Monday, November 30, 2009
Another Reason I Stay Away From Facebook
Is it just me, or do you agree that this is utterly pathetic?
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Art Museum
My wife's brother came into town for Thanksgiving - his first trip to D.C. ever. The weather wasn't the greatest and his interest quite low, so we did the briefest monument tour ever: we took the Metro to Smithsonian, got out on the Independence Avenue side, walked to the Washington Monument, and pointed out most of the salient features of the Mall. This is the best single spot to see most everything (at least from ground level), and even in cases of things you can't see from this spot (e.g., the Vietnam Memorial) you can still point out its approximate location.
Thanks to an exhibit of imperial Spanish armor, we managed to talk him into visiting the National Gallery of Art. I say "thanks" because I've never been there, despite living in D.C. for more than four years now, and visiting some other museums (like Air and Space and the National Portrait Gallery) more than enough times.
The museum was busy, though not outrageously so, and every time we go to a museum (especially an art museum) I remember how much I enjoy the experience. If it's too crowded, though, it's more like a cattle call than a cultural experience. On the other hand, it would probably be a bit much if there were no other people there. (And it takes a lot for me to make a statement like that; trust me, there are many many instances in which I would be perfectly happy to be the only person at a certain place or doing a certain thing.)
We wandered around a bit before finding the armor exhibit. It was some truly remarkable craftsmanship - many of these were pieces that belonged to kings and were largely for ceremonial purposes, not actually for battle. Many were quite small, showing the size of grown people - even those that were very wealthy and powerful - back then. As with everything else, the armor was tied up with both political and religious goals and imagery.
More and more when I look at artwork or crafts from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, I realize the cultural gulf between me as the viewer and the people who made them. In a couple of instances they showed particular imperial suits of armor next to portraits of kings decked out in that exact same armor. So I tried to imagine the scene of the actual king wearing this actual armor, while an actual artist painted that actual canvas. And then wondered just what would have been on the king's mind that day, what would have been on the artist's mind, what would have been happening around them.
We finished the armor exhibit and decided to go to the other side of the museum to check out more Renaissance artwork and sculpture. On the way, though, a particular canvas (much larger version here) caught my eye:
I don't know what it was about it. Maybe the top of the castle in the clouds looked at first like a mushroom cloud. Or it was the brightly-colored angel. But regardless, it drew me over - I couldn't stand just to walk by it.
As it turns out, this is one of four paintings that belong to Thomas Cole's "Voyage of Life" series. In each, there is a person sailing down the river of life on a boat, accompanied by a guardian angel. This one is "Youth." I'm past mine, but could still relate to the sentiments so well expressed. Plus I love anything that conveys the passage of time in an elegant way.
After we looked at these, we moved over to the Renaissance section, which somewhat begged the question of why everyone back then felt compelled to paint the Madonna and Child. I also thought it was interesting how artists back then had no compunction about overlaying contemporary (and European) complexions, clothes, architecture, and symbols on Biblical stories. I know we have plenty of modern caricatures of Biblical stories, too, but this strikes me somewhat as the equivalent of drawing Jesus in baggy pants and high tops high-fiving his homies, the Apostles, on the stoop. Of course I'm sure there are good reasons they did things this way. My favorite in this section was definitely "Daniel in the Lion's Den" by Peter Paul Rubens.
We stopped for a while and visited the immense gift shop before heading over to the contemporary art in the other building. Of course museum gift shops are not exactly the place for bargain-hunting, and I'm not much of a shopper, but I still enjoyed looking through the big coffee table books, the postcards and prints, the calendars and daybooks. A lot of them struck me as kind of quaint - products of a pre-electronic era - sort of like the art we were seeing.
I have to admit that so much of contemporary art seems like a conversation in another language. It's easy to snicker at the seeming crudity, simplicity of these works, but I try to take them seriously (I at least try to give them a shot) and try to understand just what they're trying to convey. But I feel as though I am lacking context. Some purple trapezoid or canvas splashed with random dots or leaf drawn in pencil: I try to be literary, almost, in working on the symbolism. Despite being a writer I know I can be dense this way, but I try...with the contemporary stuff, though, I feel I almost always fail.
