“But there is considerably more that needs to be accomplished.”

When literary agent Jayne Walker said these frightening words at our first meeting I still had hopes that I could make my book publishable. Here comes her list--she needed me to re-write everything!

“Oh.”

And I repeated, “OK.” I was alert, ready to deliver any work I could, to get the job done to her satisfaction. 

“To begin with,” said Jayne, “the emphasis needs to be changed. It must be more about the reader’s needs to make a movie. It needs to support their dream, not yours.” 

“I see.” 

As I very carefully listened to Jayne, I began to mentally revise the many pages I had delivered. And strangely enough, I hadn’t lost any energy from her criticism of my initial attempt. I was just happy she was sticking with me. 

“So you need to rewrite these chapters, giving the prospective readers what they need. And I believe you can.” 

I may have nodded, but remained silent, sensing she still had more to say. 

“But before I let you go, I’d like to go over some basic rules of English, to make the writing more stable and accomplished. I teach English at Cal and, if you don’t mind, I’m going to give you a condensed version of my class.” 

“That’s fine.”

I let her know that I was game. And she dove right in. 

“Starting at the beginning,” she began, “...you should understand that the first sentence of a paragraph should have something to do with the rest of that paragraph.” 

With her comment, I remember realizing that my poor student days were showing. But again, I didn’t feel threatened or reduced in my commitment to improving the project. I somehow maintained my equilibrium, was almost thrilled in fact, to follow her rules of English carefully as she dug into the depths of correct usage. I kept notes as she talked. 

Hours went by. I found myself (a) trying to absorb everything she said, and also (b) somewhat enthralled as she demystified my native language, correcting usages and word-patterns, past, present, future tenses of verbs, sentence structure, descriptive phrases, all the stuff that must be correct and crisp in order to make one’s written communication shine and be publishable. 

The one-on-one class she conducted took about four hours total. As it ended, she took a big breath and announced that she had just delivered her entire 4-year college-level English class in one afternoon. I realized that I had just received an amazing gift. After thanking her profusely and agreeing on an approximate deadline for the redo I left, drove my car out from its steep parking slot, and rolled dreamily down toward the Berkeley flatlands and my Point Richmond home.