Tuesday, June 26: High-Heeled Gumshoe
CRIMINALLY BRIEF
by Melodie Johnson Howe
I am in the midst of teaching at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference so my time is limited. Here are some random thoughts and random passions. Can a passion be random?
Tim Rutten recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times about why there is no western outcry about the Islamists reaction to Salman Rushdie being knighted by the queen. I’m glad Mr. Rutten has finally written this column. He is one of a few who have taken on the deadly silence of our authors and editors. Though I don’t remember such a column, there my have been one, about Theo Van Gough being murdered on a Denmark street by a young Islamist. The man was angered by the director’s unfinished film about the degradation of women in the Muslim world. And I certainly don’t remember the righteous film community mourning one of their brothers at the Oscars. They were too busy falling all over Michael Moore who doesn’t have to worry about being murdered for his films, unless he chooses to make a documentary about the degradation of women in the Muslim culture. I’d love to see that. Go Michael!
My first book came out at the same time as Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, and the death sentence placed on him by the Islamists. I was talking to my editor at Viking and I remember her saying she had to leave her office because the bomb-sniffing dogs were being brought in. We laughed! That was before 911.
The writers conference: I listened to an agent talk about the “pitch letter.†From what I gathered he would like the letter to be written on nice paper with a pretty envelope. And he would like to be complemented in the opening sentence. I wanted to puke. I left.
The writers conference: a group of wonderful people testing the writing waters, putting themselves out there to be heard and critiqued. What have I discovered? Most of the new writers are too nice. You can’t be nice and be a writer. You can’t be afraid of your emotions, your unconscious. You can’t be middle-class. You can live in a middle class structure, but you can’t write in one. What’s the famous Tolstoy observation? “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.â€
How true on new writers, not only being too nice, but subjected to agents such as you mentioned and feeling you not only must, but HAVE to follow all rules. Unfortunately those rules change with the various editors and agents. I was scared out of my mind the first time I pitched someting and while waiting in line repeated my mantra over and over and over. When I walked in the room, my first thought upon seeing the editor was whether I should burp her or pitch to her. She was so young and I was handing her my baby. I wasn’t sure if she knew what to do with it. You do definitely have to put yourself out there.
Good column. I remember the Salman Rushdie book back in the 70’s. You had a copy and gave it to me because you were afraid of taking it back with you on the airplane. I think I hid it away. And yes, that was before 911. Freedom of speech is a powerful freedom. It takes courage to use it.
Actually, The Satanic Verses was published in 1988.
I listened to an agent talk about the “pitch letter.†From what I gathered he would like the letter to be written on nice paper with a pretty envelope. And he would like to be complemented in the opening sentence.
Something happens to even perfectly “nice” people when they become “gatekeepers” (in all walks of life). I once had a website and the power to include or exclude viewer input. When I started actually enjoying rejecting input (because, in my not-so-humble opinion, the input was subpar), I knew it was time for me to quit. Power corrupts some more than others, but corrupt it does.