As promised, the second part of my conversation with Marisha Pessl (the first part is here). After talking a bit about her book, Marisha walks me through the process of finding her agent, and selling her manuscript, as well as her methodology for writing, and her favorite New York bookstores.
Liz Lopatto: You said it took about three years for you to complete the book. How much of that time was spent in revision?
Marisha Pessl: I did three drafts, and each draft took about a year. It wasn’t so much that I was revising Blue’s voice or the language, but that I wanted to make sure the mystery worked perfectly, that all the twists and turns really worked. Writing from the standpoint of an unreliable narrator, you as the author have to know exactly what’s going on at all times. You have to have a really firm handle on what all of the characters are doing, even if your narrator doesn’t understand. That was really the challenge of this book. And it took two or three drafts to figure that out. Even if Blue didn’t know what Gareth was doing, I as the author had to know it.
Everyone asks me if I really know what happened with the book, and of course I do. You really have to have a handle on all of that, especially when you’re laying clues and making sure that things are really mapped out perfectly. It would be obvious to the reader, I think, if it was otherwise.
LL: How did the book change during revision?
MP: One thing that I worked with my editor on was the clues. Because I didn’t have any outside readers while I was working, it was hard to keep track of the reader’s experience. When I was working with Carol, a lot of it was unburying certain clues because I made them opaque mostly because I was afraid it would be incredibly obvious what was going on. Especially with Gareth, I thought, “Oh, this is so obvious.” But the reader has a certain naivet??.
There’s an almost scientific aspect to bringing out those clues and making sure that in the language, things read a bit suspiciously. That was the challenge, and that process of building a mystery, which really has nothing to do with inspiration and has a lot more in common with a mathematical or even a chess problem, made me have a lot more respect for commercial writers like Michael Connolley. They’re constructing these things, and there’s a real art to that as well.
LL: Once you had the novel, how long did it take you to find an agent? How did you go about that process?
MP: That ended up being really short. I had heard stories, you know, where you submit to an agent, it can take up to six months for them to get back to you, especially if you’ve had no contact. And I had no contact.
But what happened was I found this website–everyonewhosanyone.com–this website lists three thousand different agents. Everyone in the US and the UK. And I thought, three thousand, I’ll just work my way down the list.
I started with my top ten, and I found my favorite writers at the time–I don’t remember who all of them at the time were but I do know that one of them was Jonathan Franzen–and then went about finding out who their agents were. So I had my top ten, and I sent out query letters, and of the ten, six asked to see my novel. And with email, it’s so fast. The assistant is on it immediately: “Send the manuscript in.” So I sent the manuscript in on a Friday, and by Saturday I already had an offer. I think this woman–she asked me to send it over email–and must have just started reading randomly. She said, “I’ll take you on as a client.”
But then with that one offer–and she wasn’t really my top choice–I could go to the other agents, and say “You know, I’ve had an offer,” which immediately catches their attention. So it put a fire under all of them to read the manuscript. Out of those six, three offered representation, one of whom was my top choice, Jonathan Franzen’s agent, Susan Donald. She took me on as a client. In fact, I was totally shocked when I heard. I remember she said, “Why don’t you call me back when you can actually speak?” Because I was hyperventilating.
And then, she asked me to change the title and revise the final two chapters. I’d really rushed through those, actually, wanting desperately to be finished with this book. I wrote very haphazardly there, so I had to revise.
I think I signed on with her–around November 2004, and then because nothing ever really happens after Thanksgiving in the publishing world, we had to wait until January. Then it sold to Viking in February.
Then there’s this lag when you sell your book—those revisions of the mystery, and that took all summer. It’s really a long process.
LL: What advice do you have for someone who is starting out in the business? I was going to say a young author but it occurs to me that you don’t have to be young to be just starting out.
MP: Well, one thing is that if that’s your dream, you shouldn’t let anyone tell you you can’t accomplish that. If you want to be a writer, you can be a writer. It’s not about talent. It’s about hard work.
You should write a little bit every day. Even if you don’t feel like it, even if you don’t feel inspired, even if what you’re writing down is atrocious–just write every day.
So those are the two big things: don’t take no for an answer and write every day. Don’t worry about not being gifted or any of that. There’s room for every voice and every story–it might take five different tries, five different books, but if you stick with it, you can be published. If you’re willing to work hard, I really think it’s possible. I think that.