There were two men walking through the Meyerhoff exhibit with us and clearly taking it very seriously. I tried to listen in to glean some of their knowledge, but pretty well failed. A lot of times I managed to catch their words it seemed they were comparing these paintings to others, rather than revealing the meaning or context of the paintings themselves.
I do like watching people in the situation of the art museum, though I don't like it when they overwhelm the art (either through behavior or just sheer numbers). Be it a toddler stumbling around, the old woman harshly waking up her wheelchair-bound husband, the two critics I mentioned, or the people chuckling at the garish modern art, it's neat. Somehow it seems more interesting to me than people in a restaurant, on the Metro, on the street (of course there are exceptions).
I wonder sometimes if part of what art is supposed to do is just remind us of the mystery of things. Some of the most famous works of art are focused on faces: the Mona Lisa is probably the best known, but Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring was ubiquitious, at least in the gift shop. We see human faces all the time, so why obsess on a face? Is it that we can never know what's inside? That others are always a mystery? That we are part of the world yet separate from it?
If the purpose of the museum is just to get one's thoughts to run on a different plane, at least for a little while, this trip succeeded for me.
Thanks to an exhibit of imperial Spanish armor, we managed to talk him into visiting the National Gallery of Art. I say "thanks" because I've never been there, despite living in D.C. for more than four years now, and visiting some other museums (like Air and Space and the National Portrait Gallery) more than enough times.
The museum was busy, though not outrageously so, and every time we go to a museum (especially an art museum) I remember how much I enjoy the experience. If it's too crowded, though, it's more like a cattle call than a cultural experience. On the other hand, it would probably be a bit much if there were no other people there. (And it takes a lot for me to make a statement like that; trust me, there are many many instances in which I would be perfectly happy to be the only person at a certain place or doing a certain thing.)
We wandered around a bit before finding the armor exhibit. It was some truly remarkable craftsmanship - many of these were pieces that belonged to kings and were largely for ceremonial purposes, not actually for battle. Many were quite small, showing the size of grown people - even those that were very wealthy and powerful - back then. As with everything else, the armor was tied up with both political and religious goals and imagery.
More and more when I look at artwork or crafts from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, I realize the cultural gulf between me as the viewer and the people who made them. In a couple of instances they showed particular imperial suits of armor next to portraits of kings decked out in that exact same armor. So I tried to imagine the scene of the actual king wearing this actual armor, while an actual artist painted that actual canvas. And then wondered just what would have been on the king's mind that day, what would have been on the artist's mind, what would have been happening around them.
We finished the armor exhibit and decided to go to the other side of the museum to check out more Renaissance artwork and sculpture. On the way, though, a particular canvas (much larger version here) caught my eye:
I don't know what it was about it. Maybe the top of the castle in the clouds looked at first like a mushroom cloud. Or it was the brightly-colored angel. But regardless, it drew me over - I couldn't stand just to walk by it.
As it turns out, this is one of four paintings that belong to Thomas Cole's "Voyage of Life" series. In each, there is a person sailing down the river of life on a boat, accompanied by a guardian angel. This one is "Youth." I'm past mine, but could still relate to the sentiments so well expressed. Plus I love anything that conveys the passage of time in an elegant way.
After we looked at these, we moved over to the Renaissance section, which somewhat begged the question of why everyone back then felt compelled to paint the Madonna and Child. I also thought it was interesting how artists back then had no compunction about overlaying contemporary (and European) complexions, clothes, architecture, and symbols on Biblical stories. I know we have plenty of modern caricatures of Biblical stories, too, but this strikes me somewhat as the equivalent of drawing Jesus in baggy pants and high tops high-fiving his homies, the Apostles, on the stoop. Of course I'm sure there are good reasons they did things this way. My favorite in this section was definitely "Daniel in the Lion's Den" by Peter Paul Rubens.
We stopped for a while and visited the immense gift shop before heading over to the contemporary art in the other building. Of course museum gift shops are not exactly the place for bargain-hunting, and I'm not much of a shopper, but I still enjoyed looking through the big coffee table books, the postcards and prints, the calendars and daybooks. A lot of them struck me as kind of quaint - products of a pre-electronic era - sort of like the art we were seeing.
