they put it in there, and the reason I’m a little cynical is there was a plug in the beginning that said, “the trip was sponsored by ...”. But I remember being very pleased that I was in the newspaper. But I was really mad that they had broken up my paragraphs [laugh] without asking me! And I have learned since then that that is a genre thing. Newspapers generally have much shorter paragraphs than any other kind of writing that I had done. So that was something that... if I had paid more attention to newspaper articles, I would have expected that they would have wanted to break up my paragraphs. But at the time it was like, “this is great and they used all my words... but that’s not where the paragraph break should go.” [laughs]
Q: So you learned from that as well, what is something else you’ve noticed as you’ve gone on publishing? Like how it works and how it changes with your writing.
A: You’re always told this, but the longer I’m in it, the more evidence I have that who you know matters a lot. So [the newspaper article] [was] my very early publishing. My middle phase publishing was doing academic publishing. At one point, I published a review and the journal [said], “can you,”--they worded it differently-- they said, “can you be nicer? We like this guy a lot.” And, you know, they were right to say that. I was fresh out of grad school and I was super critical and I was just like, “this sucks,” [laughs]. I gave reasons for why and they were like, “you know, this guy, he’s older. He doesn’t necessarily pick up on these things. These trends. But he’s been a long time player in this field and we really want to be respectful of him, so would you consider…” they didn’t require me to, and I appreciated, actually, being told that. So I did rewrite it and [made] it nicer. Last Spring, I went to the Nebula Conference. It has the Nebula award; it’s a big deal, but it amazed me how small it was and what an insider’s club it was. I tried to read all five books that were nominated for the novel award and two of them I was like, “I don’t know which one I’d pick.” Two of them were really good and just seemed head and shoulders above the rest... So who does the award go to? It goes to the one person who showed up to the conference. The other person has gotten many other awards for her book, but she wasn’t there and nobody was really that surprised that [the other woman] was the one that got it. And it’s not that I thought the other person was deserving, but showing up matters and knowing everybody matters. And being someone you wanna have around matters. So one of the things I’m working on now, with the publishing companies, is that I need more friends. How am I gonna get friends? And then I have to figure out who are the people I need to be my friends, and not necessarily influential people, not people you’ve heard of... but what kind of writing am I doing, and who else is doing it, and how can I make my writing so that they want to have me around?
Q: What was your experience getting your agent like and how do you guys work together on this kind of stuff. What do you do when you're trying to workshop something?
A: I think I queried over eighty people. I’m a little fuzzy on that because toward the end I started querying small presses, so I don’t know if some of those eighty were small presses. But I think I queried over eighty agents over a period of two years. And sometimes [it was] really frustrating because some of them won't reply at all. They don't even send you a rejection notice, and I had at least one instance where someone said, “if you haven't heard back in three months, ask.” And a lot of it’s done by email, which is unreliable, so I asked and she was like, “oh no, I never got this,” and then she said, “oh, actually I want to see this.” So I don't know how many people I sent it to who never even got it… one time I had one person just cold-call me at home, and I got the call and my child was one and he’s climbing my leg while I’m trying to talk on the phone, and it was just like awful. One of the things I really liked about the agent I ended up working with is that she emailed me and said, “I’d like to talk to you about your book, can we set up a time?” And so I had time to prepare. How do we work together? So, the first time I sent her a manuscript, and we’ve done this with two books now, I send her a manuscript, she reads it, and then she sends me a revision letter. And it’s typically like three to five pages, single-spaced. She’s very comprehensive. She never tells me how to revise it, but she’ll say “I want more of this”
Q: Is there anything about publishing that some people might find frustrating that you might find exciting and invigorating?
A: Yes. And frustrating [laughs] I can tell you yeah. I hate and I love that the market is so tough that I cannot do a half-ass book and have it sell. Nothing in my life has challenged me in this particular way. I have done personal things that have been challenging, but professionally? Nothing has been this hard. I think that dual narrative book that I had was a good book, but it wasn’t good enough. And when I went back to rewrite it, now I’m like this is a much better book. But I am lazy enough that there is no way that I’m gonna spend five to six months rewriting this. No way! If I could have just sold it, I would’ve been happy. But I can’t because; it’s awful that I may never sell this book because the market is really tough and there are all these things you don’t control, but I have been pushed to write something way better than I would have written if it were easy to sell books. So the difficulty of it has made me better at what I do. So yes it’s both. It’s frustrating but it’s also- there was a point this summer when I was like, ok this so much better, and now the other book that I have that’s still on hold? Before I let her put it on the market I’m gonna say, “give it back to me because I can make it better.” And I know I can make it better because I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve been forced to learn a lot. Because it’s so brutal, ugly, stupid, arbitrary-- but you don’t have any choice but to get better and better and better.