The Pickled Cucumber

Well, I’ve done it. The deed is done. I’ve crossed the Rubicon. The die is cast. Qué será será. Like a good neighbor State Farm is there.

I’ve sent out my first query letters for the tea clipper project I’ve been working on for the past… *checks watch*… seventeen YEARS.

Folks, I’ve been having some FEELINGS.

It is probably impossible to separate how I feel from the absolute shit-blizzard of public policy announcements coming out of Washington D.C. for the past two weeks. We are inexplicably trade warring with our three biggest economic partners, until we aren’t. ICE is kicking down doors all over the country like some cheap-ass comic book studio reboot of the Diary of Anne Frank. Funding for my wife’s state government job was suddenly and inexplicably turned off and back on again like the worst, stupidest, least-entertaining personal finance Squid Games challenge. I’m not doing super great about it all.

We are saber-rattling over Greenland (GREEN LAND), of all places. And for what?

Quick Side Bar on Greenland

I have a personal theory about why Donnie Johnnie Spray Tan is so obsessed with the resource-poor scarcely-populated self-governing country within the Kingdom of Denmark. And that is THE MERCATOR PROJECTION.

See, when you look at the map above, it SEEMS like Greenland is really huge, right? Like, something along the size of the continent of Africa? The problem of course, is that Mussolini Arancione doesn’t understand the basics of how maps are made. Observe.

In reality, of course, the actual “size” of these land masses would more accurately be portrayed as below.

Leave it to the 1/6 Choir Director to fight like hell claiming something tiny and insignificant is actually quite large and important. But I digress.

*Ahem*

Feelings abound. As I said.

There is so much tied into this manuscript for me. Too much, probably. I’ve been working on it since before either of my children were born, ever since I first heard about the great tea clipper races in my first job at an international tea importer right out of college. I have read dozens of books to research. I volunteered with the excellent Los Angeles Maritime Institute’s Topsail program for several years where I was literally shown the ropes of square-rigged sailing and in turn, taught elementary school kids how to handle lines on the Brigantines. I’ve visited maritime museums and archives around the world, including London, where I made a pilgrimage to the last surviving tea clipper, The Cutty Sark.

I spent three years at an MFA program, sweating through workshops critiquing my writing, navigating the vagaries of American literary culture, plodding my way along a stultifying career of undergraduate first year composition instruction, all so that I could build the skills to write this book. I decided early-on that if I could spend my life learning one craft to be the best at that I was capable of being, I wanted it to be writing, and, if I could only ever write one book, it would be this one.

I’ve poured myself into this thing. I’ve tapped deep veins of vulnerabilities, fears, and unresolved traumas that I even I didn’t realize were lurking under the surface of my soul when I started. This matters to me deeply. Existentially. When feel myself beaten down by inchoate fascistic neanderthalism of American culture and find myself stumbling lemming-like toward the precipice of nihilism the only things that have held me back have been my family, whom I love too dearly to abandon to this hellscape, and the off-chance that this book might actually be worthwhile.

This level of attachment is… not healthy, I’m aware. If for no other reason than that the odds are not in my favor.

As I’ve mentioned before, despite all I’ve done to prepare, the deck is fairly squarely stacked against this book ever getting published. Of the agents I have queried so far, the average request rate is less than 1%. That’s just requests just TO SEE the full manuscript. That’s not even the sub-fraction of that number to whom they actually offer representation. And of course, after winning the lottery of getting an agent, you have to get struck by lightning all over again to clear the hurdle of acquisition editors and committees, and everything that follows afterward. Not great.

But what am I to do? I can’t stop. I’ve already done the work. I’ve found it extremely rewarding, regardless of what comes next. And you know what? In prepping the manuscript for sending it off to agents, I reread it and thought, This is damn good. I like this book. I think there’s value in that, even if no one else gets to see it.

So, here I go, pushing my little paper boat out onto the roiling sea of literature, as the hail of domestic and international chaos pelts the water around me. There is nothing else that can be done.

Here’s My Strategy

I’ve built a spreadsheet with lots of agents on it who represent the categories this book most naturally slots into: historical fiction, literary, upmarket, nautical, etc. I plan to send out queries in batches of ten. As each one rejects the manuscript (or, more likely, never responds) I will send out another to keep ten queries “live” at any given time. This way, the theory goes, if I get someone who is interested in representing me, I can email the other nine folks with a little *wink wink* *nudge nudge*, hey, uh… this one’s interested, want to take a look? Get them fighting amongst themselves.

I plan to reassess my strategy/presentation after every set of ten, and in response to any feedback I receive (unlikely as that may be). Any requests for a full manuscript are points in favor of keeping things the same. Specific rejections with feedback are points in favor of changing things.

If I have the stamina to make it through 200 rejections that’s what I intend to do. Knowing myself as I do, I may succumb to despair before then. If I get all the way to 200 without an offer of representation I’ll shelve the whole project to reexamine after a few years.

I might also consider pitching the project to some smaller regional presses at that point, particularly ones that specialize in the kind of work I’ve written. That is, less ideal, in my view than a deal with a big five publisher, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I will never self-publish this book.

That’s all, folks.

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About Joshua Rigsby

Joshua Rigsby runs an independent bookstore in a small southern town. His writing has been featured on Thrillist, Atlas Obscura, Southern California Public Radio, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Atlantic.

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