It is written in what I will refer to as an "extreme" narrative, i.e. it reads like a diary. The promise of an interesting read on the subject of a young man's struggle to determine his sexuality is never realized because the author lapses into a commentary on his being bullied by those who prey on the "undecided" identity seekers. One thing that makes this interesting is that although the author identifies more as a female, his orientation is clearly heterosexual. Readers may well be inclined to 'slug' through the pity in order to see how his obvious conflicts are resolved. Three stars because it is at best a 'possible."
-- from Black Rose, a small independent publisher
You’ve struck on relevancy with your premise. The story of coming-of-age trans during the 1970’s while battling a prejudice environment is compelling, but there still needs to be a gripping arc to carry the narrative. The characters didn’t come to life for me. I felt more like I was being told events, rather than living them with Derek.
-- from Judith Weber of Sobol Weber, a literary agency
I'm not sure how I can do a better job of making the characters "come to life" and bringing the reader to the point of living events with my main character Derek while at the same time avoiding making it an even more "extreme narrative" that reads "like a diary" in which readers have to "slug through the pity".
Meanwhile, I'm continuing to participate in author's reading events at Amateur Writers of Long Island as described in this earlier blog post. I read a 1500-word excerpt from the 8th-grade chapter early in the book and the other authors gave me much more pleasant feedback than the publishers and lit agents:
Your ability to express your vulnerability is amazing! It flows with ease.
Well-written, strong emotions. Sad, powerful.
Very well written and effective. Keep at it, it's near perfect.
Still, among the rejection letters I've received over the years, there have been two main themes (aside from form letters and short choppy "not for me" replies): that I don't have enough of a platform and that the story doesn't sufficiently grab the reader and draw them in.
-- Nora Long for / Susan Cohen at Writer's house
We were impressed by The Story of Q's holistic approach to the underwritten topic of growing up queer. However, we struggled to engage emotionally with Derek because of the lack of specificity in prose. For example, it was difficult to understand why, in middle school, Derek found boys' behavior to be "bad" (rather than merely displeasing or disruptive), when Derek had not expressed a desire to be "good" or why Derek was ostracized growing up without knowing how exactly he was teased in each school he attended.
I read you query with interest. Your premise is unique and definitely stands out! Unfortunately, the writing style did not draw me into your story's world as much as I would have liked.-- Johanna Hickle at Talcott Notch
Well, that kind of feedback tends to make me think of perhaps letting go of my self-imposed barriers on manuscript length. Because for any individual event, writing it as a vivid scene with dialog and main-character mental processes and feelings and sound and smells and colors and all that means taking up more words to do it. In a vintage-2014 blog post I explained why. I'm still sure that the story I'm telling is the story I want to tell (as opposed to trying to include less). So the price tag for punching it up further is, at a minimum, to stop worrying about manuscript length and just let it take as many pages (and words) as it takes, you know?
Many of the books I've enjoyed the most have been quite a bit longer than The Story of Q in its present incarnation: Marilyn French's The Women's Room at 135,700 words (526 pages), Marge Piercy's Small Changes at 171,400 words (562 pages), Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone which comes in at 116700 words (465 pages). Mine has hovered around 97,000 words which would probably take up somewhere between 320 and 375 pages. Hmm, I could include a lot more dialog in the scene where the girl from Boston comes to visit and she become the love interest I obsess about... and I could insert some scenes with Boy Scouts illustrating more about how I was sort of not fully merging and kind of holding myself back from them, maybe a scene where the other boys are telling dirty jokes or something, and maybe some scenes at pot parties where I get into philosophical conversations with some of the girls while we're stoned...
But I also looked at some of the classic coming-out stories, to compare for length within the same genre, and that's a bit scary.
Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle ("Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America--and living happily ever after") is only 246 pages (63,960 words).
The Best Little Boy in the World by Andrew Tobias ("The classic account of growing up gay in America. An autobiography in which he spoke of his experiences as a gay boy and young man. He published it under the pen name "John Reid" to avoid the repercussions of being openly gay") was 247 pages (64,220 words).
Jan Morris wrote Conundrum ("One of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris’s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.") in a mere 176 pages (45,760 words).
Mario Martino did Emergence ("The autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual, written as a cooperative effort by the author with a medical journalist. It is one individual's story of the transition from female to male") in 273 pages (70,890 words).
The Last Time I Wore a Dress ("At fifteen years old, Daphne Scholinski was committed to a mental institution and awarded the dubious diagnosis of "Gender Identity Disorder." She spent three years--and over a million dollars of insurance--"treating" the problem...with makeup lessons and instructions in how to walk like a girl.") was 224 pages (55,552 words).
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg ("Woman or man? This internationally acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of Jess Goldberg, a masculine girl growing up in the "Ozzie and Harriet" McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town") was 308 pages (77,000 words).
And Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There ("The exuberant memoir of a man named James who became a woman named Jenny. She’s Not There is the story of a person changing genders, the story of a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret; above all, it is a love story") ran to 352 pages (91,520 words).
None of those is quite as long as The Story of Q. Is that worrisome? Relevant? I don't know for sure, but it doesn't make me very comfortable with the notion of making my book yet longer in pursuit of more vivid scenes and paragraphs.
I had two publishers sign contracts to publish this book; I need to remember that and not blame my writing for the rejection slips I get.
I'm looking for the sweet point, where I've laid down the trajectory of experiences I went through that culminated in me deciding I had a different kind of identity than the people around me, and explained that in enough detail and enough emotional vividness to convey that.
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