I have to admit that so much of contemporary art seems like a conversation in another language. It's easy to snicker at the seeming crudity, simplicity of these works, but I try to take them seriously (I at least try to give them a shot) and try to understand just what they're trying to convey. But I feel as though I am lacking context. Some purple trapezoid or canvas splashed with random dots or leaf drawn in pencil: I try to be literary, almost, in working on the symbolism. Despite being a writer I know I can be dense this way, but I try...with the contemporary stuff, though, I feel I almost always fail.
There were two men walking through the Meyerhoff exhibit with us and clearly taking it very seriously. I tried to listen in to glean some of their knowledge, but pretty well failed. A lot of times I managed to catch their words it seemed they were comparing these paintings to others, rather than revealing the meaning or context of the paintings themselves.
I do like watching people in the situation of the art museum, though I don't like it when they overwhelm the art (either through behavior or just sheer numbers). Be it a toddler stumbling around, the old woman harshly waking up her wheelchair-bound husband, the two critics I mentioned, or the people chuckling at the garish modern art, it's neat. Somehow it seems more interesting to me than people in a restaurant, on the Metro, on the street (of course there are exceptions).
I wonder sometimes if part of what art is supposed to do is just remind us of the mystery of things. Some of the most famous works of art are focused on faces: the Mona Lisa is probably the best known, but Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring was ubiquitious, at least in the gift shop. We see human faces all the time, so why obsess on a face? Is it that we can never know what's inside? That others are always a mystery? That we are part of the world yet separate from it?
If the purpose of the museum is just to get one's thoughts to run on a different plane, at least for a little while, this trip succeeded for me.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Beginning Of The Season...Of Nothing?
Every field, every work environment, has its annual ebbs and flows. Working at a university, there was the academic calendar, as well as grant and award deadlines, annual conferences, holidays.
Here in D.C., the entire city seems to (roughly) mirror the Congressional calendar: February brings the new budget proposal, June and July are hopping but August is dead, the start of the new fiscal year in October is largely symbolic for most people, nothing happens between Christmas and New Year's, and the period between President's Day and Memorial Day is a death march you work through without taking some vacation time at your own peril.
Spend a couple of years in these worlds and you get to know, to anticipate, these changes. Even when it doesn't correspond with your individual workflow (heck, even when it wildly deviates), it still affects you.
Well, I'm a new rider on the carousel of the world of agents and publishers, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I began my querying process just in time to encounter the dead zone - be it holidays, an end-of-the-year crunch, or some combination of those and other factors.
I say this because, with one exception, I haven't heard a peep from an agent in three weeks now. And I'm not exactly expecting lots of replies in the next week or so, it being Thanksgiving. Nominally, I still have around 15 queries in play (though I'm getting ready to give up on those from the first batch, now sent 6 1/2 weeks ago, that I haven't heard back on yet). Rejections (or requests for material) ought to be continuing to trickle in, but they've essentially stopped. I got three the first week in November and then, with that one exception, silence.
So the question is whether I should continue sending out queries or whether I should hold off for a while. It seems like a zero-sum game either way, but I guess I can't see any advantage to holding off. Even if agents get backed up on queries (for whatever reason) at this time of year, waiting just means I'm at the bottom of the pile when they start up again (in January?).
Of course, I am presuming that there is some real phenomenon occurring here, not that my stuff just sucks so badly that no one is responding.
It gets kind of frustrating because, having read agent blogs, I can only conclude my stuff must be in the top 10 percent of the submissions they get (in terms of quality) simply because I am literate and follow directions. Now, I am biased, but I think my idea is pretty darned interesting, and my characters (according to my beta readers) are extremely well-developed.
So what's the fucking problem? Why haven't I got even a single goddamned bite for a partial after 25 queries? (Sometimes I suspect it's because I haven't written a paranormal vampire steampunk YA romance...but since I don't even read that stuff, I'm sure as hell not going to write it. And, while we're on the subject of trendy genres, what exactly is "steampunk"? I read the wikipedia entry and still don't understand it completely. Can somebody name for me one steampunk book I might have heard of? More to the point, can somebody tell me what is appealing about reading "steampunk" books - why is it popular?)
The new query letter I was so excited about has thus far generated one form rejection and nothing else. I'm moving closer to thinking my query needs a critique...though honestly, several more bleak months will need to elapse before I pursue that for real.
Ah well, I guess I'm going to just keep plugging away, sending them out a few a week. At least it's something. Meanwhile, in more positive news, I've started doing some background reading and research for my new project ideas.
