The Moon and the Stars
I study bushido. A samurai called Musashi Miyamoto has a lesson he calls, “The Moon and the Stars.” It’s his poetic metaphor where the sky is your attack, and the moon is your move. It’s your big, clear move, and the one you’ll try the most.
It doesn’t always work, though. When it doesn’t, it’s tempting to give up. You tried, and it didn’t work. Oh well.
Musashi reminds us that the sky isn’t empty. The moon might be the brightest object in the night sky, but it’s not the only light up there.
Last year, I pitched my novel to an agent. And she liked my pitch and asked me to query her. Which I did. She’s got my full manuscript. I’m still waiting to hear back from her.
It’s like, but not exactly like, failure. I tried one big thing, and it hasn’t really done much.
Musashi would have no patience for that. He would say that I need to try other stuff too.
So I did. I went to another conference again this year, and I’ve quadrupled my roads forward. Not by doing the same thing, but by trying other stuff.
I pitched my novel again. The agent didn’t like the novel, but she liked me! (Important.) She asked me if I’m working on anything else. I’m in a TV writing class, and I told her the premise of my show. She liked the idea of the show, and said I should send that to her if I write it as a novel. So that work is happening.
I fell into conversation with another agent at the conference, one who doesn’t represent my genre. She liked me too, and she recommended a colleague of hers. These personal recommendations are important. I’m keeping an eye on that other agent, and I will query her and tell her about my social contact. That’s valuable.
I had a conversation with a different agent at the conference. I didn’t pitch my story to her—which is quite an important point. I just talked to her—asked how she was liking it, and thanked her for coming, and told her that my friends enjoyed pitching to her. Stuff like that. I was honest with her, to be short. She asked what sort of story I write, and told me I should query her.
And a sideways result of all this: I’ve been musing on shortening my manuscript. It’s a little long for current trends, but it also has a couple of side-stories that it doesn’t quite need. After the conference, I hacked about twenty thousand words out of it—which strengthened the manuscript, actually. And I sent a note to the first agent I mentioned, the one who had the full manuscript, and I said I had a shorter draft if she’d like to see it. And she said, yes, please, send it along.
Getting a Literary Agent is a Long Con
None of these precisely fit the “correct” model for a step forward in my writing career. Getting a literary agent has lessons to learn from bushido, though. Progress is good even if it doesn’t follow the expected model.
If one move isn’t working, then change something. That’s the way of the writer.
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