SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION

"What It Is, Is..."

MOST PUBLISHING PEOPLE can relate to the following scenario: You are attending a party and are introduced to another guest. "So, what line of business are you in?" the guest asks, a respected opening social gambit.

"I'm in the publishing business," you reply. "I work with authors."

"Hey, that's great. You must lead a really interesting life." They then go on to explain that they are a bank manager, a postal clerk, a computer programmer. Suddenly they brighten. "Hey, you may be just the person I've been looking for!" They then take you by the arm and furtively escort you to an isolated corner of the room. Your stomach begins to sink, because you know what's coming.

Their eyes dart suspiciously from guest to guest as they put their mouth close to your ear. "You got any writers looking for a great idea? Because I've got one! I would write it myself, but I don't have the time or talent. But if you’ve got somebody, I'll go in with them, fifty-fifty."

You look past this well-wisher, seeking your host to rescue you, but it is hopeless. This individual has an iron grip on your arm. "Okay, I'll tell you the idea if you swear not to tell another soul."

"Stack of Bibles," you say, raising your palm to the sky.

They lean even closer. "Okay. What it is, is . . ."

What it is, almost invariably, is awful. But even if it isn't, the truth is that I cannot help them. For how can I explain that the last thing professional writers need is ideas, that most of the writers I know have enough ideas to last a lifetime? They need peace and quiet. They need time. They need love. God knows they need money. But the one thing they don’t need is someone else’s ideas.

Most people who have never seriously attempted to write books subscribe to what might be termed the Big Bang theory of inspiration. They perceive artistic ideas to be stupendous epiphanies that are visited once in a lifetime upon a chosen few, like Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from the Almighty.

There is no denying that many sublime works of art, music, and literature are born that way. Most of us take ideas for granted, and why shouldn't we? We have dozens of them every day, and seldom do they seem to be of such moment that we pause in wonder to contemplate their splendor. Only when we examine books, pictures, and other artistic endeavors closely do we think about the intellectual processes that gave birth to them, and if these works are truly great, we may well be reminded that inspiration is a phenomenon worthy of genuine reverence. By what mysterious mechanism ideas originate is surely as unknowable as how life itself was first created. Indeed, as the word "inspiration" literally means the entering of spirit into that which was hitherto lifeless, it could well be said that at no time are humans closer to divine than when they are inspired with noble ideas.

But ask professional writers about their ideas and they may well respond as inarticulately as my friend at the party. In all likelihood, they will ask, "Which ideas?" because they’ve got a million of them, and their biggest problem is choosing a viable, commercial one. Their next biggest problem is finding the time and money to develop it. For this kind of writer, the real inspiration comes when they are writing. It magically flows from a remote region of their unconscious into their fingertips and seems almost unfailingly to illuminate every character description, every plot twist, every metaphor, perhaps every sentence. Big Bang? No, the image of a water tap is probably more apposite. Turn it on for an hour or two and out comes a daily ration of good, ofttimes fine work. I hesitate to say "inspired" because most professional writers are too modest and self-critical to call it that. But the creative process by which literature—even popular literature—is produced may legitimately be described as miraculous.

At first glance, most people would say that literary agents operate far from this ethereal realm of ideas. After all, we make our livings appraising the value of the commodities known as books, and helping the producers of those commodities turn them into hard cash. But look again. Unlike rug dealers, car salesmen, or bond brokers, the merchandise we traffic in is intellectual. Our stock in trade is ideas, ideas that have been smelted and fashioned by authors into the precious metal called literature. A manuscript may be no more than an image on a screen or a pound or two of paper, but when an agent pitches that book to an editor, it isn't the value of the paper they’re describing. It's the value of the idea.

As I talk with authors I ask myself some very pragmatic questions. How do those ideas fit in with their career goals and financial circumstances? They may have a magnificent vision that takes my breath away, but where are they going to find the thousands of dollars they need to write that book under the tranquil conditions they require?

Another thing I look and listen for is energy. Authors may well have dozens of plots for books, but they do not hold them all equally dear. When writers relate their ideas to me, do their eyes kindle with fire and their voices resonate with passion? Do they gesture frenetically with their hands or seem to lapse into a sort of trance? Do they speak in a singsong tone, as if it's all the same to them which book they write and which they abandon?

The agent who encourages an author to develop the wrong idea, or who doesn't help them realize an idea fully, or who doesn't take into account that idea's appropriateness for its intended market, or doesn't consider an idea in the context of an author's talent and skill, or doesn't calculate the time and money that the author will require to fulfill their idea—that agent may inflict serious harm upon the author’s career. It's a very big responsibility, and my fellow agents and I worry about it a lot.

Once we are satisfied that we have the right idea, and that we have it where we want it, we must help the author develop it into an outline form that is useful both as a scenario and a sales instrument we can pitch to publishers. The two functions can differ vastly. The key difference is that in the sales pitch the idea is presented with as much intensity as author and agent can possibly endow it with. We try to boil a book's complexity down to its very essence, and to articulate that essence with words that stimulate associations in editors' minds with such abstractions as beauty, as well as with less abstract values like profit. We strive (and sometimes slave) to make every word of description - and that includes the title - pique an editor's imagination. Many of those words are adjectives (“stunning”, “terrifying”, “thrilling”, “exquisite” etc.), and authors who are asked to write blurbs, pitches or jacket copy for their own books often struggle mightily over this grammatical hurdle, for it is so alien to the adjective-free, verb-driven narrative style they have striven to master for their entire careers.

Obviously, many and perhaps most books are more complex than any one-line summary can possibly convey. And many of them are not half as good. One agent friend of mine is fond of saying that his pitches describe a completely different (and far better) book than the book itself. "I don't sell the book, I sell my idea of the book," he says.

The process doesn't stop with the agent's pitch to the editor. It continues down the line as the editor tries to conceptualize the book for his or her colleagues. The publisher's sales force must in turn transmit the idea to the bookstore buyer, and the store's sales staff must get the message across to its customers. And because no one in this chain has a great deal of time (including the customer), the idea must be expressed in the pithiest possible way, otherwise attention may wander and the sale will be. lost. So we all practice refining our descriptions of books into concepts and log-lines that are so concentrated and potent they are practically radioactive. And we use a wide variety of aural and visual aids to get the idea across: good titles and subtitles, eye-catching covers, arresting dust jacket blurbs, intriguing advertising copy, plugs by celebrities. The one-line format developed by Michael Cader for reporting book sales to his trade newsletter “Publishers Lunch” has vastly helped authors, agents and editors to produce pithy copy.

What concerns me is that the publishing business is becoming entirely too idea-driven. In our frenzy to encapsulate concepts so that we can sell them to each other effectively, we may well be forgetting that it is not the idea that excites us when we read a book, not the idea that makes us laugh or cry or stay up into the small hours turning pages raptly while our hearts thunder with the thrill and suspense and tragedy and comedy and romance of it. It's the way the author realizes that idea and evokes it in our imaginations. But there is a tendency today to pre-sell great ideas—we call them "high concepts" in the trade—then develop them in predictably formulaic plots and package them in log lines for an audience that has been conditioned to formulas by television.

At a writers conference Harlan Ellison was asked where he got his ideas from. “Schenectady,” he said, giving gave his rapt fans a street address.

The next time you're struck by a great idea for a book, you will have created the one percent of it that is called Inspiration. The other 99% will have to be produced the hard way. What it is, is Perspiration.

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A version of this article was originally published in Locus Magazine and reprinted in Mastering the Business of Writing.

Richard Curtis’s books on publishing are available at Open Road https://openroadmedia.com/search-results/books/Richard%20Curtis