Here in D.C., the entire city seems to (roughly) mirror the Congressional calendar: February brings the new budget proposal, June and July are hopping but August is dead, the start of the new fiscal year in October is largely symbolic for most people, nothing happens between Christmas and New Year's, and the period between President's Day and Memorial Day is a death march you work through without taking some vacation time at your own peril.
Spend a couple of years in these worlds and you get to know, to anticipate, these changes. Even when it doesn't correspond with your individual workflow (heck, even when it wildly deviates), it still affects you.
Well, I'm a new rider on the carousel of the world of agents and publishers, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I began my querying process just in time to encounter the dead zone - be it holidays, an end-of-the-year crunch, or some combination of those and other factors.
I say this because, with one exception, I haven't heard a peep from an agent in three weeks now. And I'm not exactly expecting lots of replies in the next week or so, it being Thanksgiving. Nominally, I still have around 15 queries in play (though I'm getting ready to give up on those from the first batch, now sent 6 1/2 weeks ago, that I haven't heard back on yet). Rejections (or requests for material) ought to be continuing to trickle in, but they've essentially stopped. I got three the first week in November and then, with that one exception, silence.
So the question is whether I should continue sending out queries or whether I should hold off for a while. It seems like a zero-sum game either way, but I guess I can't see any advantage to holding off. Even if agents get backed up on queries (for whatever reason) at this time of year, waiting just means I'm at the bottom of the pile when they start up again (in January?).
Of course, I am presuming that there is some real phenomenon occurring here, not that my stuff just sucks so badly that no one is responding.
It gets kind of frustrating because, having read agent blogs, I can only conclude my stuff must be in the top 10 percent of the submissions they get (in terms of quality) simply because I am literate and follow directions. Now, I am biased, but I think my idea is pretty darned interesting, and my characters (according to my beta readers) are extremely well-developed.
So what's the fucking problem? Why haven't I got even a single goddamned bite for a partial after 25 queries? (Sometimes I suspect it's because I haven't written a paranormal vampire steampunk YA romance...but since I don't even read that stuff, I'm sure as hell not going to write it. And, while we're on the subject of trendy genres, what exactly is "steampunk"? I read the wikipedia entry and still don't understand it completely. Can somebody name for me one steampunk book I might have heard of? More to the point, can somebody tell me what is appealing about reading "steampunk" books - why is it popular?)
The new query letter I was so excited about has thus far generated one form rejection and nothing else. I'm moving closer to thinking my query needs a critique...though honestly, several more bleak months will need to elapse before I pursue that for real.
Ah well, I guess I'm going to just keep plugging away, sending them out a few a week. At least it's something. Meanwhile, in more positive news, I've started doing some background reading and research for my new project ideas.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Post-Vacation Update
I enjoyed my vacation last week a lot and came back refreshed. Despite my nervousness about things going wrong during the vacation (and especially when flying - I've heard that the cabin pressure changes can exacerbate these kinds of problems), the situation with my teeth (gums? jaws? whatever) actually improved a bit, and though I'm still not 100% normal, it seems less and less likely that this is the kind of problem requiring extensive dental work. I've felt twinges everywhere (both sides, top and bottom), and my jaws were sore for a couple of days. It really might just be grinding. Even if it a dental problem waiting to happen, I'm calmer about it.
My wife and I have been slow about getting back to the gym upon our return, but the plan is to start up again for real this weekend and then take advantage of the long Thanksgiving weekend to keep it up. Oddly, my weight is down quite a bit, hovering around 190. It's been this way for a couple of weeks now. Unlike 95% of Americans, losing weight isn't necessarily something I strive for - things are more complex since I am concerned also with maintaining and building muscle mass. My weight has fluctuated by around 10 pounds already this year, but 190 is the lowest it has been in several years (and it's down more than 15 pounds from last January). Stress may actually be the culprit, though I don't remember losing weight during stressful times before. And there are other possible culprits, including (on the bad side) my "tooth" problem (which may have led to my eating less and also to my drastically limiting Diet Coke consumption - in others I know this has led to rapid weight loss of five pounds or more), and (on the good side) the high-intensity interval training I'd been doing, which is supposed to increase basal metabolism.
The upshot is: I don't particularly want to lose much more weight, especially until I'm clear what is happening to my muscle mass. Getting back to the gym soon will be good for my peace of mind in this regard.