LL: I know you’ve said you don’t talk about works in progress, so I’m not going to ask you what you’re working on now–
MP: Oh, you can ask. You just won’t get very far. [laughs] I am working on a second novel. And that’s all I can tell you.
LL: What draws you to fiction?
MP: I think what drew me initially was that like Blue, I had a childhood of books. I was always reading. And I think if you grow up reading as a child, it’s almost innate that you become a storyteller yourself–that’s something you care about. And I started writing my first really bad stories as a fifth grader and just sharing them. There’s just something about it. It was that I loved reading so much that creating my own story just seemed natural.
LL: What is your writing process like?
MP: I treat it as my job, a job that’s no more exotic than plumbing or any sort of trade, something that I have to do between nine and five every day, Monday through Friday. I give myself the weekend off to enjoy my life with my husband and my cats, and to enjoy New York. I treat it this way: Monday morning, I get up and have to be at the computer by nine as if I have some sort of overseer who’s going to fire me. I really prefer to keep it out of any sort of spiritual or magical realm. It’s very quotidian. It’s something I have to do. This is my job.
LL: Are there any special rituals you observe? A cup of coffee?
MP: Oh yeah, coffee. When I was writing Special Topics I was so addicted to caffeine. I was having nine cappuccinos a day because my husband bought this cappuccino machine and I was addicted to it. So we went out in the country once with some friends, and they didn’t have a coffee machine–I had the worst shakes. I was like a junkie. It was unhealthy to be having so much caffeine. I curbed my addiction a little bit. But I drank a lot of coffee with Special Topics. I don’t think with my other books, it will be that crazy. I managed to cut back to two cups.
But it got to this point with Special Topics where I was very unhealthy. When I was writing it, when I was in the throes of working on it, I could barely even leave my computer to eat–I’d sometimes get up in the middle of the night to work on it. I mean, I really had this weird intensity. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that again. That’s just how it was.
I treat it now like a nine to five job but then I think my hours were more like an investment banker–120 hours a week. All the time. It’s just funny. And it’s exciting too, the process of creating something from nothing. It’s incredibly satisfying. At least it is for me.
LL: I feel like there are two main ways of writing–maybe there are more, maybe there’s a spectrum, but at the two ends, there’s the people who hammer every sentence out and lay it out slowly as best they can, and the people who just regurgitate and fix their mistakes in revision. Which camp would you say you fall into?
MP: I’m a hammerer. When I do the regurgitation, it’s too loose and too baggy for me. Seeing it in a sloppy way on the page–oh, I don’t like that! [laughs] The course of a sentence might change, because I usually revise what I wrote the previous day in the morning and then start something new later on, probably late morning. So I am always sort of revising things.
When I finish my first draft, it’s already fairly polished. To have complete rough draft of regurgitation–that seems so baggy. I wouldn’t like that. I’m more anal, I think.
LL: And do you clock out at five in the middle of a sentence, or do you wait until you’ve gotten to a good stopping place?
MP: Usually my husband will be coming home from work, so I know it’s time for me to get ready to go. Or my cats will start sitting on my keyboard, telling me that they need to be fed. That sort of thing. And usually at that point, I’ve reached a level of exhaustion where it’s just–I’m tired, and I would like to stop for a while. Sometimes if I’m really in the throes of something, I’ll go ahead and continue.
Yeah, I’m not one of those writers who finds the writing process incredibly painful. And you know, a lot of writers say they don’t like writing, they like having written. I’m not like that. I love the writing process. Especially now that I am doing publicity, I’ve really realized I’d rather be writing.
LL: I’m sure there have been some interesting experiences on the road. Are there any that really stand out in your mind?
MP: My favorite is meeting people I didn’t expect. I met this 85-year-old man who loved my book and that surprised me, because coming from someone in their eighties, and someone from a man’s perspective–to have him respond to my book, that was great. I really liked that.
I also love independent bookstores–I’ve been to a lot of them now. So many of them are run by true book lovers, who truly love what they do and feel passion about the books that they sell, and meeting people like that is great. It’s hard to be independent in the age of the chain. These people are really doing this because they love books. I always support independents. I try not to go to Barnes and Noble. The independents need to be supported. I love Shakespeare and Company. I also love a couple of small ones on the Upper East Side, and there are a lot of wonderful mystery book shops as well.
I’m doing a reading at the Strand soon, and I’m really excited about that. It’s legendary. They’re so great, and the people who work there are so informed. If you’re looking for something, they know what it is. They really know their stuff.