Pull!  (BLAM)

Some of you non-writers may not know that when you sell a book you haven’t yet written, you still have to do a “proposal.”  This is usually the first three or so chapters of the book, with a detailed synopsis of the rest of the story.  This goes to the editors who then confirm that it is indeed the book they contracted for.

For the third book in the Mercy Hollings book, I worked hard on the proposal.  I did a plotting weekend with the wonderful Sylvie Kurtz, and we came up with a plot chock full of goal, motivation, conflict, escalation, turning points, black moments, surprises, angst, and resolution.   A longer, darker book than the first two, revealing a lot of Mercy’s “mythology.”  I turned it in months ago, and have been waiting to get the go ahead to write the rest of the story.  Along with, of course, a check!

The editors completely eighty-sixed it.

I was just talking to someone about how my business background prepared me for editorial rejection of this sort.  Working as what was essentially a problem solver at a company that, among other things, built software, I often walked into meetings with what I thought was a really elegant, well-thought-out solution.  Then the other meeting attendees used my idea for target practice.

I’ve seen plenty of fellow employees literally crying after these meetings.  A lot of people quit or transferred to other departments.  But once I got over the initial shock, I realized that the ideas that ended up coming out of the skeet-shooting-sessions-disguised-as-business-meetings, when combined with a few surviving elements of my original proposal, usually were better than my initial idea.

In fact, as soon as I got off the phone with my editor, I had a BRILLIANT idea of how I could meet her objectives.  I emailed it to her and she immediately responded that it was exactly what she had in mind.

Of course, I now have to devise an entirely new plot full of goal, motivation, conflict, escalation, turning points, black moments, surprises, angst, and resolution...