Author bio

I got an email from my agent's assistant, she was in search of an author bio. For a couple of seconds I felt a little queasy. When asked to write anything short form I almost break out in hives. I tend to need a lot of words to say what I have to say. I'm envious of people who can clearly express themselves in a few choice words. I wonder if they went to a really good prep school. I wonder if I will ever be blessed with the ability to say something short and sweet.


As I have a tendency to over-think things and tend to get uptight in about a tenth of a second, I had to call someone who works in publishing to figure out what I was supposed to do. She [graciously] sent me a few bios. It didn't take long (under 30 seconds) before I figured out that an author bio is no big deal. St. Peter will not be judging me based on these few sentences.

I think the word bio threw me for a loop. Immediately I wondered how I was supposed to organize and condense 5 decades worth of living into concise, useful, nuggets of information.

In the end, this is the [redacted] version:

XXXXXXXXX  lives and works in XXXXXXXX. XXX personal essay, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, appeared in XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX . In 2002 XXXXXXXXX was the recipient of the XXXXXXXXX Grant. XXXXXXXX is XXX debut novel.

Phew.

And oddly enough, I'm not at all freaked out about the fact that things are out of my control. 

When I was at lunch with my agent she asked me, Do you know any editors you want to send this to?

I replied, point blank, No.

I went onto explain. "I wrote the book, I see myself as a writer. I'm deferring to your many years of expertise to send it to the right people. You should send it to whomever you think is appropriate. I will leave it up to you to sell the book."

And honestly, please don't ask me to sell my book. For cryin' out loud, I just spent years on this thing. If you're taking a cut, you need to earn that.