Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201240268
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SU CLAUSON
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
BLOOMING OVERNIGHT
Longtime Blacksburg resident Ann Goette's first novel was so good that publishers bid against one another, and she's just signed a six-figure contract with one of them.
At 4 a.m. while most of the world has yet to lift an eyelid, Ann Goette climbs out of bed tingling with anticipation.
"It's like I have this really wonderful date," she says. "And I'm so glad to be doing this."
The date is with her word processor, and it's been a steady thing for 16 years. It was the only time Goette could salvage for herself between the demands of her full-time job and three children. Soon, however, Goette will be able to afford the luxury of writing all the time.
Goette, 46, signed a contract last week with Delacorte Press (a branch of Doubleday, Dell and Bantam) giving her $250,000 for her first novel, "Midnight Lemonade," and a second novel that she has not yet begun to write.
"I'm kind of in shock," says Goette, who works as an administrative assistant at Virginia Tech.
The most Goette had hoped for when she finished what her first agent called her "women's novel" was credibility. "I thought it could be a sort of springboard to teaching opportunities and fellowships. I never dreamed anybody but Stephen King could make such big money from writing," she says.
The chances of receiving a six-figure check for a first novel, especially a mainstream novel, aren't much better than the odds on winning the Virginia lottery. Goette admits chance played a part in her being discovered by the same agent who represents best-selling author Amy Tan.
When Goette sent the unfinished novel to her first agent, he praised her writing, but said it would never sell. "So I quietly put it away and started on other things," she said.
Later that year, when two visiting friends asked what Goette had been doing with her life, she showed them the novel. They loved the story about the sheltered Catholic schoolgirl who matured from musing about the morality of kissing to pondering the anguish of motherly love. One friend begged to take the book back to California so she could finish it. Once there, she asked if she could show it to a neighbor who "did something in the publishing business."
The agent, Sandra Dijkstra, called Goette soon after. "If you can finish it this summer, I can sell it in the fall," the agent told her.
"I was really excited about that, so I asked the people I work with at the fiber optics lab if I could take off for 10 days. They were very busy, but they said OK, bless them. I packed up my cans of tuna fish, my MacIntosh and my dog, and went up to stay in the Shenandoah Valley at a remote farmhouse that belonged to a friend. He went to the beach," she says.
"For 10 days, I did nothing but write. I didn't even speak to another human. Every time I tried to leave the Mac, my dog blocked me. The novel came very quickly," she says.
She sent the novel off to California again.
In a few days, Dijkstra called back. "You're not done yet," she told Goette. "You have to tell me what happened to Susan and to these other folks.' I almost didn't know who she was talking about. I had written so quickly it was as if it were being channeled or something. But it was so very flattering to hear someone refer to my characters by name. I've only shown it to a few friends, and I've always felt they were doing me a favor."
Goette took another short break, sent the story off and didn't hear much from her agent for quite a while. On Thanksgiving, she took a trip to visit her three children who are in school or working in New Orleans. At the Pittsburgh airport she realized she hadn't told them when she'd arrive, so she called. "Your agent has been trying to get hold of you - it's an emergency," they told her.
So in the midst of the airport clamor, Goette learned that seven publishers had bid on her novel. "She was giving me figures - somebody pulled out at $60,000; somebody else at $75,000; and I was laughing and thinking, `This is all monopoly money to me.' When she told me Delacorte bid a quarter of a million, I asked her how many zeros that had in it. It was a dream."
Back in her Blacksburg cottage, Goette turns pensive. "I'm so scared my life is going to change, and I don't want it to change much," she says. "I love Blacksburg. I love my friends, and the casual, outdoor lifestyle we can have here. People have been good to me. They almost seem happier than I am that I sold my novel."
Over Goette's couch hangs an acrylic painting by artist Kathy Pinkerton that was inspired by Goette's poem, "In the Night River." Goette, photographer Diane Goff, poet Mary North, artist Pat West, singer Elizabeth McCommon, and artists Pinkerton and Joni Pienkowski form Web Six, a performance group whose creativity inspires and feeds each other.
"They call me the first bloom of the Blacksburg Bloomsbury group," says Goette, referring to Virginia Woolf's close-knit group of writer friends.
Goette's kitchen stands testimony to the creative friendship. In one night, Web Six transformed it from 1950s kitsch to '90s original with paints and a bucket of margaritas. They redecorated the cupboards, ceiling and walls, and Pat West left a painting on each blade of the paddle fan.
Twelve years ago, Goette was in the middle of moving when her father died in Louisiana. She returned home to find her friends had finished moving and had planted a garden on the new lot.
In her years of predawn writing, Goette has written many short stories, poetry and several plays, including "Coming of Age," which was produced more than 20,000 times by schools or theater groups across the nation. The novel actually took only seven weeks to write, but 46 years to incubate, she says.
"If I'd tried to write sooner, it would have been a different novel. I needed to raise three kids and experience all I did to write this book," she says.
Although Paul, 25; Gretchen, 22; and Todd, 18 are all of out of the nest now, Goette still gets involved in projects with children. Under a Virginia Endowment for the Arts grant, she has led poetry and playwriting workshops in Patrick County.
"They were supposed to be at-risk kids," she says. "They were wonderful. Some didn't even have television."
Goette doesn't expect to change much about her life now that she's a successful writer. Her two main dreams - writing for a living and spending more time on the New River - are both within reach. She's phasing out of her job, and has recently purchased land along the river for a future retreat. "I'd like to turn it over to a foundation when I die," she said. "so that women over 40 could go there to write. Women over 40 need a writing refuge."
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