The Happy Time Page was a kick in the balls for a kid like me.

On any given Sunday afternoon, 10 year old Joe Daly would have enjoyed building a Lego fortress and defending it against Cold War adversaries, watching the Boston Red Sox find a new and eye-watering way to lose, or listening to KISS albums on the little turntable in his bedroom.

Tragically, that was not how 10 year old Joe Daly spent his Sundays.

No, in those formative years, Sunday afternoons were reserved for the soul-whipping agony of writing for The Happy Time Page.

It was my mother’s idea.

The Happy Time Page was a feature in our local Sunday paper, wherein kids were encouraged to submit essays or poems on a generic subject that changed each week.  The front page featured winning essays and poems, as well as the results of the weekly drawing competition that would make a guy like Ted McCagg head straight for the bourbon. Think of it as a print-version of The Nervous Breakdown, but without all the drugs, sex, travel, and introspection.

The best works were displayed on the front page of the section, with the author’s name prominently displayed beneath each piece.  This is what everyone was shooting for- publication.

The only requirements for the essays were that they be on topic and at least fifty words.  Fifty words.  That’s where I hit the wall.

With a gun to my head (or the threat of television privileges being revoked), I could probably come up with twenty five words about baseball, spring, or some other subject like that.  But fifty words?  That was a whole afternoon, shot all to hell.

See, I had zero ambition to write.  I was as motivated to write fifty words as a heroin addict would be to take a spinning class.  I could speak relatively well for my age, but transcribing my thoughts with pencil and paper (I made too many mistakes for a pen) was a Herculean challenge for both my young mind and my tired hands.

Nonetheless, at my mother’s insistence, I would spend Sunday afternoons slogging through fifty word essays with the speed of climate change.  It would take me upwards of two to three hours to churn out one of those pieces, with my mother requiring me to sit at the dining room table and write until I had a finished product.

During those two hours, after finishing each sentence, I would count the words on the entire page, praying that I had just completed the sentence that brought me past fifty words.  On the odd occasion when I would allow myself to finish a thought even after reaching the fifty word minimum, I would expect the type of recognition generally reserved for Nobel Prize recipients, and would be baffled and resentful when such accolades were not received.

My mother would proofread each essay and returning each to me with several suggestions, all of which I would adopt without debate, simply to see the exercise come to a close.  Although my mother’s own schooling ended at the age of sixteen, she had a great sense of the written word and she would coach me on finding concise and at times, even elegant ways of re-stating my thoughts.

Most of the time she would just ask me what I meant when I wrote a particular sentence.  I didn’t realize it then, but the way we would discuss each sentence and the different ways of expressing a single idea gave me a new approach to writing.  I’m not saying that I enjoyed it, but as the process evolved, churning out fifty words became a less odious task.

When the essay was finished, she would proofread it a final time and direct me to write out a new copy in pen, which she would then drop in the mail the following morning.

I stopped submitting pieces for The Happy Time Page as soon as I reached the maximum age requirement.  I think my mother was bummed.

***

I ignored writing as a form of anything other than homework for the next twenty years.  My first real publication came in law school, when I wrote an article for my law school’s IT Journal.  If my article was approved by the editorial board, I would not only receive academic credit, but more importantly I could add the distinction of “Law Review” to my transcript and resume.

Articles were either accepted or rejected, with a select two or three being published in the school’s law journal, alongside the works of prominent judges, scholars, and attorneys.

To my surprise, I enjoyed the hell out of the process of writing my paper.  Weighing in at a couple hundred pages, the format required that I submit two pages of footnotes for every single page of original thought.  I had an editor who, unlike my mother, received quite a bit of resistance in matters of style and tone.  It was exhilarating to feel passionate about something I wrote.

My friend Michelle also wrote for the Law Review and we agreed that if one of us were published, the other would have to buy a pair of cowboy boots for the lucky writer.  More than anything, we both just wanted our papers to be accepted so we could collect the credit and graduate on time.

When the articles were reviewed by the editorial staff, we were stunned to discover that we were both nominated for publication.   A week later, on a sunny Saturday afternoon on Chicago’s west side, we went boot shopping together.

Here’s how I earned those cowboy boots.

***

The first true labor of love that I published was an article about a band from San Diego called The Rugburns.

I spent colossal chunks of free time on AOL’s music message boards in the mid-nineties, becoming a regular on the boards for The Rugburns after hearing their anthem, “Me and Eddie Vedder.”  Ironically, one of the people whom I met on those discussion boards would, years later, draw my attention to Brad Listi’s blog, and eventually to The Nervous Breakdown.

