Did I Really Do That?

For years there's one consistent rule about books that I think many people share: you don't destroy a book. You can give it away. You might be able to mark it up because it's a text book. You can store it in the attic if you've run out of bookshelf room in your house and there's no way to stack it elsewhere.

You do not cut it in half with a knife, and you don't rip out pages.

I have a Writer's Market from 2009. It is, obviously, out of date. Those books, however, are huge. As big as the market. The portion useful to me? Is less than a quarter of the pages.

Now I didn't always believe that. I thought I could write Contemporary Suspense, and perhaps my Science Fiction isn't too bad. The truth is that I'm most at home with writing in the Fantasy genre. It doesn't mean I can't write those other things--I have. They're not bad, though it's probably of no surprise that I'm more comfortable with what my ex called squishy Science Fiction. (The book was a war between Meme and Gene, with poor hapless half-breeds trapped in between).

I was starting the post-draft cleanup of my office. Actually it was a, "Why am I always in the living room instead of where I'm supposed to be working?" It's where my desk is, and my reference books, the map of the land where all my Fantasy books are set, and the printer. I realized that my living room was far less cluttered. One of the things I did in that clean up was tackle the limited space on a book shelf with more writing-editing focused books. I saw the hefty Writer's Market.

Something had been happening to me the past few weeks. A sense of affirmation, a sense of purpose. And here was this thing four times too big. It looks daunting. There were sticky tabs in it marking agents who might be interested in my Contemporary Suspense novel. (I never sent it out, and I'm glad I didn't. It failed to do what I wanted it to do. The Fantasy I just finished does it much, much better). I thought back to a college English Professor. She would take her Norton or Willie/Hunt anthologies--heftier than the Writer's Market more often than not--and cut it in half so she only had to take what she needed into the classroom. she re-bound them.

I suddenly thought to myself: this book isn't a book. It's a tool. It's like one of those air gun stapler/nailer/whatever else type tools. You only use one at a time. It would be silly to staple and nail and do other doohickey type tasks at one time. That would be a mess. So why not cut this Writer's Market in half? The pages will fall out, I told myself. Would that be such a problem? It's out of date and you'll have to do your homework to see if any of this information is relevant. I thought about the homework... and realized that if I cut it down so I only focused on finding agents in my primary area of writing, then I'd be cooking with gas.

I pulled out an exacto blade that I've had since art classes in college... and went at it. I took out all the useless sticky tabs, got a fresh sticky pad. I started to go through the agent list. I realized a page had nothing of use to me. "I'm sure you're going to do great work for someone else," I said to the list of agents... and then ripped out the page. For those pages with only one reference--the standard for the most part--I got a green sharpie and crossed out the names of agents who never touched Fantasy, did children, young adult, or required you to work a number of certain scenes into your novel so it would be even more adult than you already had it. The number of pages was whittled down even further.

What I have now is a little bit of a mess. It's a step in a totally new direction, with a rather determined proof of focus. I have a list of agents and publishers who work with my genre. The list is old, but I can now use that list, read up about them, and then look for more information on the internet. This side of the work can be more focused. More? I don't have to look at the daunting book wondering if I'll find what I need in it. I can now get on with the job.