Nice Work if You Can Get It

Jim Bob McMillan, the executive director of the Austin Writers’ League (AWL), may laugh when he says that editors will attend AWL’s agent’s conference this year for the first time “to keep agents more honest,” but he’s really quite serious. Within the past year and a half, Austin Writer, AWL’s monthly newsletter, has been host to several stories revealing double-dealings and shifty practices encountered by AWL members. One of those accounts begins, “This is a true story”; it’s by Donn Le Vie Jr., a former AWL board member who met “the individual I call Agent X” at the 1995 agent’s conference (this year is the fifth for AWL’s agent’s conference). Le Vie pitched the agent his nonfiction project, the agent seemed very interested and suggested Le Vie buy his book, How to Write a Book Proposal (he bought the book). Le Vie received a call three weeks after the conference from the agent to discuss the project, which needed some revisions, and then the agent asked Le Vie how many copies of his own book he would purchase. “`I thought he was referring to how many copies I could sell through workshops, seminars and promotions, so I gave him a number.’

“He said, `No, I mean how many copies are you personally going to buy?’ Going to buy? `Yes, going to buy. I have an author who is a doctor and has committed to purchasing several thousand copies of her own book. I can’t sell your proposal to publishers on either coast unless I know how many copies of your book you’re going to buy.'” In the next month’s Austin Writer, Agent X revealed himself as Michael Larsen, a San Francisco literary agent, who justifies his request by stating, “Writers are competing with all the authors published by every large house. … I tell writers who are preparing proposals they want to sell to a large house that, for most books aimed at a wide national audience, the list of things that they will do to promote their books is at least eight times more important than the content of the book.” Promotion eight times more important than the content of the book? Doesn’t that seem a bit … ridiculous? This is, admittedly, a question from someone whose job it is to analyze a book’s contents, but Larsen’s apparently incredible figure is cited as just one example of the many initially incredible things about the publishing industry writers attending this weekend’s fifth annual agent’s conference may be hearing (this year the conference is called Agents! Agents! Agents! … & Editors Too! ).

Suzy Spencer, the secretary of the AWL board, says that “one thing I have learned in the past year is that we have a lot of writers … who don’t really have any dreams to be published.” Her statement is surprising since she’s voicing it just days before the conference, which, if anything, is all about how to get published. Spencer is certain, however, that the members she’s talking about are part of AWL “for the inspiration and because they like hanging out with writers.” McMillan calls the approximately 200 conference attendees “constituents” since not all of them are AWL members. Some of them, in fact, have absolutely nothing to do with Austin and will arrive this weekend from various points across the nation; most likely all of them are similar to the members Spencer refers to – they like being around other writers. But for this weekend, though plenty of opportunities are provided for writers to “network,” it’s a pretty fair assumption that the writers would really like to be spending time with agents and editors.

Among the many genuinely intriguing discussion topics at the conference is one pre-conference primer course that takes place this Friday, the day before the agents and editors arrive, titled “How to Impress an Editor or Agent – in 10 Minutes.” Many of the writers attending the conference, like Le Vie, have signed up for 10-minute “individual consultations” with an agent or editor where they pitch ideas or sometimes have ideas pitched to them. McMillan calls these sessions “false environments” because unpublished writers, and sometimes even published writers, rarely have the opportunity to own 10 minutes of an agent’s or editor’s undivided time (most of the 12 agents and editors are coming from New York; houses such as Random House and St. Martin’s and agencies such as William Morris and IMG Literary will be there). In this pre-conference workshop, the art of making the deal will be honed; schmoozing is not to be shamed. “It’s partially tongue-in-cheek, though,” says Larry Brill, the KXAN 36 morning anchor who will teach the workshop and who was president of the AWL board in 1995 and ’96.

In many ways, the Agents! conference epitomizes AWL’s “can-do” philosophy. Writers of all stripes are among the 1,500 members, making AWL the largest writer’s organization in the state. Some of them, as Spencer suggests, are there for camaraderie; some are aspiring writers; and some, like Marion Winik, Sarah Bird, and Mary Willis Walker, are published, established, and active supporters of AWL. At each of AWL’s monthly member gatherings, there is time set aside for members who have recently been published or received some good news, to share that information with the rest of the members. Actually, it’s like a writers’ revival. The participants are typically overjoyed and it’s a tribute to the AWL spirit that all of them, regardless of where they’ve been published or what they write, are received enthusiastically. There is a sense of fellowship at AWL meetings. Spencer recalls that while she was trying to finish her true crime book, Wasted, that will be shipped to stores around Halloween, she would attend the monthly meetings for much-needed fellow-feeling. “When I was doing Wasted I would say, `Oh gosh, can I do this?’ And I would call up the people I had met through the Writers’ League and they’d say, `Yes, you can. Stick with it. There’s no doubt you can do it.’ I used them for inspiration to keep me going.” It’s not the established vs. the unpublished at the Writers’ League; at least at the monthly meetings, everyone is on equal footing. You half expect the members to break out singing that old standard, “Nice work if you can get it, and if you get it, won’t you tell me how.”

