Two bits of news:

 The Fiction Class is coming out in a large print version and the cover is completely different than either the U.S. or UK version, as you can see below.
 

Also, The Fiction Class was chosen as a selection for Reading Group Choices 2009 (www.readinggroupchoices.com) This is an annual anthology geared to book clubs, and so it’s a wonderful boost to my book.

TFC has now been out in print for nine months, which is about 3,000 years in publishing terms. One of the major things I’ve learned as a new author is how little time you have to make an impact. Basically four months. And by that point, you’re either selling or you’re not. So it’s a great relief to me that I’m still selling and that TFC seems to have some traction. In fact, one of the things I like the most is seeing the way my book is seeping through the country. I love getting e mails from all over the place, and I get a kick out of the fact that so many are from small towns in the South.

When I was writing short stories, almost every magazine that published me was from the South—Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and so on. And what struck me as odd at the time was that I was connecting with southerners and yet I could not be more of a New Yorker—born and raised in Queens, studied in Rochester and Manhattan, live in Westchester. And I think I conform to just about every stereotype I have about New Yorkers, so it is intriguing to me that my writing connects with people who I imagine as being so different. Maybe it’s my religious background? Maybe it’s the topics I write about? Maybe it’s a statistical fluke? I don’t know, but I treasure that connection because I think writing should about building bridges.

How about you? What surprises have you had as a writer?

Today is the official publication date for my book, and contrary to all my expectations, a meteor has not hit the earth. Yet. In fact, the day itself is fairly quiet. I plan to drive over to my local Barnes & Noble to see my books (which are supposed to be in the front of the store—thank you Penguin!). Later today I’m teaching my class and we’ll have a bottle of champagne, which, given that there are fourteen people in the class, is not likely to lead to much debauchery. And then, tonight, some friends are coming over and we will have more champagne.

Not to say that nothing exciting is going on. For one thing, for this week, I am the official blogger for the Penguin web site, which is a big, big honor (and I have put the link in the blogroll). Let me tell you that going to the Penguin site and seeing my name (and face) alongside some of those other authors is just surreal. I spent a good part of my childhood in a library looking at those little penguins on the spines of books and it’s thrilling to be a part of it.

There are lots of other things going on—reviews and articles and readings and so forth, but the whole experience is different than a movie premiere, for example. There is no one moment at which my editor trots out my book and people applaud (unless, of course, she’s not telling me something). When I think of the other major experiences of my life (marriage and having children), they have followed a more traditional narrative arc. There’s all that excitement before the baby is born and then you have that big climactic moment of labor and then, there’s the baby. With a book, the narrative arc is more like a Chekhov story; life goes on and you’re different, but in a quiet way.

Which is really fine with me, because as exciting and wonderful as all this is, the fact of the matter is that I don’t want to do anything that takes me away from writing. At the end of the day, I’m happiest when I’m sitting in front of a computer, thinking about a story. So I’ll drink my champagne, and then I’ll go back to work. 

How about you? What will you do the day your story or book is published?

What did I do right?

In two weeks time, I (and hopefully you) will be able to walk into a bookstore and buy my book. For me, this is a sensation that is surreal. Two years ago, my beautiful gleaming book was nothing more than a bunch of notes that I was writing down in a diary in a Whole Foods store near Columbus Circle, and then it was a ream of computer paper piled up on my desk, and then a somewhat neater pile with fewer marks on it. Then there were galleys with editorial marks and then it disappeared into the bowels of Plume and then it came out, all sort of awkward in ARC  (advance review copy) form, and then it came out again, all spiffed up and lovely, with beautiful colors and blurbs. And now it is going on sale and people who are not related to me are thinking about buying it.

Let me tell you, it feels great. People have told me that there’s a lot of angst associated with being published—the reviews, the disappointing sales, the stress of marketing, and so on, and I’m sure that’s true. I’m also sure that it’s very difficult to be beautiful because you never know if people really like you for you or your looks. But neither of these issues is up there with finding a cure to cancer. The fact is that somehow, remarkably, I have beaten the odds. My first novel is being published by a major commercial publisher;  I have done something right. And I keep trying to figure out what that is.