I found immense pleasure in writing about music on those discussion boards- especially where I would write a lengthy essay on an interpretation of a song or how certain music made me feel.  My posts were pompous and at times self-important, but gradually I learned to discuss music in a way that allowed me to express my point of view without insisting that others agree.  Writing about songs and artists flowed very easily for me, and the writing skills that I acquired in law school helped me present those ideas with clarity and in some cases, persuasion.  I loved the challenge of finding creative ways to express my feelings about music.  Talking about music was a passion, but writing about it was a rush.

One day a girl contacted me about The Rugburns.  She had read some of my posts about the band and wondered if I would be interested in submitting an article for a zine she had just launched called “Lunatic Fringe.”

I agreed and a couple months later, I published my first piece about music.

***

Even after I began practicing law in 1994, music was always my number one passion.  I would much rather be listening to Soundgarden bootlegs than working weekends to impress my bosses.  In 1996, I spent a week touring around the midwest with The Rurburns.  It was one of the most significant experiences of my life.  So much so that when I returned to Chicago, I quit my job as a lawyer and began immersing myself in all aspects of music.  I took up guitar, I expanded my musical tastes into new genres, and at the suggestion of an entertainment attorney, I began studying how the music industry worked.  I had amassed a number of contacts in the music business- artists, managers, and quite a few contacts at some pretty big record labels, and I soon found myself writing promotional biographies for bands.  When a band was in the final stages of preparing to release a new album, their label or management would pay me to write a short biography of the band that would be included with the CD and press kit that was sent out to radio stations all over the country.

The pay was lousy, but money mattered little to me in that regard.  I did it for the sheer enjoyment, although at times it was a character-building experience.  I received a request to do a bio for a solo artist, and without much guidance, submitted a first draft to the artist and label.   The artist’s PR agent ripped the draft apart so ferociously and so personally, that I took almost a year off from writing any other music bios.

Another time a label hired me to do a biography on a band whose music I could not relate to at all.  It was a hard rock band and I’m a hard rock guy, but I just could not get there from here.  Still, I had to sit down with the band and find out what made them tick.  The following exchange actually happened:

I asked, “So what are you guys trying to convey when you play live?”

“Dewd, we just like, want to like, try to you know, like, get people with jobs and shit to like totally forget their day, you know?  It’s like, some guy works like forty hours, you know, and we just want him to come to our show and like, forget about his week.  If we can make just one person forget about their week, then it’s all worth it, dewd, you know?”

“But they could just stay at home and get drunk to forget about their week.  We need to highlight what makes you guys different.  They should forget their week not because they’re drunk, but because your music is memorable.  Does that make sense?”

“Exactly, dude!  See, you get it.  Alcohol only makes our music sound better!”

On the other hand, I had the privilege of writing biographies for some fascinating artists who were releasing jaw-droppingly good music.

To this day, I still take on the odd band bio, although an inflexible requirement is that I actually like the music.

***

SPIN Magazine is, depending on the reader, either a pretentious conclave of indier-than-thou hipsters, or a vital alternative to the commercially-savvy and creatively bankrupt Rolling Stone.  While SPIN can sometimes trip over its own emo-ness, overall it gives exposure to bands and music that other mainstream publications might ignore.

Other than reading the magazine occasionally, my first real connection to SPIN was sleeping on the floor of their suite at the Driskill Hotel during the South By Southwest music festival in 1997.  My college roommate Dan was interning for SPIN, doing a lot of hustling for the magazine for little or no pay.  In return, we received a place to crash, a great view of the main stage, and we got to smoke pot in the suite with The Supersuckers.

Dan went on to secure the best job in the world- making mix tapes to send to college radio stations for the magazine.  He spent his days listening to new (and free) CDs and making mix tapes of his favorite songs. Thirteen years later, I have yet to hear anyone describe a better job.

As Dan became more plugged in at SPIN, he made many connections, one of whom oversaw the magazine’s online column, “It Happened Last Night.”  IHLN featured reviews of notable concerts and events across the country.  They kept a list of writers and photographers in major cities across the country so that when a cool show was happening that they wanted to feature, they would reach out to the local writer and get him or her to the gig.

One day, while literally stepping onto a plane in Cabo San Lucas after an entirely undeserved vacation, I received a text from Dan.  SPIN needed a San Diego writer.  Black Francis (The Pixies, Frank Black) was playing a solo show there that they wanted to review.  They had seen one of my artist bios and wondered if I might cover the event for the magazine.

A couple weeks later, I published my first music article for a major publication.  I remember sitting backstage with Black Francis and Warren Zanes (The Del Fuegos), talking about our favorite pizza joints in Cambridge, MA (where I used to live), and thinking how awesome it would be if this were my actual job.

