From
the Office
(Frequently Asked Questions)
This piece was written by Sarah
Cooper, Margaret’s assistant for eight years. I’m Margaret’s
new assistant, Sarah Webster, but since I answer all of these questions
the same way, I’m going to leave her piece intact. Enjoy!
Basically, my job is to simplify Margaret’s life so that she has
time to write. Under that general category comes a whole range of activities,
from research and correspondence to banking and book-keeping. It’s
a full-time job, believe me: just to give you a glimpse of the tip of
the iceberg, consider the fact that we get between 20 and 50 pieces of
mail a day.
Somehow, I have to whittle that stack down to a reasonable amount that
will leave Margaret time to do other things, like write books, and read
from them, and to visit her mother. It’s made it really clear to
me that one of the problems with being famous is that you get asked to
do way more than any one person could ever actually accomplish.
Even though Margaret is very willing to spend a lot of her time helping
out with various causes and interests, from charities to research projects,
she can’t do everything. My job is to help her keep a balance between
all of the various demands on her time. So how do we choose what she will
do?
Here’s a sampling of how we answer some frequently asked questions:
Fan mail
Margaret answers each and every fan letter we receive, albeit usually
with a pre-printed postcard that reads, in part, “I read all the
letters people write to me, though because of the numbers of them I’ve
been receiving, it’s no longer possible for me to reply to each one
as individually as I would like. However, please be assured that I very
much appreciate your having taken the time to write. After all, where
would writers be without readers?”
“Please read my book and give me a quote to use on the jacket.”
Publishers and writers often send manuscripts to us with a request
that Margaret read the book and give them a quotable quote to use on the
back cover. It takes four to six hours to read the book, and we get 10
or so of these requests a week. Multiply 5 hours times 10 requests and
you get a 50-hour a week job.
Choosing a few of the books to blurb doesn’t make things much easier,
partly because it takes a long time to make a well-informed choice, and
partly because choosing between books is akin to choosing which of your
two sisters should be your maid of honour … no matter what you do,
someone’s bound to have their feelings hurt. So our answer is no,
to everybody. (See the page Answer
to Blurb Requests for Margaret's own poetic “no” to this
particular oft-repeated request.)
“Please read my manuscript and/or
help me get published.”
This one’s really tough. Margaret
is very sympathetic to the difficult situation young writers too often
find themselves in. (It wasn’t so long ago that she herself was in
that situation.) But for legal reasons, she can’t read unpublished
manuscripts, so again I just answer “no.” For the other advice
we give new writers, see below.
“Please give me, a young writer,
some advice.”
Margaret recommends contacting an organization
such as the
Canadian Authors Association (or the equivalent in your country).
The CAA offers a number of services helpful to young writers. Also very
useful are books such as The Canadian Writers’ Market (and
which also has equivalents elsewhere). It contains explanations of how
the business works and how to go about getting published, as well as listings
of all of the book and magazine publishers in the country.
Agents can be very helpful, although it’s
hard to get one if you’ve never been published. There are lists of
agents available: check your local library.
For less prosaic advice, Margaret recommends
that young writers read The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of
Property by Lewis Hyde, a book about the relationship between the
creative process and the commodity exchange.
One thing to remember when you’re feeling
frustrated: it took Margaret a long time to find a publisher for her first
book, too.
“Please interpret your work for
me.” (Also known as “Am I right?”)
Often students and curious readers write
to ask questions about an interpretation of one of Margaret’s books,
questions such as, “This book ends ambiguously. We aren’t really
told what happened to Character X. Can you tell me what really happened?”
… or sometimes, “Critic X says Y about your use of Z. Do you
agree?” There are two points to be made about this sort of question.
First, what Margaret thinks about what happened is already in the book.
If the ending is ambiguous, she has decided it should be that way.
Secondly, Margaret’s not comfortable
giving interpretations of her work. She’s concerned that if she does,
it will become the definitive interpretation, inhibiting readers from
finding their own meaning.
Generally we refer the sender of this type
of letter to a couple of useful resource books, including the very interesting
collection of interviews with Margaret titled Conversations. It’s
edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, and published by Ontario Review Press. (You
can also find a list of books on her work under Works
on Atwood on this Web site.)
“Please come and read at our
university / reading series / charity fundraiser.”
We get a lot of requests for Margaret
to come and read, and she does do quite a few readings, usually in and
around a promotional tour for one of her books. At the moment, Margaret’s
working on a new novel, so we’re not accepting speaking or reading
engagements. But here’s where to write if you want to be considered
next time we’re organizing a tour.
For a reading or lecture in Canada or the
U.S., write to:
Sarah Webster
Assistant to Margaret Atwood
c/o McClelland & Stewart
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, ON M5A 2P9
Canada
In other countries, write to the local publisher of Margaret’s books.
(See our Translations
page for some information on local publishers.) She doesn’t tour
for each book in every country, but her publisher will know if and when
she's coming.
Charitable donation requests
Besides requests to read for charities, we also get a lot of requests
for Margaret to donate autographed books, personal items, or money to
various charities. Because of the volume of requests we receive, we have
had to limit her donations to Canadian concerns, and even then we are
sometimes hard pressed to fill all the requests, and must turn down some
group or other. She does have favourite causes, and we intend to add information
on some of these to the home page in the near future.
“Can we have permission to reprint
an Atwood work?”
The publisher usually controls the right
to give permission to include an excerpt or story in an anthology, so
these requests should be sent to them. (Their address is usually on the
back of the title page of the book in question.) If they don’t control
the rights you want, they’ll forward your request to whoever does.
One last word on what it’s like to work
with Margaret: fun! I feel very fortunate to have the privilege of working
with her.
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