That mindset is also exemplified in the lead article of the April Austin Writer in which San Antonio writer and writing consultant Jan Kilby, Ph.D. analyzes some of the myths about being a writer. She points out that one of the myths about writers is that “only a few special people can become writers.” Kilby says the reality is that “most people are writers, regardless of their occupation. Some people just pursue writing more actively than others. Writing is among the most basic and essential human activities. In my view, there are not lawyers, managers, and teachers who write but writers who happen to be lawyers, managers, and teachers.” She’s right, at least, that most writers do not solely make their living from writing. But what if, in all the flurry to make the deal, to demystify the admittedly heady aura that surrounds writing, the necessity of honing talent becomes lost? Does AWL neglect the more spiritual aspects of writing in favor of having everyone believe they can be writers?

One board member would prefer that the tag of “making the deal” not be laid at the feet of the Writers’ League. “I mean good God, look at the society we live in, where everybody knows what every sports figure is paid, and how much the movie that opened last weekend grossed. We live in a `doing the deal’ culture in this country. Are there people [in America] who are interested in exploring literature and what a writerly life might be as a spiritual journey or quest? Yeah, there are some,” but they don’t influence the culture enough to really change it. “I saw an interview with Toni Morrison on 60 Minutes and the lady blew me away, but a good part of what she talked about is when she finally got enough money to take care of her mother, those kinds of things. Here’s a Nobel Laureate who is having to talk about money and how we get it and how we spend it and that kind of stuff,” says the board member.

But according to a perhaps outmoded but nonetheless vestigial paradigm, writers are inspired people, they’re unique and solitary. According to an even older paradigm, great writers bestow their works upon a grateful public; these great writers were people destined to be published, for the most part gentlemen born and raised – people who didn’t mess with agents and presumably didn’t need editors. In a brochure printed by the Southwest Writers Workshop announcing their September conference, which Patricia Schroeder, U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, and Snow Falling on Cedars author David Guterson are to attend, Jennifer J. Stewart, whose book Please Don’t Eat the Princess will be published in 1999, is quoted as saying, “I’m very grateful to SWW. At the awards banquet, I sat next to Regina Griffin, who ultimately bought the manuscript.” Are there so many people who want to be published and is the market so overloaded that to get a book published, it’s come down to sitting next to the right person at an awards banquet? For the traditionalist, that may be why all this fervent deal-making may seem to openly thwart literature’s high-mindedness.

Executive director McMillan is aware that the deal-making to take place this weekend is only one aspect of the writer’s life; as an arts administrator, he’s determined to provide programming that speaks to all facets of the writer’s life. “When we started the Agents! conference five years ago, no one was doing this, no one was bringing agents together and offering the opportunity for individual consultations with agents. Now, five years later, it’s become very commonplace to put the agents and editors in a conference but the Austin Writers’ League was the first to do that.”

“We realize that [the writers attending the Agents! conference] are only one segment of the writers that need service and in the past we have had a number of programs, some different conferences that have been of benefit to those people who are looking perhaps to hear about the writers’ journey or the creative side of it or just polishing their craft or just learning about writing in general,” McMillan says. “So in putting together the fall workshops we’re looking for a couple of speakers and perhaps one or two major programs that will focus on that.” AWL is in final negotiations with KVUE 24 to develop a weekly segment on the midday news where published writers will be interviewed, which came about because Olga Campos, KVUE 24 anchor, is a judge this year for the annual Violet Crown Awards (see sidebar). Another plan in the works is to develop a weekly program on KOOP radio that will feature writers reading their own works. McMillan says that AWL would also like to enact “a well-known or a published writer reading series or lecture series and that is something we want to do, but we really don’t have a venue right now, and that, as a lot of arts groups in Austin find, that’s a big problem.”

But McMillan is no apologist when it comes to the agents and editors conference, and, really, he doesn’t need to be one. No one believes anymore that good books arrive on a bookshelf like manna from heaven. It seems cultural vernacular that a lot of toil and sweat is expended to get a book to the point of publication. As McMillan says, “We measured it and it’s 6,000 calls yearly that we handle here in the office. These are the questions we get, this is what people want to know and we’re really reacting to the questions that we get on a daily basis, and so perhaps some people may look at it as being the wrong thing to do, but we’re reacting to what we’re being asked to provide.”

This article appears in August 21 • 1998 and August 21 • 1998 (Cover).