Episode Sixteen: Reaction: The First Pages Podcast

04/19/17 • 18 min

We talk with Lindsey Danis about her experience being workshopped on our podcast, the changes she's implemented, and whether she wanted to reach through the screen and shake us for not getting it. We also answer Lindsey's questions and talk about how much self-deprecation can work on the page (versus in real life) and how to create (and why you should try to create) an emotional and aesthetic range. Want to volunteer as tribute? Submit your page for consideration by sending it to [email protected] as a Word document (yes, we know! The opposite of querying: we WANT an attachment). Please put "First Pages Podcast" in the subject line. For your reference, here is Lindsay's first page, which we went over in episode fourteen: My Life Without You by Lindsey Danis It’s the last day of the first week of school and the air has this incredible warmth, like summer’s just a tease. I unzip my navy-blue mechanic’s jacket, which I’ve been warned is not sanctioned as school uniform. I’m meeting my best friend Birdie at our sanctuary, the appropriately named Haven Diner. The Square feels like home and I breathe in its smell of incense, sweat, and garbage, happy to be here. Harvard Square is about a mile from my parents’ house (correction: my father’s house) and it’s ground zero for any street punk/riot grrrl/alternative kid in the Boston area. Street artists, protesters, musicians, writers—everyone who cares about arts, culture, and activism hangs out here, learning from and inspiring one another. The Square as we all call it shares nothing but a name with that Ivy League school. You would think it would be totally pretentious, just like the university barricaded behind 27 iron gates, but it’s the opposite. Harvard students cut across to go from dorm to class and back again, but the Square belongs to everyone. University janitors eat their packed sandwiches and rub shoulders with teen runaways, retail store clerks take smoke breaks, homeless folks play chess outside the coffee shop. Even the diehard Cambridge hippies pause and take in the scene on their way to poetry readings or theater performances. Worlds blend and cultures mix, especially when you’re waiting outside Haven for a seat. Popular girls from my old school who would never smile at me in the hallways call out my name to ask how summer was. At my new school I may be the weirdo, but whatever I am is all right here in the Square. There’s no judgment.

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Episode Fifteen: A Conversation with Agent Caitie Flum

In this episode, we talk with literary agent Caitie Flum of Liza Dawson Associates about online communities (and where to find your people), teleporting powers (which we would use to get lunch in Paris), and why agents do so many things for free (hint: we love the work, but it's still unpaid). We also talk about how agents can tell you haven't read enough in your genre--and why that matters. PLUS Caitie's best tips for a writer just starting out. You can also find Caitie in episode fourteen, our first first pages podcast. She's on Twitter @caitief.

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Episode Seventeen: First Pages With Kelly Van Sant

We speak with the lovely and talented Kelly Van Sant, agent at D4E0 Literary, about a new first page from author Erin Shachory. If you'd like to submit your first page for this podcast, please send it to [email protected] as a Word document, with "First Page Podcast" in the subject line. Here's Erin's first page, so you can follow along at home: My new life begins with a spark. First, a pinch in the center of my forehead, sharp enough to make me close my eyes. Then my skin tingles and a burst of inspiration seems to burst through my skin. Before I can even open my eyelids, I’m imagining my first sketches of Italy on a fresh page in Notebook 19: apartment towers lined with laundry and streets littered with beat-up cars, everything layered in smog and smoke. In movies, Italy is all vineyards and farmhouses. In Naples, it’s chaos. “Daydreaming?” Dad squeezes my shoulder, then nods to some chairs across the lobby. “I’ll check us in. You two sit tight.” As he sidles up to the registration desk, I shake my head, blurry with jetlag, and take in the sad, dim lobby of the oddly named American Hotel. “Italy sucks.” Troy nudges me with his elbow and calls the chair closest to the elevator. “C’mon, E. Give it a chance.” I follow my brother past a group of kids sprawled across backpacks and each other’s legs. They’re about our ages, chattering loudly in a mash-up of European languages, earphones dangling from their ears. No cares. No worries. Their dads didn’t just move them halfway across the world. I shrug off my backpack and toss it onto our pile of mismatched suitcases. “A ‘chance’ is a weeklong vacation, not selling our house and moving.” “Dramatic much?” Troy stretches out like a starfish and the chair sags. “We’ve been in the country about an hour, Eden. Chill out.” He turns his head and a girl across the room, a brunette with Botticelli curls, notices the small patch of bright purple hair behind his right ear. Then her eyes fall on the violet hair spilling over my right shoulder. Troy sees the girl and nods, but I fidget with my hair, self-conscious. I twist the whole mess into a knot and tie it back, hoping the purple streak is hidden by brown hair, cursing our shared birth defect, a recessive trait from our mother’s family. “I wish it was recessive,” I mutter. Troy kicks my chair and mouths chill before returning to his phone. The electric whine of his favorite game blips and beeps, and he’s oblivious to me again.