The Fiction Class is the third novel I wrote, but the first that I sold, and so I keep asking myself, how is it different from the other two. The first novel I ever tried to write, Pitch, was the story of a woman whose first lover, an eccentric musician, suddenly reappears in her life, forcing her to choose between the life she has and the life she once thought she wanted.  My second novel, Courting Disaster, was the story of a woman who has been engaged seventeen times and then falls in love. Both novels were finalists for major awards, so I think they were well-written, and yet they never made the cut. In the rejection letters, which I saved, so that I could torture myself, agents and editors praised the writing, but said they just didn’t love the book.

When I began to write The Fiction Class, I did have a sense that I had stumbled onto a topic that might have wide appeal. I know firsthand that a lot of people want to learn to write and I did think, that if I could do it right, I could probably sell this book. One thing that struck me was that my class evaluations always came back saying that the students felt that I was warm and friendly, but the rejection letters for my novels came back saying I was cold and bitter. So clearly I was doing something different when I was teaching than I was doing when I was writing. Then I realized, when I’m teaching, I’m concerned with keeping my students interested and entertaining them and I’m not thinking about myself quite so much.

So, I decided to pretend that I was teaching my novel to my students. I put imaginary names on post-it notes and stuck them in front of my computer, so that I could imagine a class sitting there, listening to me.  I stood up and spoke the words of the novel out loud.  I became much more conscious of the reader. And the novel almost wrote itself. I have never written anything so quickly and with so much pleasure.

So what’s my advice? As always, write what you have to write, but you might want to think about who you hope is going to read it. How about you? Who do you imagine reading your work?

One side note. I have a bunch of readings coming up and I will be posting the event schedule on my web site (www.susanjbreen.com) very soon. So if you’d like to meet face to face, please stop by and say hello.

During the long, long years that I worked on my various novels, I often fantasized about what it would be like to get an offer from an editor. I also daydreamed about what the cover of my book would look like, who would be cast in the movie version, what songs the soundtrack would include and even, on one particularly unproductive afternoon, what it would be like to win the Nobel Prize. But somehow, in all this fantasizing, I never once considered what it would be like to have a book reviewed. Quite honestly, it seemed like such a monumental accomplishment to get a book published, that it never occurred to me that there would be something to worry about after that.  

Imagine my consternation then when one evening I was driving to a meeting at my church and my cell phone rang and there was my agent, calling to tell me that the review in Publisher’s Weekly had come out. I had no idea I should even be worrying about reviews yet because The Fiction Class is not out until February 26. Automatically I said, How is it? And he said, Great, which, after a year and a half of knowing this man I have come to realize means that I am in trouble. Every time he says “Great,” I should duck. 

Actually, the review was not that bad. If it were a grade on a report card, I would say it was a B. (I’m not going to reprint the review here, because why should I aggravate myself, but if you want to see it you can go to the amazon site, and then, if you’re feeling merciful, you can always pre-order my book.) But even a B is upsetting if you’re hoping for an A, and frankly, what I’ve come to realize is that I don’t deal with criticism well. I know you are not supposed to take these things personally, but I don’t believe that. I draw so much on my own experiences in my writing that it is hard not to connect the review with the person, which is me. Which is probably not healthy. 

My family jumped into the fray immediately. My sisters-in-law, who are lovely and supportive, (and have read the book) both sent me emails saying that the review was completely uncalled for and wrong. My brother, who is even more supportive, said that it had never occurred to him that anyone could find anything wrong with the book. My daughter pointed out that there are millions of people hoping to get a book published and I shouldn’t complain and my husband asked me if there was anything I could learn from the review and use toward my next book. Then he went online to see if I’d been reviewed anywhere else. 

The good news is I was reviewed by a number of other places, and all the rest of the reviews were terrific, especially the one by Booklist, which is also on the amazon site.  (I will just quote some relevant words, which are “surprisingly touching” and “poignant yet amusing.”) So all is good, for the moment, except that I know somewhere out there is some miserable reviewer who has just had a fight with his wife, ate bad Chinese food, and had too much to drink last night, and he is about to sit down and read my book.  

