As the title to this entry suggests, I've had a busy week. Mix in some insomnia, a handful of really horrible headaches, and more than 3,400 written words and we've pretty much touched on all the other fun stuff. (Actually, the writing is a really good thing. I hit my goal for last weekend and plan on attempting to hit another one when I'm done here.)
Let's do it count-down style:
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Due to holes in our Employee Handbook (and a huge increase in hiring over the past eight months), I was able to take Columbus Day off. Hence the three-day weekend and the four-day work week. Despite it being a full day shorter, I felt like this week was longer than most have been. Because I dedicated part of that three-day weekend to writing and the other parts to spending as much time as possible with Matt (and yet another part to freelance work), my sleep schedule got screwed. Hard.
This whole week made me remember another reason why I've been so creatively unproductive the past seven years: My brain is most creative at night. I produce all my best stuff after twilight. Midnight, 1 AM, 2 AM... bring it. This is when my brain is most active, when I get my best ideas. And this doesn't only apply to the actual act of writing. This whole week I barely got any sleep because even though I was in bed, my brain wouldn't shut off. I kept getting ideas for things I wanted to write. So I've been dragging myself out of bed and into the living room at 2:30 or even 3:30 in the morning, and writing down everything that I've been thinking all night. Just random ideas... chicken scratch. And you'd think that just getting it out and down on paper would help, but oh no... No... the next hour or so is spent thinking about how I would actually approach the idea. I can't stop it.
Hence, the longest 4-day work week in the world. Completed on less than 15 hours of sleep, I'd say.
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I currently have three contracts in the works: one novel (the one I was super excited about a few weeks ago that my director told me probably wouldn't happen), one memoir (about a young Jewish girl teaching in the Bronx—the total opposite of Freedom Writers and everything along those lines), and one nonfiction coffee-table-ish type book (called Kitchen Things, it features the photos on this site and really awesome historical and entertaining narrative about each utensil). The author/photographer of Kitchen Things is actually the younger brother of the late Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, W.D. Snodgrass. Pretty freakin' cool, in my opinion.
Nothing's confirmed until the contracts are returned and signed, but everyone seems pretty content with the deals, so hopefully they'll all work out and I'll have three additional acquisitions to my name. Today I received a submission from an agent representing the former pastry chef of one of Michael Mina's restaurants. Michael Mina is a Michelin-star rated chef in California and Vegas and he would even provide a blurb for the cover of the book. I'm reviewing it next week. If it's written well, I'll pitch that one, too.
(2)
I was reaching for two of something to finish this title, and it occurred to me that during the hour and a half it took me to get home today, I couldn't fit on two A trains that stopped at Penn Station. They were all running behind, so even though I got to the station at 5:35, I didn't step foot on a train until 6:30. In that time frame, tons of trains went downtown and the C and E passed me a zillion times, but me and about 100 other people paced and bitched while waiting for an A train. And, of course, when one finally did show up, it was so packed that the majority of us couldn't fit inside. This happened one more time around 6:15. Then, as I was about to give up and take the C to 168 and transfer, I caught sight of the A train's lights down the tracks. The car was so empty, I actually got a seat. Which is nice when you have to go 150 streets...
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Ah, yes. The best part of this week... for me, for Mo Yan, and for my company. Years ago, when Arcade Publishing was its own company, they acquired English translations of works by a Chinese writer named Mo Yan. At the time, no one else wanted Mo's work. But the publisher of Arcade, the late Dick Seaver, took a chance. He liked what he read, he had faith in it, and even though it wasn't the best thing ever, he took it on. Throughout the years, Arcade picked up five of Mo's books. In 2009, Mr. Seaver passed away and his wife, Jeannette, sold the company to Skyhorse.
This year, Mo happened to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. As Jeannette told us in a company meeting on Thursday, she did not expect Mo to win. All eyes were on the Japanese nominee, not the Chinese. But Mo won. And, in a way, so did my company. Phone calls were made at 5 in the morning, tens of thousands of reprints were ordered, and the design team worked on "Nobel Prize Winner" emblems for the covers of the reprints. The phones rang all day, looking for quotes from our executive editor of Arcade, our publisher, and even Jeannette, who works in the office with us a few days a week. Around 3, our publisher called a meeting, poured champagne for everyone, and we celebrated the rest of the day. It was... awesome.
Of course, I had absolutely nothing to do with any of the books Arcade printed between 2000 and 2008. And I didn't even have anything to do with the reprints we'll be putting out this weekend. But still... we're such a small company. And this is so huge for us. I don't agree with everything we publish, but this definitely shows that taking risks is worth it. And if you believe in something enough, even if it doesn't sell, that doesn't mean it's not good writing. I think we're all going to be a bit more open minded when we're reviewing submissions from now on. You never know when you may be taking on something bigger than yourself.
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