Back in December, when I participated in the Mediabistro "Blogger to Author" panel, I think I came across as sort of peppy and happy and naive. The book deal was like a magical thing, sneezed in my face by a unicorn or something. Considering I was there as Tragedy Dad, I was surprisingly pollyanna about the whole thing. My book was still being written, and I had no idea what the process was going to be like.
When we were all discussing the differences between writing a blog and writing a book, I didn't have much to contribute (although I did manage to jabber on like a Cowboy Woody doll with a broken string anyway). This week, I learned something that would have made a good point at the panel.
When you are writing a blog, you have complete control. For better or for worse, it's all you, the editorial decisions, the layout, everything. If your blog blows up in your face, it is a self-inflicted wound.
This week, I got my first taste of the collaborative process inherent in having a book published.
I received an email the other day from my editor at St. Martin's, letting me know that they needed to select a subtitle for my book and asking if I had any thoughts on the matter.
Now, I hadn't actually considered a subtitle. I always thought that SCHUYLER'S MONSTER was a title that worked really well on its own, steeped in allegory and mysterious enough to catch the attention of a curious potential reader. The thing I hadn't really considered was the reality of a world in which tens of thousands of books are published every year, a world where people are more likely to look at it and say, "Shooler's Monster? What's THIS crap?" before moving on to the latest Sudoku collection.
So yes, after a moment of twitchiness, I saw the necessity of a subtitle if I'd like to actually sell any books.
The tricky part is that the subtitle will ultimately be decided by St. Martin's Press, not me. And really, that's fine. The subtitle is a marketing tool as much as anything else. It tells potential readers, as well as reviewers and book buyers, what the book is about at a glance. In the case of reviewers and buyers, it does so in a situation where the cover art is not yet in place; galleys go out as text only. So St. Martin's will choose the subtitle, which is fine with me since they're the ones who sell books for a living.
My concern is that the people who will be making this decision will largely be people who haven't read the book. Again, that's perfectly reasonable; in a company that publishes over 700 titles a year, no one's got the time to read them all, or even most of them.
But in the case of SCHUYLER'S MONSTER, I'm afraid that without reading it, the people who make the decision on a subtitle may be imagining a very different book, one more suited for a Hallmark card or an After-School Special. I'm afraid of a customer buying "Schuyler's Monster: An Inspiring Story of a Family's Noble Struggle Against Blah Blah Blah", only to read it and think to herself, "Wow, he sure says 'fuck' a lot."
I sat down and wrote what can only be described as a scary, Unabomberesque manifesto this weekend, giving my editor my thoughts on this whole subtitle and genre classification issue. Poor Sheila. She asked for a few thoughts, and she got my Schuyler's Monster dissertation instead. She’s going to end up in the Federal Witness Protection Program before she’s done with me.
The most relevant part (as opposed to all the irrelevant stuff that perhaps I should have edited out in the first place) was this:
Simply put, I believe that the subtitle should reflect the experience of the family, not the disorder. The disorder gets the title itself; the subtitle should express a larger truth. The book is about a little girl and a family (specifically a father, which I think is somewhat unique among the books that are out there), and the experience they have. The father is a little lost and ill-prepared, and the girl is tenacious but without a voice. In the end, the father finds strength, but it is the little girl who perseveres and triumphs. She gets help from her parents and the schools and situations she ends up in, but her ultimate success comes through her tenacity and fearlessness.
The primary elements of the subtitle, then, could be more about the experience of being a father in over his head and more about a girl without words, rather than about a struggle against a disease. Because really, it has never been entirely about fighting polymicrogyria. Polymicrogyria won its battle before she was born, it won simply by existing. The story has been about taking what the monster gave her and finding her way and her voice.
Am I making sense? I don't see this as a parenting book or a special needs book so much as a memoir about a journey. Even if the book gets categorized as "parenting" (which I sort of hope it doesn't but which is WAY beyond my scope of experience or expertise), I hope that it gets marketed as a more universal experience: the world can overwhelm, the people selected to fight the big battles often feel like they are not the right person for the job, and they step up to the plate anyway because their actions determine the fate of those they love the most. And also, the smallest person can hold the deepest wells of strength, deeper ultimately even than those of the persons who set out to protect and save them.
(Schuyler as Frodo? Perhaps overstated, but you get the idea.)
[...]
But if this book carries the right title (and subtitle) and jacket cover, then hopefully it grabs the attention of people who may have neurotypical kids or no kids at all. The common experience of "holy crap, I'm not ready for this" and "the experts are telling us one thing, but we know better and are prepared to fight for it" and "that little person can't even talk, but she's tenacious and in the end can take care of herself and thrive"; THAT'S what I think the book should be about. I don't know if that's the book I wrote, but if it's not, it's because I wasn't a good enough writer, not because I'm wrong.
My friend Tracy pointed out that it is probably unrealistic that I can avoid the parenting pigeonhole, and she's probably right. But I wanted to at the very least put my thoughts out there, let them enter the discussion and then step away. I don't expect St. Martin's to say "Please, tell us more!" I expect them to make their decisions based on their experience as a successful publisher. I just wanted them to hear my point of view so it's there in the room.
As for my subtitle suggestions, I came up with a few, none of which I think are going to make the final cut. My favorite was:
Schuyler's Monster:
Odyssey of a Lost Father and a Girl Without Words
Although really, I sort of like "Mime School Dropout", too.
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