Writers & Lovers(55)

We appreciate you thinking of us

We do not feel passionate enough





After eleven rejection letters comes a message on my phone from someone called Jennifer Lin. She says she’s Ellen Nelson’s assistant and leaves a number. Ellen Nelson is the agent of two of my favorite writers.

I call back the next morning before work.

‘I read Love and the Revolution over the weekend. I loved it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No, I really loved it. I think it’s extraordinary, Camila.’

Camila. I forgot I’d put my real name on the manuscript.

‘Thank you so much.’ But what does Ellen Nelson think? I’m impatient to know where we’re going. And I can’t be late for work.

‘So Ellie isn’t taking on new authors right now. I’d like to do this one myself. I’d like to represent you. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of interest, and I’ll just say up front that this would be my first book. I’ve been working for the Nelson Agency for three years and I’ve been waiting for the novel that would lift me a mile high and it’s yours.’

I have no idea what to ask, what to say. Why haven’t I prepared for this?

‘Have you already made a decision? Am I too late?’

‘No, I haven’t. Not yet.’

‘Phew,’ she laughs. ‘My palms are sweaty right now. Makes me wonder how people ever propose to each other. I have no track record,’ Jennifer goes on. ‘And I will completely understand if you are interested in a more trodden path. But you would be my only client.’ She laughs again. ‘I would give you all my attention and focus, which, if you talk to someone in my family, can be very intense. I work very hard. Ellie said she would be happy to give you a full and lengthy evaluation of me. Shall I put her on?’

There’s a click and another voice is talking, as if I’ve been patched in to a conversation late. ‘You might have someone lined up with big name authors and a fancy address, but I’m telling you, you want Jennifer steering your ship. No one else.’ She takes what sounds like three fast intakes of a cigarette and blows it out all over the receiver. ‘First of all, she hates everything. Everything. I had three debut bestsellers last year. She hated all three. Told me not to touch them. Your book—I haven’t read it yet—but your book must be something outstanding because this girl passes on everything. Second, she’s ambitious. She’ll work her fanny off for you. She’ll tell you exactly what she’s doing and why she’s doing it. You probably have other options.’ She waits for me to confirm this, and when I say nothing she says, ‘You’re coy. Okay. I get it. However, I know this business, and I am giving you grade-A advice.’

I thank her and am relieved when she passes me back to Jennifer. Jennifer starts talking about the manuscript. I can barely take it in, her enthusiasm, her close reading, her kindness. Each time she brings up a scene I remember where I was when I wrote it—in the yellow kitchen in Albuquerque, in the bar below Paco’s mother’s apartment. She talks about the clever break in the narrative, the abrupt end of Clara’s childhood and, when it resumes, the subtle but clear shift in voice. That happened in Caleb and Phil’s guest room in Bend, in the weeks after my mother’s death and I couldn’t write at all, and when I started up again it had to be from a different place. Clara’s young voice was gone. She talks and all I see is what she cannot, these years of my life woven into the pages.

‘There are just a few things I wonder about,’ she says and lists a few elements of the book that she feels needs some attention. They make sense. She has identified things I didn’t even know were there and things I’d skirted past. She talks for a long time, and I’m looking at the clock and thinking about asking her if I can call her back after work, but I don’t want to interrupt her. I want to know where she’s going with all this. Will she represent me, and how exactly does that work?

She asks if I’d like to do a revision and send it back to her. She asks if I could do that in a month. ‘We’d want to get it to editors before the holidays. You can’t sell anything over the holidays.’

I agree to write a revision, and we hang up. It’s 11:34. The restaurant has just opened for lunch. I bolt out the door.

Marcus is so mad he almost sends me home, but a party of eight reporters from the Globe comes in without a reservation and no one else can take them. He tells me I’m now on double probation. He says I have one slim straw left. I don’t care. I have a fucking agent.

I find Harry in the kitchen picking up his turkey clubs. I tell him about Jennifer and he puts the clubs back down and hugs me hard. He whoops loudly and Tony tells him to shut his mouth. He doesn’t. He keeps yelping. I tell him what she said and how I have to do a revision, that she has all kinds of ideas.

‘Like what?’

I look at him. I can’t remember anything Jennifer said except for something about a transition in chapter 5.

‘Something about chapter five,’ I say.

‘You took notes, right?’

‘My heart was pounding and I was late for work and I didn’t know where we were going.’

He rubs my back. ‘You can call her back later.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, but I know I won’t.

I think when I get home and sit at my desk with the telephone pressed to my ear that I’ll remember what Jennifer said, but I don’t. It all made so much sense to me at the time. I remember the feeling I had, the thrill of it, but I don’t remember many of the words. We talked about the theme of possession, I think, that runs through the book, but I don’t know what she said. I remember nothing she wanted me to work on except the party scene in chapter 5. She thought it needed a few lines of transition from the scene before it. I think she said it could be a few pages longer, too.