Success Story Interview - Lyall Bush

An Interview with Lyall Bush (lyallbush on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Bonnie Nadell of Hill Nadell Literary Agency.

07/11/2024

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?

Lyall Bush:
I’d been writing screenplays for a several years when I came across the start of a story in my notebook app: a scene in which a sixteen year-old is aiming to make an important film before school starts up again in the fall. I’d forgotten that I’d written it, but I liked the tone and something in the initial conversation between the young man and his father. It was in prose, was evidently a story idea, and it occurred to me that my first love was fiction and that I’d had a thought-bubble following me for awhile, a longing to get back to it. So I just started to extend from the beginning, tracking out how this opening would lead to the next thing, and so on.

QT: How long have you been writing?

Lyall Bush:
Twenty years.

QT: How long have you been working on this book?

Lyall Bush:
I started it in December 2022 and completed the first draft a few days after Labor Day 2023.

QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?

Lyall Bush:
No. I write every day, and the discipline is a marvelous antidote to the voices of trepidation that knock so many mornings with bristling lists of to-dos that simply can’t wait, and probably your writing could wait just this one day. Staying on course is a habit, in this respect, like making coffee.

QT: Is this your first book?

Lyall Bush:
First, yes. Screenplays aren’t books, but I’ve also written, or co-written, eight feature-length scripts (and many short ones).

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

Lyall Bush:
I studied literature in university (film and literature in graduate school), and have taken creative writing classes over the years.

QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?

Lyall Bush:
I write every morning, more or less first thing, phone off, with coffee and yellow pad. I write for an hour—three hours if I can steal the time.

QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

Lyall Bush:
I think five times.

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

Lyall Bush:
I asked a couple of good friends to read it once I’d completed a draft; no one read it while I was writing it, and hardly anyone knew I was writing it. Many years ago I heard a well-known writer tell a group of teenagers to be careful about first drafts. It’s a tender moment, he said, and I felt that once I’d competed it. Good advice.

QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

Lyall Bush:
My yellow pad is the map. I begin by drawing six squares on each page—two columns of three—and I try to see each square as a moment or a scene, or an exchange of dialogue: it helps me to think of how things are moving, and why, from moment to moment, and helps to steer me away from a sea of individual scenes. So it’s structured, and it leaves me with room for turns to evolve, things that make sense that I couldn’t have thought of three or four weeks (or months) ago.

QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?

Lyall Bush:
I started querying after I’d finished revising the manuscript and thought it was ready. That was, in early- or mid-December.

QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?

Lyall Bush:
I think thirty.

QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

Lyall Bush:
I studied every agency’s website and read (carefully) individual agents’ personal mission statements. This meant skipping plenty of agencies that didn’t seem right. I chose individual agents, in each case, who I thought might respond well to the manuscript.

QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?

Lyall Bush:
Most agents say what they are looking for, and what they love, and their websites typically offer lists of writers represented. In every case I sought, in the opening paragraph, to indicate why I was writing to that person. But the bulk of the query didn’t change from one agent to the next.

QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

Lyall Bush:
Write because you love it and want to know something more about yourself or the world (or both). I think the agent who wants to work with you will feel that in your sentences, beginning with your query letter. That was the case with me, at least, and I imagine it is a common experience. Agents love writing, and they want to connect with manuscripts that they can shepherd to a successful publication.

QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?

Lyall Bush:
This is the main part of the query letter:

Query Letter:

I’m writing to introduce myself and my novel, Between Lakes, in the hope that you will want to represent it. I was drawn to your agency, and to you as an agent, in part because of what you write on your website: “Ultimately literature is when someone else’s story speaks to you and broadens your world. That’s what I always want to find.” I hope my novel achieves this, and, if so, that it persuades you to want to include me on your roster of writers.

Between Lakes tells the story of William May, who wants to make an ambitious film in the summer before he enters his junior year of high school. The film’s subject will be sin, he decides, and he begins by gathering information: he asks his father, who confuses sins with commandments before he latches onto the idea that it is a form of ‘too much’. Theft may break a commandment, he says, but you begin to sin when you fill your garage with stolen things, and then don’t touch them.

The image stays with William, but he begins writing only after paying a trip to the Sandwich Shack with his friend Jen, who rattles him with her combination of intelligence and looks. He puts the same question to Bobby, the grad student who runs it with his girlfriend, Angie, who’s also a grad student. Bobby introduces them to the idea of abjection, which he says is central to the idea they are “exploring” — the thin membrane, he says, between life and death that a person can trip on.

Working with his crew of friends, William starts production, but after only the first day his parents ground him for trespassing on a neighbor's property and forbid him from talking or texting with his friends. He is allowed to leave only for fresh air each day, and one day, after a longer-than-usual walk, he comes home to find red and blue lights throbbing in the driveway, and news that will change his life.

best,
Lyall