Seeking the secret path to a bestseller

The several hundred people who filled every seat of the auditorium in UCLA’s Korn Hall laughed as one when a woman on the stage suggested that it was actually pretty easy to get a literary agent. Of course, she was a literary agent, which means a lot of her friends were literary agents, so presumably for her it would simply be a matter of a few phone calls.

Judging by the bordering-on-bitter timbre of the laugh, this was not the case for the people in the audience.

The lines for “How to Get an Agent,” a panel over the weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, had been rock-concert long. And it was pretty clear from the wildly waving hands that marked the beginning of the question-answer period that these folks wanted answers.

The three panelists -- agents Bonnie Nadell, Michael Carlisle and Maureen Lasher -- along with the moderator, author and teacher S.L. Stebel, had gamely and gently alerted the audience to the Sorry State of Fiction Publishing Today -- nervous editors, limited budgets, general fear of the unknown -- and offered some pretty obvious, and yet seemingly necessary, tips for the undaunted: Finish the novel, don’t send a first draft, or a second draft, and above all don’t call it a draft in the cover letter if you do. Spell the agent’s name correctly and know basic information about the agency. For example, Mr. William Morris has been dead lo these many years, so don’t address your correspondence directly to him.

All of which was very nice and nothing like what the audience wanted. “OK,” said a young woman who stood the instant the Q&A; portion was invoked. “Say you’ve done all that, you’ve finished your novel and it’s really good and you’ve written a good letter and everything is spelled right. Then what?”

Which is when Lasher made her comment about how finding an agent is really pretty easy and everyone laughed in a not-lighthearted way because that was not the right answer for this crowd.

People who go to panels titled “How to Find an Agent” don’t want to hear about proofreading or the value of Internet listings, they don’t want to hear yet another story about the manuscript that was rejected 7,000 times only to be fished out of a slush pile by the night watchman and unleashed on the bestsellers list. They want to know the magic spell, the secret password that will enable them to enter the Golden Realm.

Many people dream of becoming a Famous Writer. On the updated, Walter Mitty-fantasy list, Famous Writer is probably somewhere around Academy Award-winning actor / actress and the scientist who finally cures cancer. But because it does not require massive weight loss or facility in math, being a Famous Writer seems somehow possible. We all write, for heaven’s sake.

The only obstacle to renown as a bestselling novelist, we believe, is the fact that we haven’t published, or in some cases written, a novel.

All we need, we think, is someone to explain to us, exactly, how it is done. Longhand or keyboard? Write in the mornings or the afternoon? Three pages every day or only when the muse demands? And ideas, where exactly do they come from? Our childhood? Russell Baker’s childhood? Coffeehouse culture? Any chance opiates help?

And so we attend readings of authors great and small, clutching notebooks and autographed copies as if they were photo albums rescued from a fire. We’re here to fill a need similar to the one filled by tabloid photos of Cindy Crawford or Julia Roberts looking grubby and cross in a Trader Joe’s parking lot: See, that really could be me. If only a secret inter-dimensional tunnel would open beneath my feet and time and space as we know them cease to exist.

“What advice do you have for someone who wants to write a novel?” a young woman asks another panel Saturday, this one with three women novelists.

“I want to write a book loosely based on my family, can I do that? How do I handle the issues that arise?” asks another.

And so the questions go:

“Have you found a way to use your journals in your writing? Do you keep journals?”

“I have a high-stress job and I write to relax but my characters keep getting away from me. Does that happen to you?”

“What time of day do you do most of your writing?”

In answering, the writers are more encouraging than the agents, who are pragmatic -- “You have to write and write and then rewrite and rewrite,” which no one wants to hear. The writers are, for the most part, happy to explain their habits, although some secretly roll their eyes; they would rather discuss the big creative issues than whether they write at the kitchen table or in the garden.

And after a while, even for those who seek the secret handshake, there is something useless and disconcerting about the process, like asking a magician to explain his methods, or being shown how the set of the movie’s breathtaking, epic battle scene actually fits into a shoebox.

At another panel, a quartet of authors whose work dwells in the past talked about the value of historical and geographical research, of the role fact plays in fiction. Novelist Joanna Scott, whose latest book, “Tourmaline,” takes place on Elba in the 1950s, explained that she was reluctant to visit the island after she started writing the book, because she didn’t want to find out that her vision of the place was wrong.

“In the end, the value is not accuracy,” she said, “although accuracy can be important. The value is the illusion.”

The illusion that this place, this person, this meeting happened just this way. There are skills to learn, mistakes to avoid, discipline to acquire, but what is genius and what is craft and what is sheer blind luck? What stands between the stories we all have in our heads and the ones that emerge and then live forever in the hearts of others? Time and patience and hard work, yes, visions and revisions, yes, yes. But also that other thing, that thing of mystery that draws the crowd. Did you see that? Where did it come from, how did she do it? Can you teach us?

Magic.