Enough of the physical - now on to the intellectual....
As I feared, my scientific paper was rejected by the journal. Actually, it is not accurate to label it a "scientific paper." It's an essay, really. It's for scientists in my field, about the intersection of our field with certain controversial policy issues, and attempts to provide some perspective from similar issues outside the field and chart a strategic course for scientists to follow. It's heavily-referenced but it's not a review - it makes an argument. In other words, it is a very atypical thing to show up in a peer-reviewed journal, and that's why - even though I researched long and hard to try to find the most appropriate venue - I am not surprised it was rejected.
As ever with these things, I feel like the reviewers missed the mark. On the other hand, the ways in which they missed it are telling and informative. I thought about what to do next with it and here is my strategy: I'm going to take another pass through it and edit to try to accommodate some of the reviewer comments. I'm not going to kill myself or do a major revision because the paper was flat-out rejected; I was not invited to revise and resubmit. Once I've done this I'm going to send it out to 3-5 fairly senior people I know both in science and in policy, and I'm going to ask them for their comments. I'm also going to ask them to recommend venues, and emphasize that if they can't think of any, it's not worth wasting their time commenting. If they think it sucks, it may be time to shelve it, too (I'm not too worried about that right now). But obviously I'm going to have use some people power to move this thing ahead, and I don't mind calling out some favors to do so. Meanwhile I'll do a bit more research myself on venues, and not be so restrictive this time: policy journals might work, or other kinds of venues.
The irony is that one thing my reviewers all agreed on (and you never see this kind of comment in a peer-review - maybe it's because this was so far from the typical paper) was how well-written the piece was.
I say "irony" just because there wasn't much progress on the query front for my novel (i.e. where the writing really counts) while I was gone.
I returned home and was scrolling through my feed and reading yet more posts by agents and writers on queries and decided to revise my query letter. I'd been tweaking it, but this was basically a rewrite designed to soften it a little and make it more active, more human, more exciting (if this sounds odd, trust me, it makes sense in the context of my story). I played with it throughout Sunday and Monday (I almost missed my Metro stop for work Tuesday morning because I was contemplating a potential change to a phrase in the query with such focus) and I feel like Query 2.0 is a big improvement over Query 1.x. I sent it to three agents so far (tried to do a fourth yesterday but the e-mail bounced).
So my current stats, 5 1/2 weeks into my querying process, are: 24 queries sent (successfully - not counting yesterday's bounce), 8 rejections, and 2 that have basically expired (i.e. website says they'll get back to me within X weeks if interested, and X weeks have now elapsed). So I have 14 nominally in play, though I'm sure it's actually less. (Because, for example, I sent out 10 queries on October 11th: from those, I've received four rejections and one has expired, but that means I'm treating five as still live, though I really doubt that this far out.)
OK, still no partial or full requests, but I'm excited and optimistic about Query 2.0, and I'm going to send several more queries out this weekend (probably 3-5). I have a few agents on my list that want a chapter or more along with the query, so that's kind of like a partial right off the bat, isn't it?
Meanwhile, I'm going to keep plugging away on my new project. And over vacation I was mulling over another idea I have - something relatively light, and yet seemingly so very marketable. (Is that vague enough? I'm basically talking about something derivative in a parody style - not wrenching my guts out to reveal the truth and sweating blood for my art, but definitely fun and enjoyable.) So I'm going to work on both ideas and try to obsess less about this querying business.
I guess there's one more thought that was running through my head over vacation that I wanted to share. One of the blogs I follow is this "Zen Habits Blog" where many of the posts are focused on helping you simplify your life and/or achieve your goals. A lot of the advice, quite frankly, is downright banal (or at least totally common sense) but it did make me think that all this stuff - the science paper, the new novel ideas, the drive to get published - they're all extra. I don't say this to disparage them or indicate that they're not important - even vital. It's just that they don't pay the bills.
Now, in my perfect world, they would pay the bills, and I could do them to the exclusion of all else. One thing about me is that being a "scholar" is intimately tied in with the way I want to perceive myself, and this manifests itself in an endless and insatiable drive to write and publish. Maybe this is graduate school imprinting run amok, but I don't think so. Having completed three novels and a bevy of short stories in high school, I think this drive way predates it.
