فصل 31

31

While I didn’t want to write about myself exactly, I wondered if maybe a story of dreaming big, growing up, and forging a career was sort of universal. I hadn’t given myself a time limit as an actor, but others I know did, and it occurred to me that might create a ticking clock that would help structure the story. I opened a Word document and started a…what? I didn’t even know what it was yet.

It turned out to be a novel. Someday, Someday, Maybe is about a young girl named Franny Banks who comes to New York City to follow her dream of becoming an actress. Aided by the pages of her Filofax date book, we follow a year in her life (sort of like A Year in the Life!), at the end of which she’s vowed to give up and move back home if she doesn’t find success. Set in the 1990s, it takes place in a New York City that has changed a great deal since then. The first thing I wrote was an anxiety dream that Franny has the night before an audition. It ended up also being one of the first things I cut. But over the next few weeks, I just kept going, kept going, kept going. It was a thrilling novelty to have something I could work on just by myself. I didn’t need a set or a script or another actor. I loved my main character, Franny, of course, but it was just as fun to create the others. My friend Kathy was sort of the inspiration for Jane, but then Jane started taking on a life of her own. James Franklin, a bad-boy type whom Franny falls for, wasn’t based on anyone in particular. He was inspired by some of the very actor-y actors I’ve known and have always been intrigued by, the ones who seem like they’re never not playing the character of “extremely deep artiste.” Barney Sparks, Franny’s first agent, was nothing like any agent I ever had. I just liked the idea of her starting out with someone who’d been in the business a long time and who spoke in clichés that were also sincerely heartfelt. So while my original inspiration was personal, it wasn’t really “about” me. Even if I’d wanted to use more details from my life at the time, I didn’t keep a diary and my memory isn’t that good. And when I started working on it, I had no particular goal in mind. It wasn’t a calculated play to cash in on some backstory of mine. I was just enjoying trying something new that was creative, something that allowed me to connect with another time and place.

In fact, I went out of my way to make the characters not resemble anyone from my real life. I would never want the real people I work with to feel parodied or exploited. It’s one of the things that slowed me down considerably on my second novel (more on that in a moment). I’d think, oh, a fun character would be an outspoken publicist who’s always sending Franny to D-list events in order to “get seen.” But then I don’t want anyone to assume I’m parodying the publicist I’m working with, who’s a man, so maybe I’ll change the publicist to a woman. But, I don’t want anyone to think I’m making fun of that one female publicist…You see the problem.

The first hundred pages just spilled out. They were a pleasure and a breeze, and to date that’s the last time writing anything has ever come so easily. One day I mentioned to my agent that I’d been working on something, just for fun, and he asked me to send it to him, which I did, with apologies. It was very rough, I told him. I hadn’t even proofread it for typos, I told him. But he read my scrappy pages and, without telling me, forwarded them to one of the best and best-known book agents at ICM and in the galaxy, Esther Newberg.

I’d only met Esther once, years before. Since then I’ve come to know her as an excellent dinner date and raconteur. Esther is smart, stylish, and a devoted Red Sox fan. But what I knew about her then was mostly that she hailed from the No Bullshit School of Agenting. (This should be an actual school—someone call Shark Tank!) Many agents have attended its sister campus, the Amazing Amazing School, a related but very different institution where even the three lines you had on that Friday night sitcom were so impressive they should earn you an Emmy. These agents are pleasant to deal with, but their comments require some translation on your part. Over time, you learn that “you’re amazing” means you’re just okay, “the ratings are great” means your show is getting cancelled, and “you look fantastic” means you’ve gained weight. I’ll write it all up for you in another helpful chart! No Bullshit is by far my favorite school.

My conversation with Esther went something like this:

ESTHER: I read your pages.

ME: Oh, wow, really? They’re not even—

ESTHER: I can get you a lot of money if I sell this book to certain people.

ME: Are you kidding? That’s great! I mean, I wasn’t even doing it for the—

ESTHER: But I don’t want to sell it to those people.

ME: Oh, no? Uh, okay.

ESTHER: Because you know what else these people would buy from you?

ME: No, I don’t—

ESTHER: Monkey doodles.

ME: Monkey…?

ESTHER: Yes. From you, they’d buy a book of monkey crayon doodles. They’d buy a cookbook covering just nuts. They’d buy the confessions of your split ends. And you know why?

ME: Um, no…

ESTHER: The Today show. [Hi, Tamryn!]

ME: The Today show? [Hi, Willie!]

ESTHER: The Today show. [Hi, Carson! Filling in again, Jenna?] You can get booked as a guest on the Today show. [Hi, Al!] You can get a spot on Ellen. Books are hard to sell, and you have these ways to promote a book, and that’s the main reason these certain people would buy your book. I don’t want to sell this book to those people.

ME (deflated): Oh, okay. Makes sense, I guess. Well, thanks anyway, I really appre—

ESTHER (mysteriously): But there are other people.

ME: Other…?

ESTHER: Well, there are three. Three other people.

ME: In all of publishing?

ESTHER: Three people—editors, I mean—whom I would trust with this. Three people who would only take it on because they believed in you and the book. But if one of them doesn’t take it, I think we should wait. Unless you want me to call the monkey doodle people…

ME: No, no. I wasn’t even—I was just sitting in my trailer one day and—

ESTHER: Well, then, we’ll see what the people say.

ME: Okay! Let me just clean up the pages first, and—

ESTHER: I already sent the pages to the people.

ME: You already—

ESTHER: I’ll let you know. (Click.)