***

My friend Dana had been a Brad Listi junkie for quite some time.  After hearing her incessantly raving about his writing, I began following his blog, and eventually The Nervous Breakdown.  I instantly fell in love with TNB.  The authors were talented, down-to-earth, and they wrote about subjects to which I could easily relate.  Also, the comment culture was fun and people seemed to actually support each other, with fascinating conversations occurring along with the featured articles.  I chose to lurk rather than participate in any of the conversations.

Dana would pepper me with entreaties to apply to write for TNB, which I resisted for a number of reasons.  Mainly, as someone who had neither published a book, nor had any sort of platform, I was worried that I would have nothing to offer the site.  I am grateful that she persisted because sometime at the end of 2009, I submitted an application.  A month later I received a welcome letter from TNB with instructions on how to get started.  The only thing left to do was write.

I agonized over my first article for two weeks, starting and scrapping ideas for three or four different columns.  Finally I chose to write about my first band back in Chicago, and on a Saturday morning in February, 2009, I began writing.  I finished that evening and spent the next 48 hours proofreading the piece ad nauseam.  Each time I started to publish it, I chickened out and proofread it again.

Finally I threw caution to the wind and hit the “Publish button.”  J.M. Blaine left me my first comment.  As the day wore on,  I began receiving and replying to comments from the very people I had always read and admired.  Nine months later, I have met many of these authors in person and I am in contact with several on a regular basis.  TNB is my online home.

***

As I published articles on TNB, I would post links to each piece on Facebook, asking my friends to take a look if they were interested.  One day after posting a link, I received a note from a college friend whom I had not seen or heard from in close to twenty years.  He had read some of my work on TNB and said he enjoyed them- especially the pieces about music.  He wondered if I might be interested in talking about book ideas.  As fate would have it, he was a literary agent.

***

In July, 2010, I was laid off from my job.  Instead of jumping right into a job search, I decided to see what it would feel like to write for awhile.

I am now in the process of completing a proposal for my first book.  It might never see the light of day, but in the course of the past month, it has been the most fulfilling work I have ever done.  I sit at my laptop in my kitchen or at a local coffee shop, and with the sounds of Sigur Ros, Dead Confederate, or The Stone Roses wafting from my headphones, I write about things that matter to me.  I laugh out loud, I research obscure details about bands and music, and I occasionally run upstairs to sift through papers and photographs to jog my memory as I write.

When people now ask what I do, I really have no answer.  I clumsily say something like, “Well, I’m out of work now, and just writing to make use of the time…”

But once in awhile I boldly answer, “I’m a writer.”

It feels fucking awesome.

***

My mother would have been 77 years old next week had she not succumbed to cancer in 1989.  The older I get, the greater the clarity I have with my past, and especially my time with my mother.  As I look back on those Sunday afternoons in the dining room, wishing I were doing anything but writing for The Happy Time Page, I now see the gift that she has left me.

I am both humbled and grateful.

Thanks, Mom.

I have never met Bill Clegg, but we seem to have a lot in common. I learned in his new memoir, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, that we’re both white people who come from dysfunctional families in rural towns who nursed dreams of getting out. We both moved to NYC after attending uncool colleges, with no plan other than to “become something.” We both became literary agents, falling into a career we seemed thrillingly, finally suited for. We both love photography, and Bill Eggleston in particular. We’re both single and into dudes. We both had problems with painful urination as children and we both have abused illicit substances with abandon. For me, it was Vicodin — or any fun pill I could get my hands on. For Bill, it was alcohol and crack.

Remember that over-achieving kid in your high school class who was on the varsity basketball team, President of the Student Body, AND played a mean guitar solo in the talent show? That’s J.E. Fishman…only in the publishing world. He’s been an accomplished editor at Doubleday, owned his own literary agency, and is a published non-fiction author. Did we mention he has a few novels and a screenplay in the pipeline?

But the best thing about J.E. is that he’s willing to share his experiences to help aspiring writers out there learn the lessons he has accumulated over his many years in the business. WordHustler sat down with J.E. to discuss how fast the industry moves, how much moxie it takes to survive, and why no one owes you a read. Hint: make sure you grab your reader from the start!

Read on to learn from J.E.’s heartaches, triumphs, and vision. You won’t be sorry!

WordHustler: You’ve been involved in pretty much every aspect of the publishing industry, from editor to agent to author. How long have you been writing?