I've said before that if I ever were to become wealthy (get my "fuck you" money, so to speak) I might still work and I'd definitely have more fun with it because the consequences would be so low. (I have co-workers I know are in this position - they are millionaires who made their fortunes elsewhere and could do whatever they want, and what they want to do is just what they're doing.)
Flipping this around (and finally getting to my point) since I don't get paid for all the "extras" there's no reason not to have fun with them, do them my way, not obsess or stress about them. I am not saying I shouldn't exert effort or do my best and then more, because that's just par for the course if you actually care about stuff. It's just that not everything has to be ground to bits in a drive for success. And if these stop being fun (or at least seeming worthwhile), I can just stop.
No, I have no plans to stop - not any of it. But knowing that I can, that I'm doing it because I WANT to and not for any other reason - it's liberating. Shouldn't it be? It's just easy to forget sometimes.
My wife and I have been slow about getting back to the gym upon our return, but the plan is to start up again for real this weekend and then take advantage of the long Thanksgiving weekend to keep it up. Oddly, my weight is down quite a bit, hovering around 190. It's been this way for a couple of weeks now. Unlike 95% of Americans, losing weight isn't necessarily something I strive for - things are more complex since I am concerned also with maintaining and building muscle mass. My weight has fluctuated by around 10 pounds already this year, but 190 is the lowest it has been in several years (and it's down more than 15 pounds from last January). Stress may actually be the culprit, though I don't remember losing weight during stressful times before. And there are other possible culprits, including (on the bad side) my "tooth" problem (which may have led to my eating less and also to my drastically limiting Diet Coke consumption - in others I know this has led to rapid weight loss of five pounds or more), and (on the good side) the high-intensity interval training I'd been doing, which is supposed to increase basal metabolism.
The upshot is: I don't particularly want to lose much more weight, especially until I'm clear what is happening to my muscle mass. Getting back to the gym soon will be good for my peace of mind in this regard.
Enough of the physical - now on to the intellectual....
As I feared, my scientific paper was rejected by the journal. Actually, it is not accurate to label it a "scientific paper." It's an essay, really. It's for scientists in my field, about the intersection of our field with certain controversial policy issues, and attempts to provide some perspective from similar issues outside the field and chart a strategic course for scientists to follow. It's heavily-referenced but it's not a review - it makes an argument. In other words, it is a very atypical thing to show up in a peer-reviewed journal, and that's why - even though I researched long and hard to try to find the most appropriate venue - I am not surprised it was rejected.
As ever with these things, I feel like the reviewers missed the mark. On the other hand, the ways in which they missed it are telling and informative. I thought about what to do next with it and here is my strategy: I'm going to take another pass through it and edit to try to accommodate some of the reviewer comments. I'm not going to kill myself or do a major revision because the paper was flat-out rejected; I was not invited to revise and resubmit. Once I've done this I'm going to send it out to 3-5 fairly senior people I know both in science and in policy, and I'm going to ask them for their comments. I'm also going to ask them to recommend venues, and emphasize that if they can't think of any, it's not worth wasting their time commenting. If they think it sucks, it may be time to shelve it, too (I'm not too worried about that right now). But obviously I'm going to have use some people power to move this thing ahead, and I don't mind calling out some favors to do so. Meanwhile I'll do a bit more research myself on venues, and not be so restrictive this time: policy journals might work, or other kinds of venues.
The irony is that one thing my reviewers all agreed on (and you never see this kind of comment in a peer-review - maybe it's because this was so far from the typical paper) was how well-written the piece was.
I say "irony" just because there wasn't much progress on the query front for my novel (i.e. where the writing really counts) while I was gone.
I returned home and was scrolling through my feed and reading yet more posts by agents and writers on queries and decided to revise my query letter. I'd been tweaking it, but this was basically a rewrite designed to soften it a little and make it more active, more human, more exciting (if this sounds odd, trust me, it makes sense in the context of my story). I played with it throughout Sunday and Monday (I almost missed my Metro stop for work Tuesday morning because I was contemplating a potential change to a phrase in the query with such focus) and I feel like Query 2.0 is a big improvement over Query 1.x. I sent it to three agents so far (tried to do a fourth yesterday but the e-mail bounced).
