{"id":12352,"date":"2018-08-15T09:27:52","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T16:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=12352"},"modified":"2018-08-15T15:53:58","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T22:53:58","slug":"mercator-projection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/15\/mercator-projection\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercator Projection"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Back in the darkest part of my depression, my friend Alex contacted me. He was launching a new travel magazine and he wanted me to write something for it. I declined. My brain wasn’t working correctly and I didn’t have any ideas. He wouldn’t take no for an answer; he asked that I please think it over and get back to him when I came up with an idea. We talked regularly —\u00a0 I helped launch the magazine website — and every time he asked me to write something for him. Every time I declined.<\/p>\n

“Didn’t you tell me once you were in Sharm el-Sheikh before it went back to Egypt?”<\/p>\n

“Yeah. I was. But that was a long time ago. I can’t promise anything but I’ll think about it.”<\/p>\n

I hung up and promptly hammered out 1600 words which I emailed to him the next morning. He was effusive about the piece. But something else happened. It turned out I had a lot more to say about that time in my travels. I wrote between 500 and 2000 words a day for many weeks, stalling out at about 45,000 words when I completed the arc of the story.<\/p>\n

I took a few weeks off, got some good advice, and sat down for a month of revisions, putting down between 500-1000 new words a day until I reached full manuscript length. I took one more breather, about three weeks, revised the ending significantly, and found I’d written just short of 70,000 words. That’s the recommended target for a non-fiction memoir manuscript, though it’s nice to have more so you have things to cut in edits.<\/p>\n

I let it sit for another few weeks, and last weekend, I got up early and wrote a query. A query is the pitch letter you send to literary agents; it tells them what the book is and why you, fancy pants, deserve their time. I’d been struggling with this, when you are so deep in the maze, all you can see is corn.\u00a0 You can’t see that it’s in the shape of a map of the world, a neat Mercator projection that allows you to see the whole thing at once. My writing Sherpa offered to help, but he’s had his own work to attend to. I was lucky; I’d had a good night’s sleep (rare in my life) and a few weeks off, and the words just fell out. It’s a kick ass query, if I may say so myself, and if you know an agent I should send it to, I would like to hear from you.<\/p>\n

“You’ve been sandbagging,” my Sherpa said, “you didn’t need me at all.”<\/p>\n

Yesterday, after another friend proofed my pitch, I sent it out to 10 agencies. I got an immediate — I have whiplash from the speed —\u00a0 request for a full manuscript from one and a request for chapters from another, later that day. One of them asked for temporary exclusive review rights, which I could not promise as I’d already submitted pages elsewhere, but it did not seem to be a deal breaker.<\/p>\n

All of this is super awesome news that adds up, ultimately, to nothing meaningful yet. I mean, besides the fact that I have a story about traveling to Egypt in 1981 in the inaugural edition of Fields and Stations. I have no publisher. I have no contract. I am imagining a New York office where a sharply dressed young woman with much better hair than I have is presenting my pitch, along with some commentary about my “candid, voice-forward style” to a room full of other people, also with much better hair and shoes I would never wear. And then they shoot it down.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I got a pile of notes from an editor I adore. I missed the mark on the story she assigned me. I know why — I wrote about things I’m interested in, not the guidelines the editor gave me, and I forgot about the audience. I still fuck things up sometimes, I still make mistakes. I wrote a magazine story about two months ago that required repeated input from my editor because I had a lot of feelings about the topic, and I needed to do more straight reporting, something I’m still learning. I am grateful for the oversight of these editors, don’t mistake my mentioning this as blaming them in any way — it’s my fault. Writing feels like an endless beginner pursuit, like I never advance, like every story I write starts with me having no knowledge of how to do my damn job. Truth be told, that’s probably why I like it.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I was deep in the corn, so excited that my manuscript was getting fancy New York agent attention. Today, I’m back out, rewrites on deck, dishes in the sink. Harley the Dog needs a walk. I have a meeting today to talk to a guy about some tech writing work. I’m just another working stiff with a manuscript in the (virtual) drawer. No agent, no contract. All Mercator, no maze.<\/p>\n

Though I did write a book, you guys, if you wonder why I haven’t been blogging much. I hear it doesn’t suck.<\/p>\n

\n