So how about you? Have you ever been reviewed? Or critiqued?

My latest excitement is that last week I received an email with the back copy for my book, which is basically the text on the back of the book that entices the reader into picking it up and buying it. My editor included the copy and asked me to check it over and make sure I liked it. 

I think I had actually written the back copy myself some months ago, so I had high hopes that I would like it, plus which I am really not looking for any more work, and so I figured as long as I didn’t hate the back copy, we would all be fine. Unfortunately, when I read it I thought it seemed kind of boring. It wasn’t terrible, I just didn’t feel excited about it (and if the author doesn’t seem excited, that’s probably a bad sign).  

So, hoping I was wrong, I sent it off to my agent and asked what he thought and he said, It seems kind of boring. Which was another bad sign, though it is nice to deal with someone who’s honest. So I looked at the back copy again and thought, All right. I like the basic premise. I’ll just move around some words. Some of the sentences just seem sort of bland. 

I spent an hour fiddling with the sentences and it did read better, but, unfortunately, it still didn’t read well. I really really really did not want to start over. I hate starting over. This is something I talk about a lot in class because often, after a critique, it becomes clear (to me anyway) that what is required is for the author to rethink her premise and this doesn’t mean that everything should be thrown out and you’ve wasted ten years of your life, because all that good work stays inside of you and comes out somehow. But it does mean you have to open up a new file and look at some white space. 

No one wants to do this. But if you don’t start over, then you can spend weeks and months fiddling with something and not make much progress.  

Fortunately, in this case I was just dealing with three paragraphs and not a whole novel (though I have started over with whole novels and I hope I never have to do it again). I looked at the blank screen and asked myself: What is the point I’m trying to make?   This is always a good question. 

Then, I stopped and looked at the page for a bit and I concluded that I would never write anything sensible again and my career was over before it started and then bang, something popped into my head. And I liked it. And then the rest fell into place and now I have back copy that I love and, thank heavens, my editor loves it too.  

Or she did. At the risk of writing a novel-length post about the back copy, it turned out that although the new version was good, it didn’t hit enough of the themes that the publishing house wants to hit—which is to say, more about the mother-daughter relationship and less about the class. So I have to rethink this. It’s okay; it’s all good. I want to sell lots of books. I just wish my brain wasn’t feeling so empty. 

So how about you? Have you ever had to start over?

Last week, amazon listed my book The Fiction Class on its web site. There’s no picture yet and the book is not actually on sale (though you can preorder it), but still. It’s a watershed moment. There am I, right on top of Walter Breen who wrote a book about U.S. coins. Or so far I’m on top of him. 

As soon as I was listed, my husband called to inform me that I was ranked 174,236 on the amazon list. I thought that was pretty good, given that it was the first day, but I told him that I really didn’t want to start worrying about the ranks. I’m way too anxious to start thinking about things like that, I have a ton of other work to do and I can’t do it if I’m sitting here worrying about my ranking on amazon.com.  

“This way madness lies,” I said.  

“You’re absolutely right,” my husband replied. 

One hour later he called to inform me that I had “plummeted” to 196,452. 

For those who wonder, the amazon rankings show where your book is compared to all the other books amazon is selling, but it ranks them on an hour by hour basis depending on how many books you’ve sold that hour. Which, if I am understanding it right, means that if you sold 1,000 books in one hour and none the next, your ranking would go down. (J.K. Rowling is at the top of the list, as you might imagine, and is likely to stay there for a long time.) And yes, I do wonder if I placed an order for 10,000 of my books, would that push me to the top of the best seller list. And could I then cancel the order? 

I am trying really hard to be zen about this. I truly am so delighted to have a book on its way to publication that I cannot get too stressed about my rank. But it’s hard. On some level I’m still back in elementary school, waiting to be chosen for the volleyball team, and I’m not even sure that that’s relevant.  