J.E. Fishman: Like anyone who aspires to be published, in some sense I’ve been writing all my life. I wrote stories as a kid.  Wherever I go – walking down the street, driving in the car – I see stories.  Recently, I was getting rid of an old office computer and had to laboriously wipe the hard drive clean one file at a time.  It was full of reading notes, book ideas – most important, story ideas.

WH: When you were an editor at Doubleday, which types of books/authors did you work with?

JEF: The books ran the gamut of non-fiction, from the equestrian library to true crime, business, sports, narrative non-fiction.  When I left Doubleday, I had a lot of credibility with journalists, so I ended up specializing in narrative non-fiction, though I agented the occasional novel.

WH: What is the main difference between being an editor now and when you were one?

JEF: I’m not sure.  When I was coming up, the industry was already beginning to consolidate and become more corporate.  My guess is that today, at the big houses, editors are even more buried in process, giving them less time just to think.  In the old days, if a respected editor really believed in a book, he or she might be able to drive the acquisition process.  Now, it seems, a greater part of the process is out of the editor’s hands.  It’s a team decision and everyone gets a vote.  Also, when I was an editor Amazon didn’t exist, e-books didn’t exist.  Now they’re having a huge impact on the business.

WH: Then you opened your own agency- had you been amassing talent when you were editing that you represented in your agency? What inspired you to make the switch?

JEF: I did take a few authors whom I’d edited as my early clients, but amassing talent would be an overstatement.  It was only a few people.  The reason I left was I was feeling ground down by the corporate thing.  It has its good and bad points, but I couldn’t see myself doing it forever.  Plus, it seemed like editors were spending more and more time selling the books on their lists to all the other departments in the house.  I figured: if I’m going to be a salesman, I may as well be trading on my own account, so to speak.

WH: Then another switch- from agenting to writing. Do you think a lot of agents are also writers? Did you feel it important to your writing career to spend your time doing just that and not repping other writers?

JEF: I don’t think a lot of agents are also writers – certainly not the successful agents.  Good agents are big fans of writing, though.  And some good fiction agents are great editors.  Everyone in book publishing, I think, lives for the act of discovery, as all readers do.  Successful agents are very good at communicating their enthusiasm in those discoveries to others.  As for writing exclusively, yeah, for me it’s important to have immersion in the writing process.  Agenting is difficult.  I don’t think an agent is doing much justice to his or her clients if he’s off working on his own stuff half the day.

WH: What are you working on right now?

JEF: I’ll probably be doing some revisions on my first novel, PRIMACY, which I hope will be ready for sale soon.  I’m working on two more novels and a screenplay, all on spec.  One of the novels, CADAVER BLUES, is being serialized on the web right now.  I also write essays – hate the word blog – for TheNervousBreakdown.com.

WH: Who are a few of your favorite authors out there today?

JEF: I read really eclectically.  Among living authors, I’m still a big fan of Philip Roth, after all these years, Pat Conroy (though I haven’t read his latest), E.L. Doctorow, Richard Price, Junot Diaz – you don’t need me to tell you, but these guys can all really write.  I’m sure I’m leaving a bunch out, and my women friends say I don’t read enough women.  They’re certainly right.

In thrillers and mysteries, Dennis Lehane is very good.  C.J. Box.  Janet Evanovich is fun.  There’s a woman!  Elmore Leonard. Daniel Silva.  James Lee Burke.  Harlan Coban.  I’m sure I’m leaving out someone important.  My favorite writer of all time is probably Saul Bellow – no longer living, of course.  But there are so many others.  I find flaws in much of what I read, because clean story telling is much harder than it appears, but there’s a lot of talent out there.

WH: If you could put on your psychic hat, what trends do you see making a splash soon? Or is following trends a waste of time?

JEF: The only thing I’d say about trends is that they seem to be shorter and shorter lived.  Some genre catches fire and then everyone chases it so manically that the quality declines and people get bored.  If I could predict trends – if anyone could – they’d be a lot richer.  As a writer, I don’t think you can chase it.  I had an agent recently ask me to write a novel that emulates Lee Childs, whose Jack Reacher series is fun and hot right now.

But – setting aside the issue of whether I could just order this stuff up from my brain – by the time you get the book finished, it’s likely that the world has moved on.  You just have to follow your muse, I think, and hope for the best.  That said, I think it’s most important to understand existing story forms and be creative within those forms rather than try to defy them.  It sounds boring to say so, but there will always be demand, I think, for great stories with beginning, middle and end.  Making it fresh within that is the hard part, and it has to come from authenticity, not chasing trends.

WH: What’s your overall take on publishing today? In dire straights or blooming and flourishing?

