Fun with art!
Let’s be clear on something. Agents care about one thing and one thing only. Marketability. As in, “can I sell your manuscript to [insert editor's name at giant new york publishing house]. They don’t care that you sacrificed nights, weekends, family time, etc. to grind out a manuscript that, according to you, is the truest representation yet of the dark night of the American soul. They don’t give a flying fuck. What they do care about is sales. Let’s slow that down. S..capital..A…capital…L…capital…E…capital…S. And how do I know all this? Because yes, goddammit, my agent — although technically he’s not really my agent, he reads my stuff and then decides whether or not to represent that particular manuscript, you don’t really “have” an agent until you’re James Patterson, Carl Hiassen, et. al — anyway, “the agent who reads my stuff” finally finished my second novel — only took him two months — and this is what he had to say…
AGENT: “I, um, love it.”
Long, awkward pause.
AGENT: “There’s a really great seed of a crime novel in there.”
Sound of shuffling papers.
AGENT: “You’re um, trying to combine—”
ME: “Crime and literary.”
AGENT: “Right, right, two genres in one.”
ME: “Make something new.”
AGENT: “Sure.”
ME: “Give it to me straight.”
AGENT: “Well, uh…”
And then he proceeded to tell me why this would never sell. In a nutshell, it’s this. Unless you’re Phillip Roth, Dave Eggers, et. al, then don’t even attempt to combine genres. Either write a literay novel (impossible to sell) or write a crime novel (easy to sell). But don’t get all high-falutin’ (my term) and try and do both. Because it won’t work.
Am I bitter?
No.
It comes down to this.
How badly to you want it?
Second Novel Now What
So I haven’t written in three weeks — since I finished, or allegedly finished because the thing is, as all writers know, you don’t really finish a novel. But whatever, none of that matters, what matters is that I finished and now I don’t know what to do. My wife is about to read it, the first human to do so, and I know it’s not perfect so there’s that. She’ll tell me what she always tells me after a book — it’s great but you should really think about doing an outline first. And she’s right. I know that. But I just can’t write that way. My whole creative life is about pleasing the man. Not with fiction. Not ever. I have enough money in the bank.
Rio Day Three
We wrapped. We did the samba until 3. I’m going to bed.
Rio Day Two
So it’s almost midnight (Rio time) and I’ve been up since 5 in the morning so I’m going to keep this brief because I’m FUCKING EXHAUSTED and yes, I know, I did that in all caps, which is annoying and pretentious and writerly but whatever the fuck ever..
Corcovado Mountain, home of Christ the Redeemer, a.k.a. Giant Jesus, is– after the birth of my sons — one of the most spiritual, humbling, you’ve-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me experiences ever. There are no words. There are no pictures that do this justice. There is just a view that forced me to reevaluate some of my earlier theories on God.
You can’t control the weather. We were supposed to shoot at Ipa and Copa today. But it rained. So we couldn’t. And there’s not a damn thing we could do about this.
That’s it. I’m done. No pictures. They take too long to post and if I don’t crash, I’ll be toast in the morning.
Another fifteen hour days looms.
Rio Day One
Officially in the can. We spent the morning scouting Ipanema, Copocabana and the samba district. After lunch, we took the cable car up Sugar Loaf Mountain. Reece, the new actor, was great. Nervous at first — duh, who wouldn’t be — but quickly fell into a natural rhythm. Spent about three hours on Sugar Loaf. Got some great time lapse of a sunset. Plus the city lights coming on. Should be fab-o. Have a 5:45 a.m call in the morning. Trying to catch a sunrise. Get tired head just thinking about it. I’ll leave you with some Rio randomness…
The pedestrian has no rights. The pedestrian can not walk into the street thinking the speeding bus will stop. Because the speeding bus does not care about you. The speeding bus does not have a bumper sticker that reads, “Will brake for humans.” Though the speeding bus will lay on the horn to give you fair warning.
Order the fish. Don’t worry if you can’t read Portuguese. Just point at something in the seafood section and say yes. The fish comes straight from the sea to your table.
Sugar loaf Mountain doesn’t have the best view in Rio. And this is hard to believe. Because the view from the top is unspeakably great. Seriously, there are no words. Though “boy, this sure isn”t Las Colinas” comes to mind. The best view in Rio is on top of Corcovado, home of Christ the Redeemer, a.ka. giant Jesus, a.k a., a recently announced seven wonder of the world.
I’m thinking tomorrow won’t suck.
Rio
Flight took ten hours. Watched Michael Clayton but fell asleep halfway through — too much wine. Rio is a huge, sweeping, in-your-face life kind of place. The people are beautiful. Also, they don’t wear shirts or bras. So that’s awesome. Lots of poverty, which isn’t quite as awesome. Goes like this — huge hotel, shantytown, even bigger hotel, vermin, etc. I guess that’s why they call it third world. Though really, I have no idea what that means. Where are the first and second worlds? Anyway. We had way too much rum at dinner Our actor — Reece — spotted a girl with long blond hair and said, “there is nothing unsexy about that girl.” Then the girl turned her head. It was a guy. That’s Rio.
First Draft
I just finished the first draft of my second novel. I’m not sure this means anything.