So I have promised myself that I will only check amazon five times a day. And that I will not be too excited that my rank is now, as my husband says, “hovering” around 30,000. And I will keep in mind that there will be bad reviews and that some people will hate my book and some people won’t buy it, and it’s all fine (as long as those people aren’t my editor and agent). 

What about you? Anyone else have a rank?

One day last summer I was standing on line at the deli counter at Stop & Shop, waiting to order half a pound of roast beef. My cell phone rang, I found it, and it was my agent, Alex Glass, calling to tell me that Trident had had just sold the British rights to my novel and was that all right? I said it was more than all right, particularly because I didn’t even know they were trying to sell the British rights to my novel. (Perhaps I should ask my agent more questions, but my feeling is that the more I know, the crazier I get.) 

The next day I got a lovely e mail from my British editor, who is a novelist herself, and is the most enthusiastic person I have ever met in my life, and I don’t say that lightly, because I’m fairly enthusiastic myself. But next to Charlotte, I’m Scrooge. Anything you’ve heard about British reserve is a lie. 

What I found intriguing, and didn’t realize until all this happened, was that the British company publishing my novel had absolutely nothing to do with the American company. I’d assumed that if a division of Penguin was publishing my book in the U.S., then it would be a division of Penguin publishing in the UK. But not so.  

All of which is to say that the cover of the British version of the book is very different than theU.S. cover, as you can see (below).   

Completely different tone, right? The American one seems somewhat thoughtful and literary to me and the UK one seems more fun. Each one is true to the book, but they both pick up on different sides of it.  

Which one do I like best? 

That reminds of how my kids always used to ask me which one of them I liked best. I’d always answer that I didn’t like any of them (which isn’t true in either context).  

So, what do you think? Apple or squiggles?

Not long ago, I was sitting at my computer, obsessively checking my e mail, putting off doing what I should be doing (which is writing a synopsis of my next book) and pop—up came an e mail from my editor with the mock-up of the cover of my novel. There is something disconcerting about seeing something appear so suddenly that you have been thinking about for decades. I suppose it would be like dreaming of being pregnant and then having a baby land on your kitchen table.

I was scared to press the link. What if I hated it? What if there was a stiletto on the cover? What if it was tacky? I’ve read so many cover horror stories—including one by an author who had stickers made up for his readers to put on his book so that they could cover up the original cover that he hated so much. I didn’t think I would hate the cover, because quite honestly I don’t hate anything, except for every Adam Sandler movie I’ve ever seen. But you don’t know.

Fortunately, my husband also obsessively checks my e mail (which is an issue probably best dealt with by a marriage counselor.) So he clicked on the link, called me and said, “The cover came. It looks great.”

“What does it look it?” I asked. To which he replied, “It’s pretty and there’s an apple in it.”

Still, I didn’t click on the image, because now I was concerned about the apple.

“It’s a big apple,” my husband said.

This anxiety went on for a while, and I’ll spare you the details, except to say that I did finally click on the image and my eyes immediately went to the light coming in from the corner, which I loved. And of course, the apple.

What does the apple signify? First of all, the novel takes place in The Big Apple, and then it is about a teacher and her students, and then there is an apple that figures in the novel. So I don’t know that it is the first image that I would have mentioned if you were to ask me what my book is about, but I like the redness of the apple. I can picture people saying, “I’d like that book with the apple on it.” It’s all good.

That week I took my cover into work with me and showed it to my boss, Alex Steele, at Gotham Writers’ Workshop and he looked at it very seriously and thoughtfully, as is his wont, and then he said, “Do you want my honest opinion?” (which is always a bad sign).

I said, “Of course.” (Because I lie.)

And he said, “I don’t like the apple.”

So, where do you fall on the apple divide? What do you think?

One of the trickiest things every writer struggles with is figuring out when she is done. When should you send that short story out to the magazine, or that novel out to the agent? How good is good enough? 