JEF: I think book publishers in general are facing significant challenges going forward.  Bill Gates said people overestimate the effects technology will have going two years out and underestimate their effects ten years out.  There will always be authors and stories, but the book publishing business will probably look much different in another decade or two.  Publishers will have to find new ways to add value or they’ll be gradually disintermediated.  It’s a scary time for them, and yet the big ones have to figure out how to change while making their quarterly numbers and carrying big overhead.  Like much of the media, their business is changing rapidly.  The same could be said of bookstores.  A big part of the growth is electronic, and that will only accelerate going forward.

WH: To return to your editing/agenting roots for a moment: how important is the query vs. the sample pages?

JEF: On and off, I’ve attended a high-level writing workshop in Philadelphia the last couple years called the Rittenhouse Writer’s Group.  Before I started, I hadn’t done a writing workshop since I was just out of college – certainly long before I went into book publishing.  Now the thing is, people go to these workshops and you’re obligated to read everyone’s stuff, no matter how good or bad, no matter whether they’ve grabbed the reader by the lapels on Page One or have sauntered up to the reader and finally got around to their story on Page Twelve.  The thing you can lose sight of in that environment is that all writers, in a sense, are in the entertainment business.

Editors, agents, publishers – at least in the fiction area — all in the entertainment business.  So when writers ask for advice with regard to getting an agent, I remind them of this single truism: no one out there owes you a read.  No one.  You have to grab their attention.  In the realm of non-fiction, the query letter may be more important than the sample pages – because if the author’s concept and credentials are strong, an agent can always find them a writer to do the proposal.  In fiction, you’re going to live and die on those first ten sample pages.  But it’s all important.  Agents are so pressed for time.  It’s easy to shout, “Next!”

WH: What are the main things in a query letter that make agents/editors want to read more?

JEF: For non-fiction: credentials, concept, a platform for promotion.  For fiction: consistency between the demands of the genre and the ambition of the writer, originality, and some sense that there’s an authorial voice there.

WH: What are the main things that let agents/editors know this project/writer isn’t for them?

JEF: In my opinion there are really only two things.  First, is this a genre in which I’m working?  An agent who has no interest in science fiction isn’t going to look at a science fiction manuscript.  Period.  Second, does it capture my imagination?  People – even editors and agents – read with their gut.  If they like it, they’ll ask themselves whether they can come up with a coherent pitch that has a chance of succeeding, based largely on their experience in the market over the past year.  If they don’t like it, they can come up with ways to rationalize why, but the bottom line will always be a matter of taste.  Presuming, of course, that the writer was able to string sentences together.  A certain level of competence is expected.

WH: Do you think with the rise of digital publishing that there’s a difference between hard copy queries and e-queries? Does one seem more disposable/less serious than the other?

JEF: It’s all up to the preference of the agent.  Some still won’t read e-queries, but if I were still an agent, my thinking would be: why waste your time re-stuffing the envelope?  Words are words.

WH: What advice would you give aspiring writers out there?

JEF: Someone asked this of Carl Reiner once.  He said, if you’re a writer, then write!  Nothing else matters if you don’t bring your vision to the page.  You’re a painter: paint!  Malcolm Gladwell notes that excellence in any endeavor requires a ten-thousand-hour investment.  For writers, that’s not ten thousand hours dreaming about the book tour, it’s writing.

Joan Acocella observes that the single thing most successful people in the arts have in common is perseverance.  Don’t just talk about doing it, strategize doing it, worry about how the world will receive you…  It starts with product.  You want product, then produce!  Amazingly, it takes some of us a lifetime to realize this.  But most of the great writers you know are banging it out every day.

WH: Well said, Sir. So do you think WordHustler helps writers successfully get their work out there, professionally and effectively?

JEF: It sounds that way.  The brilliance of WordHustler, I think, is that it has the potential to give creative people more time to create.  If you enjoy sending queries more than writing, then you should be an agent, not a writer.  That’s why I’m a writer now.  I’m happier telling stories than making pitches.

Straight talk from a man in the know! So take J.E.’s advice and put in those hours to perfect your craft, focus on persevering even when the going is tough, and spend some time crafting your queries and projects with the za-za-zing that will grab an editor or agent’s attention right from the start.

Why not submit your masterfully-written prose to an esteemed literary agency like Writer’s House? If you want some help nailing your query letters, take a glance at our Cover Letter Clinic here! Write your best, edit your best, then do your homework so you can send your work out to the best publishing professionals out there. And WordHustler is here to help. Write on!

Fresh out of college in 1993, I landed a job with a literary agent. Don’t ask me how. The job, however plummy it seemed, was actually insane. Every day was a lesson in Real Life.