I’m Ready For My Cigar…

How many of you have heard the saying, ‘Close But No Cigar’? If it’s new to you, then let me simplify the meaning. Say you are an advent lotto player and one night while you’re watching them call the numbers on the tele, you realize that with each number they pick you’re getting closer to becoming the big winner. You’re on the edge of your couch. Three numbers left and you’re now crawling to your set with your ticket clutched in your hand. Your palms are sweating because it’s so close you can taste it. Like a horse that you’ve bet on at the races you can see it getting closer to the finish line—come on… come on… Aw darn. Better luck next time.

I thought about this when I was in New York this past week. I was on the Metro North train heading back upstate from Harlem when I met what I thought might be my soul-mate. You know what I mean—that first glance and your heart skips a beat. You can’t help but sneak a peek at him as he reads his paper and you just hope like in the movies he might ask you for your number and when he does, you just know you’ll have a great story to tell your grandkids. But then seven days later he doesn’t call. What the what?

I’ve come so close to getting that cigar many times as a writer. In 2004, when I was halfway thru writing my first novel, I began sending out query letters to literary agents. Like many first-time writers, I was anxious to get a contract. I just knew I had a bestseller in my hands.

Not long after mailing around 10 queries, I got a response back from an agency in New York. The sequence was the following:

1. Please send us a synopsis
a. No problem. I can write one immediately
2. We like your synopsis. Please send us first 3 chapters
a. No problem. I have 3 chapters and I can send them immediately
3. We like the first couple of chapters. Please send us the whole book
a. Ooops. I better finish my book.

I rushed the last of my chapters and sent it off only to receive a form letter soon after telling me that my novel was too short.

After getting that letter, I put my novel away for a few years. But after awhile I took it back out and started to work on it again.

There have been many other times when I’ve come close to signing a deal but for some reason, it fell through. In 2010, that same novel became a quarter-finalist in the Amazon.com’s Breakthrough Novel Award competition. That’s 6 years later.

I will continue to draft and redraft my novel until I get it right. Recently I had it edited by a wonderful editor by the name of Jean Jenkins and I’m absolutely sure that when I send it out this time, I’ll get a yes and will finally be able to light that cigar.

Here’s smoke in your eyes.