For my first novel, Pitch (unpublished but not unloved), I didn’t feel as though I was ever done. I went through forty revisions. About seven a year—which adds up to a lot of years—which is why I am a late bloomer. I would still be revising that novel if The Fiction Class had not muscled its way into my imagination. And with The Fiction Class, I knew I was done because my editor said, “I’d like to see it by May 15.” Deadlines help a lot. 

But this week, “being done” went to a different level, because I got the “first pass” version of my novel. Basically, this is a stack of pages with my novel on it, except that instead of looking like the text that comes out of a printer, this looks the way the book will look when it’s published. The font is the book font and there is an ISBN number, which is exciting. My job now is to read through the pages looking for typos and small changes I’d like to make. (If I want to make big changes, such as adding in a new page, I have to pay for it. Fortunately, I do not want to make big changes.) “This will be your last chance to look at the book before publication,” my editor wrote. 

Oddly, the moment I got the package, I set it aside, which is not like me at all. I’m very organized, and yet I could not bring myself to look at the text. The days ticked by. I have to read this whole thing by July 9; instead, I went to Montauk, I watched TV, I wrote an article, I stared at the box of pages. 

Part of my problem is that I always hate to reread things I’ve written. I always cringe at the sight of my words, because I can always see things I should have done better. But I realized this morning that my main problem was that, once I did this final read-through, I would be saying good bye to my characters. I’d still be able to spend time with them, of course, but it would be like visiting children after a divorce. They won’t exactly belong to me. Other people will have opinions about them—other people may not like them.  

The fact is, I love the characters in my novel. We’ve been on a long journey together. They’ve been good company. They’re always saying new things to me; I’m not quite sure that I’m done with them.

But life doesn’t stay still, and, I do want to see this book in print and it will be hard to do, if I never give my editor the pages back. So, today I sat down at my dining room table and laid out the pages. They looked very handsome. There were a bunch of typos and I circled them in red ink. There were times when I used the same word too many times in the same paragraph, and I noted that.  I’m on page 80, but I should be done by Sunday, and then I’ll send it in. And say good bye. Fortunately, there are some new characters who have been chattering away in my mind, so I will turn my attention to them soon. 

How do you know when you’re done with something?

My debut novel is being published this February, and a few weeks ago my editor asked me the question every author dreams of hearing—“So, have you given any thought to the cover?” In fact, I had spent years thinking about the cover.

In fact, before I wrote the book, I thought about the cover, and I had a hazy image in my mind of something with Bestseller on the top and my name on the bottom. But that was as far as I got.  

My novel is about a mother and a daughter. But it’s also about a teacher and her class. The mother and the class are never in the same place. If the cover focused on the mother, it would leave out the half of the story; but if it focused on the class… 

So I said to my editor what I always say when I’m not sure, which is, “What do you think?”  My editor said I’d written a great book and it was like a multi-headed hydra and that someone wonderful was working on designing the cover and she was sure that I would love it. Which I took to mean she wasn’t exactly sure what the cover should be either.  

(I should say that, like most debut authors, my contract does not give me a lot of say over what my cover looks like. It says that I shall be consulted, but that in the event of a conflict, the publishing house “shall prevail.” I find there to be something thrilling about that language, as “prevail” makes me think of my editor as a knight on a horse, but that was not particularly helpful in this context.) 

Anyway, one does not like to look like an idiot, and I felt I should suggest something, and so, upon reflection, I passed along two thoughts about the cover to my editor. 

First, I told her that my favorite color is blue. 

Secondly, I suggested that the cover should be pretty. Like a gift. Because in my mind, this book is a gift, because in all my years of writing, nothing has ever come as easily to me as this book did. Also, the very fact that it is being published is a gift to me, and finally, because I hope that mothers and daughters will give it to each other as gifts, and that the novel will help other families heal relationships in the way it helped me and my mother heal ours. (That’s a longer story that I will address at another time.)  

My editor agreed wholeheartedly with this last (she is a lovely person) and in the next installment of this blog, you can see what she came up with. Meantime, why don’t you tell me what you’d like the cover of your book to look like. (Don’t worry if you haven’t written the book yet; that didn’t stop me either.)