So my current stats, 5 1/2 weeks into my querying process, are: 24 queries sent (successfully - not counting yesterday's bounce), 8 rejections, and 2 that have basically expired (i.e. website says they'll get back to me within X weeks if interested, and X weeks have now elapsed). So I have 14 nominally in play, though I'm sure it's actually less. (Because, for example, I sent out 10 queries on October 11th: from those, I've received four rejections and one has expired, but that means I'm treating five as still live, though I really doubt that this far out.)
OK, still no partial or full requests, but I'm excited and optimistic about Query 2.0, and I'm going to send several more queries out this weekend (probably 3-5). I have a few agents on my list that want a chapter or more along with the query, so that's kind of like a partial right off the bat, isn't it?
Meanwhile, I'm going to keep plugging away on my new project. And over vacation I was mulling over another idea I have - something relatively light, and yet seemingly so very marketable. (Is that vague enough? I'm basically talking about something derivative in a parody style - not wrenching my guts out to reveal the truth and sweating blood for my art, but definitely fun and enjoyable.) So I'm going to work on both ideas and try to obsess less about this querying business.
I guess there's one more thought that was running through my head over vacation that I wanted to share. One of the blogs I follow is this "Zen Habits Blog" where many of the posts are focused on helping you simplify your life and/or achieve your goals. A lot of the advice, quite frankly, is downright banal (or at least totally common sense) but it did make me think that all this stuff - the science paper, the new novel ideas, the drive to get published - they're all extra. I don't say this to disparage them or indicate that they're not important - even vital. It's just that they don't pay the bills.
Now, in my perfect world, they would pay the bills, and I could do them to the exclusion of all else. One thing about me is that being a "scholar" is intimately tied in with the way I want to perceive myself, and this manifests itself in an endless and insatiable drive to write and publish. Maybe this is graduate school imprinting run amok, but I don't think so. Having completed three novels and a bevy of short stories in high school, I think this drive way predates it.
I've said before that if I ever were to become wealthy (get my "fuck you" money, so to speak) I might still work and I'd definitely have more fun with it because the consequences would be so low. (I have co-workers I know are in this position - they are millionaires who made their fortunes elsewhere and could do whatever they want, and what they want to do is just what they're doing.)
Flipping this around (and finally getting to my point) since I don't get paid for all the "extras" there's no reason not to have fun with them, do them my way, not obsess or stress about them. I am not saying I shouldn't exert effort or do my best and then more, because that's just par for the course if you actually care about stuff. It's just that not everything has to be ground to bits in a drive for success. And if these stop being fun (or at least seeming worthwhile), I can just stop.
No, I have no plans to stop - not any of it. But knowing that I can, that I'm doing it because I WANT to and not for any other reason - it's liberating. Shouldn't it be? It's just easy to forget sometimes.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
9/11 Terrorist Trials
One of the big news events last week while I was away is that the Obama Administration has decided to try the five main 9/11 suspects - Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and of course Khalid Sheik Mohammed - in federal court in New York. I learned about this on the last night of our trip as we were checking into our hotel, and I have to say I am thrilled.
Instead of the travesties of Guantanamo and CIA black sites and waterboarding, this is what they should have done right at the beginning. I don't understand how we try even the most fearsome criminal gang leaders in this country seemingly without the slightest worry for people's safety, but ascribe almost supernatural powers to "terrorists," even as the biggest terrorism case in years is some kid who bought an awful lot of hairspray.
As for holding the trials in New York, where better than the scene of the crime? The Nuremberg trials were in Germany, they brought Eichmann to Jerusalem, they hung Rudolf Hoss at Auschwitz, and they tried the '93 WTC bombers in New York and Zacarias Moussaoui within miles of the Pentagon. And what could be a worse fate for the 9/11 planners than one like Moussaoui's? No glorious martyrdom, but as Judge Brinkema told Moussaoui, they will "die with a whimper".
(Now how they will get a jury I have no idea.)
Dahlia Lithwick in Slate does a great job of demolishing objections to this move, and at the end calls them exactly what they are: fearmongering. We're a strong country, and we talk awfully big: we should do what is right, not what is easy.
(Now we just have to hope our previous mistreatment of these prisoners doesn't fuck it all up.)
