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The Bridge I Didn't Come ToMarch 13, 2006 The other day Mud of the Place got rejected by a publisher who'd asked, based on my proposal, to see the first hundred pages. No question, I was disappointed: this was the best nibble I'd had since my terrorist-eye adventures of 2004. On the other hand, in my p.o. box at the same time was confirmation that "Showdown," an excerpt from the novel, would appear in the next issue of Martha's Vineyard Writing, which is due out in mid-May. The coincidence was appropriate: when printing out the first hundred pages for Publisher X, I noted that the scene that began on page 102 made a better ending for the section, so I included it. Then it dawned on me that with a little tweaking this scene would stand pretty well by itself. Duly tweaked, the 1,900-word scene became "Showdown." Driving home from the post office, I had to admit that along with disappointed I was also relieved. Writers, especially fiction writers, especially first-novelists with no celebrity, aren't supposed to be relieved by rejection. Saying "my publisher" is like sporting a big shiny rock on the ring finger of your left hand: I've been chosen, I'm taken, somebody loves me. The worthiness of the ring-giver is secondary. What matters is that someone has given you a ring. From the moment I shipped those 109 pages off, at the end of last November, I've been thinking off and on "What if they take it? Do I want to get into bed with this outfit?" Running through my head ever since has been the title of a Spanish-language handbook for women in abusive relationships: Mejor sola que mal acompañada. Loosely translated: "Better alone than in a bad relationship." In other words, I had my doubts. I've been familiar with Publisher X since my bookselling days; if you're at least casually acquainted with gay publishing, you know the name. No question, they've done good and significant work over the years, but still I identify them with so-so design, lackadaisical editing, and some monumentally mediocre covers. Playing the what if? game, I told myself that Mud of the Place wouldn't embarrass anybody if it went out into the world without any more editing (though I really would like someone to tell me how to fix the dragginess of the first few chapters without ruining the book), and that maybe I could negotiate some influence over design and cover choices? We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I told myself. Unagented first-novelists aren't renowned for their clout, which is one reason I'm not entirely sorry that we never came to that bridge. The other reason, the bigger reason, the nagging unnegotiable reason is that Publisher X is a gay press. Let's leave for another time the extended discussion of why gay (male) and lesbian (female) interests are not the same: the short version is that gay men are men and lesbian women are women, and no matter how far we've supposedly come, one's sex/gender still makes a huge difference in how one experiences this society we live in. Before I sent those 109 pages off, I went back to Publisher X's website. Yeah, they do good work, but the list is overbalanced with hot-n-heavy fuck books, both male and female. That's one pernicious aspect of this lovey-dovey relationship of the G and the L, the gay and the lesbian: the G, possessing more power and wielding more influence by virtue (shifty word, that) of its maleness (generally compounded in this case by color and class privilege), gets to define and shape L as merely its female counterpart -- which in practice means, more or less, lopping off anything radically, undigestibly feminist. Mejor sola que mal acompañada. From the start I felt queasy: what if I went on the road promoting Mud of the Place? For sure I'd like to be promoting my publisher at the same time, at least in general terms, but with Publisher X it would have been "don't ask, don't tell" all the way -- and sooner or later someone, probably an astute lesbian feminist, would have asked. I'm pretty good at keeping things to myself, but I'm really lousy at lying. Well, no, actually I'm very good at lying, I'm too good at lying, and that's why I don't do it. Lying kills the writing, the writing that's worth doing. I'm thinking of Truman Capote here, the Capote of Capote. I think the lying, to himself, to Perry, to everyone around him and by extension to his readers, is what killed his writing and, eventually, him. The editor at Publisher X wrote that he "just didn't fall in love with the material." The word "love" often comes up when acquiring editors talk about books: excellence in a book is not enough; they have to "love" it. No problem with that: who wants to spend months editing and producing and promoting a book that you hate? (I'm currently copyediting one that I dislike intensely; if I heated with wood, I might have burned it already.) But "falling in love" puts the burden on the prospective beloved: it's the book's fault that the editor didn't fall in love with it. What I'm looking is an editor who's willing to meet the book halfway. I expect as much of my readers, after all, and of myself when I read someone else's book. Any ideas?
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