Publish and/or perish

Been out of touch for a long time. Actually, couldn't quite guage what exactly was the point of writing away into cyberspace with no trace of anyone who may have even passingly taken a glance at Turnstile. And then something happened...

One of my former bosses, a journalist himself, had been trying to get his first major internationally-published-novel kick for close to six years. He first tried his hand at the 'click and publish' mode, and found out that it did reach to quite a few... in the sense that he got enough impetus to actually start writing a full fledged novel, simultaneously looking for a literary agent abroad to get his manuscript through to the table of a publisher.

He did get his manuscript through to quite a few agents, who showed interest. Then a few backed out, a few sat on the soft copies while one generally got super-excited and kept in touch with him. And then the ordeal started. The agent liked the story, but wanted certain 'elements' (whatever that may mean) in it. Which, obviously the author was obliged to add. And then the agent came back with yet another request-- this time, wanting a little 'tweaking' in the plot. Which was also adhered to. Actually, my boss was (and still is) a first-time-author yet to be published on a mass scale, so he had little choice I suppose. Then the agent went shut for a long time.

Meanwhile, another agent thought the manuscript was fantastic, as it was and wanted to go ahead with it. So here was my former boss, confused doubly -- first by whom to choose and second by what exactly to write. So he took a call and dumped both agents, and tried for a third, a fourth, a fifth and so on, selecting the names and sending the manuscript at random, all thanks to the internet. And almost overnight, he had more than one response, most of them positive. Believe that's how you operate in the days of call centres.

But his woes were far from over, since more responses meant more and varied suggestions, as well as various word limits. To cut the long story short, my boss, who had for the greater part of his life lectured others on how to approach a copy (we are all journos, you see) and make it crisp (because the word limit for all copies is invariably 600 words, though there is no guarantee that you won't receive a dressing down because you had used too few words for too important a subject, or too many for a too trivial one) was now being lectured around, night-in and night-out ( as most literary agents in the West naturally work at an hour when people in India are fast asleep) until he was sobered, objectified and eventually smartened up to pick the best deal and stick to it.

Thus he followed the course, and finally this year he is on the verge of getting published. Last heard, he was in the process of chopping off 20,000 words from the manuscript in which he had been previously asked to add some 50,000 words-- and he was absolutely cool about it, because he had to, since that is how according to him 'the professional publishing industry functions in the west'.

Uff... puff... and spare me God!

I have the internet, I have a blog, I have my space and I can write whatever crap I want and get it published-- albeit virtually.

So here I am, back on the blog, read or don't read, that's your headache.