Nope, they’re not in the first sentence of your novel. They’re the nine or 10 words you’ll use to tell people what your book is about. That ol’ elevator pitch.
Now, those could be the exact words that are on the back of your book. But often, the words that read so well in a reader’s mind at a bookstore don’t work so well coming out of your mouth at, say, a book fair booth.
My Codorus Press pals spent the weekend at the most-fine Gaithersburg Book Festival refining our pitches to a razor point — sometimes pitching a friend’s book with better precision than our own. (That one serves to reinforce my creative credo to do it with your friends. The buddy system really works with this stuff.)
For myself and Mike Argento, not counting the aborted Kensington monsoon last month, this was our first book fair pitching our own books. So, even though we spent a chunk of last year pitching Scott B. Pruden’s book at fairs, there was a little bit of a learning curve for both of us. Mike’s had his “Bad people doing bad things, badly” line locked down for a long time on “Don’t Be Cruel.” But we had to work in mob, Elvis and insurance scam in there as deftly as possible, as well.
Scott hit upon the “memoir” element of my book at some point during the show, and it really worked as a way to quantify the book. It turned into “a memoir about growing up overeducated and underemployed in the ’90s.” If they needed more, especially if they were concerned about it not having any resonance with other generations, I’d pull out the big guns: “Well, in one of the columns, I practically call Kurt Cobain the grunge Dizzy Gillespie.”
If you have the well-refined “elevator pitch,” when you hand the book to someone, those words will be amplified by what they read on the back jacket.
Here’s an example for “Acid.”
Reader: “What’s that? Will it cure acid reflux?”
Wayne: “Yes. Guaranteed, if you read the whole thing.”
Reader: “What is this really?”
Wayne: “It’s a memoir about growing up overeducated and underemployed in the ’90s.”
Reader: “Oh ok!” (Takes the book and looks at the back.) “Hey, that’s you!” (And reads the following: “Get your grunge on! Former nationally syndicated Generation X columnist Wayne Lockwood collects some of his best columns, reflecting and sharing in the promise and challenges faced by those who came of age in the early 1990s. While talking heads will harken back to St. Cobain for perspective on this misunderstood decade, this collection of works — simultaneously everyman and deeply personal — aims to give a voice to those who didn’t have a guitar to scream behind.”)
… “Why does it look like a Pepto Bismol box?”
Wayne: “It’s a pop-art nod to the first essay in the book. It’s kind of a metaphor on how your eyes can burn the same way your stomach can, from the same input.”
Reader: “Ok, ok! … This is really cool!”
By the way, if you go the highbrow art route with your cover, be prepared to explain yourself. A lot.
OK, back to the words. You might think that it’s not your responsibility/problem to come up with this pitch. Get over it. Everything’s your problem, especially if you’re a first-time fiction writer, no matter who’s doing the publishing. Anyway, having this pitch can give you tremendous focus. This is book one of the (insert writer here) brand. Better to get it right as early as you can. Like Uncle Kurt said (Vonnegut! Vonnegut!), we become what we pretend to be. So, pretend well.
ACID BONUS! Here is the Kurt/Dizzy chapter:
Generation Mutts
The evolution of the Generation X ethos has really got me down. But it’s not so much the existence lately, it’s the term. It’s popping up everywhere. Soon, there’s going to be a Generation X breakfast cereal. “X’ies! Bitter and hard to swallow!” Probably a video game. And, of course, a Saturday morning cartoon to sell it.
I’m an “X’er” – because I am. Can’t much help that. My hair, it brands me a hippie. My personal library brands me a beatnik. Who knows what my librarian brands me. All I know is I’m branded and bugged.
Here’s a little pop sociology for you. Since around the end of World War II, our society has gotten more factioned, more fractured. There’s been a lack of unifying rallying points (like world wars). As such, the group mentality has decayed. Society needs to label, sub-label and sub-sub-label so that everyone knows the boundaries on the invisible map. Boom, you get Irish-American, African-American, Mexican-American.
This goes deeper than roots. You can – and you will – get labeled depending on who you are inside (assuming, of course, you’re lucky enough to know). “Generation X” isn’t the first such label. This year’s model.
Does the wind remember the names it has blown in the past? Let’s hop in the Wayback and see.
First stop, 1940s New York City. Here beneath the signs’ seedy glow on 52nd St., rumpled musicians are changing the face of art. Then staying up all night, jamming at Minton’s, crashing in their best Zoot Suits wherever there’s a floor, couch or cot. Their iconoclastic playing and rumpled clothing leads the cultural majority to give them a name, to quantify something to which they can’t necessarily relate. Boom, you’ve got the first “hipsters.” And the music they play, it isn’t Jazz anymore. It’s “Be-Bop.” That’s not what they named it. They just thought it was music.
Wake up, Sherman. It’s 1991. Here beneath the signs’ seedy glow in Seattle, rumpled musicians are changing the face of art. In plaid shirts worn more for warmth than fashion (supposedly), they play vibrant music. And the music they play, it isn’t rock. It’s “Grunge.” No so-called grunge artist ever calls it that. The term is never used, except on sardonic T-shirts that declare “Grunge Is Dead.” And by the way, the only time psychedelic architect Jimi Hendrix used the term “hippie” was to scoff at it (see “If Six Was Nine”). It’s not so much the words anyway, it’s the connotations.
Ponder “beatnik.” What a word. In two syllables, it conjures up the intense fear of Communist oppression and slaps a set of bongos on it. Instant hate – just add vodka.
Same thing with Generation X. At first, it seemed like a catchy way to refer to a wedge of the grapefruit. Spoon on some connotation, and you taste a bunch of slacking, visionless underachievers lounging around reading Bret Easton Ellis. Or Douglas Coupland, for that matter, if he writes something good again. Four syllables – an infinity of meaning.
You can maybe lump movements and eras, but how can you lump something so complex as human beings? People aren’t lumpable like so much Play-Doh. I’m certainly not. Here on my desk (around the corner from the Wayback), I have two Kerouac novels, a picture Dizzy Gillespie signed for me, “Axis: Bold As Love” in the Walkman and an ultrayuppie credit card computer phone index.
So what am I?
Boom – I’m a mutt.
Sticks and stones still break our bones, but believe it or not, names really can hurt you. Maybe not individually. But the labels hurt us collectively, like those shaving nicks you don’t discover until you throw some cologne on them. And then they hurt like hell.
Our little group has always been and always will … until they call us something else.
wayne lockwood 