SEPTEMBER, 2024 | WRITERS ISSUE

Writers Gonna Write

This newsletter goes out to my fellow writers. Most of you know I started this newsletter—of which this is the 20th issue—to promote my debut novel, The Cyclone Release. That novel can still be found on the shelves of at least one Bay Area bookstore, but paraphrasing someone I have no business paraphrasing, haters gonna hate and writers gonna write, which means I’ll soon be promoting a new novel. And in this newsletter, I want to tell all of you, my fellow writers, a little more about this novel, and a little story about the last crazy couple of weeks.

About Tristan 4 America

This new novel, Tristan 4 America, is quite different from my first book, though it does have Silicon Valley as its launch point. To quote the pitch letter I’ve now sent out to publishers…

Tristan 4 America is Aaron Sorkin with gloves off, an unapologetically woke manifesto wrapped in a probing but no less lit-up and often hilarious tale of political intrigue.

Tristan Heller is a man preoccupied by America’s fraught political moment and hyped for the most American of reasons to do something about it. Stripped during the COVID pandemic of the sales executive job that had given his life meaning, Tristan reassembles his crew of Silicon Valley refugees and plunges into the U.S. presidential campaign as a candidate with zero chance of winning, but one hell of a lot to say. And as he starts opening eyes with his diatribes, an underworld cast of well-armed haters and homies rises up to savage effect.

These two paragraphs led off a pretty typical pitch letter that included a quick bio, a list of my writing credits, and a closing salutation. I was pretty proud of this particular pitch, and I found even more to be proud of a couple of days later. (Read on.)

Boom!

Perhaps unwisely, I sent that pitch letter out before I had finished my manuscript. I was working on my final revisions, and I had pretty much resigned myself to self-publishing the book when I realized, 1. The beginning of the book was solid, and 2. the early-October launch date I had planned gave me six weeks before publication. Since six weeks is the turnaround small publishers typically commit to, I thought to myself, “Hey, I’ve got six weeks. Might as well submit to some publishers and see what happens.”

And lo and behold, three days after I submitted to two publishers, I heard back from one of them expressing interest and asking for the full manuscript. Boom! I was excited, I was pumped up about my kick-ass pitch letter, and that lasted about 20 seconds, because then I remembered…

Shit. I don’t have a full manuscript.

Return to Startup Mode

Those of you who are familiar with The Cyclone Release know that it’s set in a Silicon Valley startup company in the late 1990s. What you may not know is that the story is somewhat autobiographical, based on the years I spent working in a startup from 1999–2001. And now here I was, feeling pressure to respond to this interested publisher, like, fast, and looking at almost 40,000 words of manuscript that needed final revisions.

Almost 25 years since I’d been in full-on startup mode, I needed to do it again.

Coffee was made, leftovers were reheated, tequila was pulled out of the bar, and I put my head down for three solid days. Amazingly, I was able to perform, at 65, a feat of stamina similar to what I did at 40—albeit for just a few days, as opposed to two solid years. (Yeah, that ship has sailed.) In the end, I met my goal of finishing the manuscript and getting it ready to send by Friday afternoon. But more than that, I discovered something magical during those three solid days in startup mode.

A Magical Mandate

As I packed up my completed manuscript and sent it off last Friday, I reflected on the truly rare writing experience I had just had. I am not a writer who spends hours every day deeply focused on the work. I have my word-count goals, and I have those amazing days when I’m really rolling, but fixating on a vast landscape of 40,000+ words for days at a time is just not something I typically do. And the opportunity—indeed, the mandate—to do just that turned out to be magical. I could see the story more clearly, the unique traits of each character, the building arc of the narrative, and most importantly of all, I just enjoyed the book more. I found myself excited that the manuscript would soon be in the hands of an acquisitions editor, not only because of the opportunity that means for me, but also because it’s just a really good book that I think she’ll find really fun to read.

Now, many of you know what happens after you submit a manuscript: the waiting game. The quick response from this publisher has left me very optimistic, but it doesn’t alleviate that fact that very few manuscripts actually get accepted for publication. I’ve been at this long enough to know that the best thing to do now is put the manuscript out of my mind now and get on with my life.

But I’m pleased that those three days in startup mode have given me new ideas for invigorating my writing practice. To create the intimacy with all the aspects of the work that I felt during those three days, I might use my imagination to convince myself that I’m back in startup mode. To intensify my relationship with the story and my appreciation for it, I could play the mental trick of imagining a publisher out there waiting with baited breath for my manuscript. And for those of who already do all this, or don’t need to because your writing practice is already intense, intimate, and appreciative, good for you. I very much look forward to seeing what you turn out next.

In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed for me. Because eventually, the waiting game will end.

In case you missed them, previous editions of the Bruce Overby newsletter can be viewed online here.

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