A Little Luck Never Hurts My Career as a Book Author

A Little Luck Never Hurts: My Career as a Book Author
by Nevin Martell

Scoring a deal with a publishing house can sometimes seem impossible—at the very least fantastical—even if you’ve made it happen before. Even though I’ve written several books, I’m still surprised that any of them made it to the shelves. Happenstance and luck always seem to play a role.

My first effort, Dave Matthews Band: Music for the People, came about when a writer friend managed to sell a similarly styled biography on Oasis. I kept badgering him over gin and tonics until he introduced me to his agent and walked me through the process. A short while later, I found myself cashing an advance check. Basically, I starred in a publishing fairytale.

When that book sold well, the publisher called me to find out what music icon I wanted to tackle next. I narrowed down my options to this new little band called the Foo Fighters, and Beck, who was alt-rock’s golden child. Unfortunately, I chose the “Loser” singer. As I toiled away on my book, he proceeded to release increasingly experimental albums that sold progressively fewer copies. Meanwhile, the Foos became the biggest band in the world. Beck: The Art of Mutation sank like its namesake’s career and my publisher stopped calling. My career as a writer was stalled.

More than half a decade passed and I couldn’t come up with an idea that would stick to the wall. I still had an agent, but only technically. The only time we communicated was when he emailed to ensure that my royalty checks for the DMB book were going to the right address. It wasn’t a bad relationship; it just wasn’t one that productively moved my career forward.

After more than a few false starts, I started asking myself a simple question: What did I love so much that I would want to spend a year researching it and writing about it?

My epiphany came as I was reading an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. The quirky adventures of the boy and his tiger got me to thinking: What the hell ever happened to their creator, Bill Watterson? After some quick research (ie. Googling), I realized Watterson was a true enigma. I drew up a one-page proposal in the hopes that someone would pay me to uncover the mystery.

I shared the concept with my agent, but he wasn’t interested. I was convinced it was a good idea, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it off the ground without representation. Around that time, I happened to be talking to an editor at Continuum Publishing about their 33 1/3 series, which focuses on esoteric and forgotten albums. He passed on my idea to do a book on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, but I decided to send him my proposal for my dream project on Bill Watterson anyway. He liked it and asked for a quick chapter outline. Soon enough, he was sending me a contract for what became Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip. Since my agent hadn’t been supportive of the idea, I decided to represent myself (with a little help from a friendly lawyer who looked over the paperwork). It all happened so fast that I had little time to consider my good fortune.

Now I’m putting together a proposal for my next project and I’ve got my fingers crossed. It takes a great idea, persistence, and a lot of hard work to get a book deal. But a little luck never hurts. ¶

This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Workshop & Event Guide.

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Nevin Martell has been writing about food and culture for more than a decade and a half. His work has appeared in The Washington Post Express, DC Modern Luxury, Capitol File, Washington City Paper, Cheese Connoisseur, Restaurant Management, Men’s Health, and online at The Washington Post’s All You Can Eat blog. His books include Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip, Standing Small: A Celebration of 30 Years of the LEGO Minifigure, Dave Matthews Band: Music for the People, and Beck: The Art of Mutation. You can find him online at nevinmartell.com.

photo by: Danny Fowler (Martell)

The Gift of Noticing: A Profile of Jody Bolz

The Gift of Noticing: A Profile of Jody Bolz
by Caitlin Cushman

Jody Bolz was three years old when she dictated a poem to her grandmother, a Russian Jew with limited English. The result was incomprehensible, but one thing became clear: Jody was a poet.

High school soured poetry with its overanalysis and she flirted instead with fiction—anything to tell a story—until Cornell’s A.R. Ammons brought her back to poetry for life. He told her, “Poetry is really just paying attention, isn’t it?”

It took her nearly two decades to fully unpack that sentiment, but she came away with an important assessment of the craft that consumed her: Poetry is a way of paying back the world for the gift of noticing. Having worked with Jody and experienced both the mentor and the editor, I’ve seen her talent for noticing, for paying attention, and the ways she’s chosen to thank the world for her gifts, leaving the rest of us richer for knowing her.

My favorite part of working with Jody on Poet Lore was sharing in the detailed conversations between her and our poets. Yes, in a move seldom made by today’s beleaguered editors, Jody remains one of the few who take the time to write to her poets. The journal’s history (it is the nation’s oldest continuously published poetry journal) and reputation (beloved by those who know it) are draws to poets and readers—but Jody’s sensibility reveals the reason poets love Poet Lore.

Jody came aboard with 24 years of teaching under her belt and a strong editing background. But beyond her talent for spotting printer errors and grammatical inconsistencies, Jody is a poet, and she and E. Ethelbert Miller (poet and literary activist) have kept Poet Lore a poet’s journal.

Jody explains, “One of the things that I feel best about is engaging poets in a serious conversation about their work. It can salvage a poem.” And the attention does not go unremarked. Grateful poets speak of the time Jody took to deeply evaluate and consider their work. Someone was paying attention.

And she loves the work. “The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve felt that poetry is essential,” Jody says. “Poets leave behind a record of humanness—what it’s like to be alive here and now—an intense connection with a stranger in another time and space.” That’s what she looks for when reading a poem, and when she writes her own: work that lasts and that changes your way of thinking.

Her work as editor, poet, teacher, and lover of literature has always been about those new ways of thinking, especially the kind generated in collaboration. Whether between an artist and appreciator, an editor and writer, a teacher and student, or a poet and her subject, Jody Bolz embraces the opportunity that conversation provides—taking the time to pay attention in a preoccupied world. We’ve noticed. We’ll pay you back. ¶

Poet Lore's 123rd birthday—and National Poetry Month—will be celebrated with a reading at The Writer's Center on Saturday, April 21 at 2:00 P.M. Join Jody, John Bargowski and Mary-Sherman Willis (both featured in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue) for an afternoon of readings, champagne, and cake!

This profile was originally posted in the summer 2012 issue of The Workshop & Event Guide.

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Caitlin Cushman is a writer/editor at Boston University. She holds a fiction B.F.A. from Emerson College and M.F.A. from American University. She spent seven years at TWC, at one time simultaneously teaching at AU, finishing her thesis, and working both as managing editor of Poet Lore and business and operations coordinator; she’s thrilled to have just one job right now. Her fiction has appeared in So to Speak and Amazing Graces, and she has written for First Person Plural. She loves Shirley Temples and Twain.

photos by: Samantha Guerry (Bolz); Kathryn Murphy (Cushman)