People often tell me that they have written–or want to write–a novel, and they ask me if I can advise them how to have it published. They mean, have it published by a traditional publisher, not a vanity press where the author pays the publisher instead of the other way around.
Write it all, I tell them. Put it away and read it six months later, because time is the best editor. Believe in yourself. And then hope that your stars align and you have a bit of luck. Here was mine:
Some years ago, I was researching and writing a long, complicated novel about women in New England before the Civil War (www.lowellmillwomen.com). One day the librarian handed me a faded, brittle typescript.
“This might interest you,” she said.
She was right. It did interest me. Written around 1940, it was an account by one of those local, mostly amateur historians who can be found in every New England town and probably in many towns elsewhere. It told a true story: in 1848, Edgar Allan Poe went to Lowell to lecture. He met an attractive young married woman, Mrs. Charles Richmond. They fell in love. Poe went back to New York, where he lived. Over the next year, he wrote a number of letters to Mrs. Richmond. In October, 1849, Poe died. Mrs. Richmond lived on until 1898. Over the years, many people asked her permission to see Poe’s letters, but she never showed them to anyone. She destroyed them before she died.
This story reminded me of a similar tale about Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont that Henry James used as the basis for one of his shorter novels, The Aspern Papers. I didn’t see how it fit in with the long novel that I was writing, but I kept it mind. About a year later I began to work on it. I imagined a young man traveling to Lowell in 1895. He is a Poe devotee, determined to buy–or steal–the Poe letters that he believes Mrs. Richmond still has. He has no idea how difficult his quest will turn out to be.
When I was partway through writing this manuscript, I saw an advertisement in the New York Times Book Review for a memoir by William Targ, a senior executive at G.P.Putnam’s Sons. Soon afterward I saw his book in the library and took it out. I was intrigued to read the chapter where Targ told of his visit to Aileen Bernstein, the late Thomas Wolfe’s mistress. Targ was convinced that Ms. Bernstein had some of Wolfe’s papers, but he was reluctant to ask for them. Later he regretted that he didn’t. In telling this story, he mentioned The Aspern Papers.
Aha, I thought. This editor might be interested in my Poe novel.
I finished the manuscript. I asked a couple of friends to read it. They liked it. I should offer it to that editor at Putnam’s, I thought.
Still, I was shy. I had never published anything, was completely unknown. Why should an important New York editor–the man who had discovered Mario Puzo and published The Godfather–why should that man pay any attention to me?
Time passed. One day, a neighbor stopped by to give me a book she had read and enjoyed: Audrey Rose by Frank DeFelitta. I opened it at random and saw the acknowledgements page. After thanking a number of people for their help, DeFelitta thanked most of all his editor, William Targ.
I immediately wrote to Mr. Targ to offer him my manuscript. He said he wanted to read it. He liked it and offered me a contract.
When your luck happens, be ready to take it.