Instead of the travesties of Guantanamo and CIA black sites and waterboarding, this is what they should have done right at the beginning. I don't understand how we try even the most fearsome criminal gang leaders in this country seemingly without the slightest worry for people's safety, but ascribe almost supernatural powers to "terrorists," even as the biggest terrorism case in years is some kid who bought an awful lot of hairspray.
As for holding the trials in New York, where better than the scene of the crime? The Nuremberg trials were in Germany, they brought Eichmann to Jerusalem, they hung Rudolf Hoss at Auschwitz, and they tried the '93 WTC bombers in New York and Zacarias Moussaoui within miles of the Pentagon. And what could be a worse fate for the 9/11 planners than one like Moussaoui's? No glorious martyrdom, but as Judge Brinkema told Moussaoui, they will "die with a whimper".
(Now how they will get a jury I have no idea.)
Dahlia Lithwick in Slate does a great job of demolishing objections to this move, and at the end calls them exactly what they are: fearmongering. We're a strong country, and we talk awfully big: we should do what is right, not what is easy.
(Now we just have to hope our previous mistreatment of these prisoners doesn't fuck it all up.)
Sunday, November 15, 2009
"Two Birds Is What They'll See..."
Back from vacation. Five days, three parks, 1,100 miles driven, more than 20 miles hiked, more than 6,000 feet in elevation difference, many delicious Mexican meals. And feeling, especially towards the end, the return of perspective. I'm ready to get rolling again. There's a lot to do.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Tension
I mentioned a few posts ago that I will be out of touch for the next week. I've decided that I will bring my blackberry with me on vacation but plan to leave it off the entire time (and only renege on that if there is some kind of an emergency).
This vacation comes at a good time - I've been feeling a bit tense lately. I couldn't exactly tell you why. Things at work have been picking up, and picking up is generally good. I don't like being consistently overburdened, such that I never get to take a breath or, even worse, wind up frequently staying late or working on the weekends. Plenty of jobs, especially in D.C., will happily overwhelm you immediately and you will never shovel away all the piles of shit you're buried under.
Mine, fortunately, is not one of those jobs. But in my job there can also be quiet periods...and too quiet makes me nervous. It means that I should probably be doing something to move things along faster, even if I have no idea what that something is. One of those counterintuitive truisms I've just realized relatively recently is that there is a default level of activity that suits me best at work, and it's a fairly high level. Not, as I said, overwhelming. But getting too low is just as bad as getting too high. Besides, it's when things are around that nice default level that the days fly by and I can really get into a groove, and I know I'm doing my job well...or at least the best I can.
I think I have been grinding my teeth at night, though I'm not sure. I'm developing what might be a full-on OCD around my teeth, which is strange considering that just a few months ago I finally overcome my longstanding fear and went to the dentist for the first time in over ten years. It wasn't bad, not at all. I needed some fillings, and not deep ones either, on my (fully-erupted) third molars - other than that I was fine.
(This, by the way, is not the first time I've noticed OCD-like symptoms in myself, but usually they are focused on something external - like some aspect of my job or some appliance at home - and not on something internal like my teeth. The worst happened while I was a postdoc and I became obsessed with a piece of lab equipment that needed watching and to be set a certain way or it would flood. I made up elaborate rituals to ensure I put it in the proper place before I left for the day and remembered doing so after I left. Despite that, I'd sometimes return once, twice, even three times to check. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night or very early in the morning and drive in to check. It was fucked up, but just a manifestation of how unhealthy that job was for me.)
I had Laquizzledizzle for a while but he went away.
Then about two weeks ago I noticed some sensitivity to cold outside my normal range of experience in the top right quadrant of my jaw. I made the huge mistake of querying "Dr. Google" about it. Anyone with latent hypochondria has probably been driven over the edge by the availability of atrocious medical "advice" online. I never thought of myself as a latent hypochondriac (goodness knows I tend to be healthy and never need to see the doctor). Yet here I, with a PhD in science and an unfailingly (even annoyingly) rational person, was finding myself worried sick because of postings on idiotic websites like Yahoo Answers that read something like: "hey my tooth hurt when i eat coldstuff and whaddaya think it could be i dont want to go to the dentast." and the "number one answer" - by "glamorgrl83" - is "YEA YOU NEED A ROOT CANAL!!!"
And now I'm convinced I need a root canal! Because of that crap above. It makes no fucking sense.
So, defying my nature, I made an appointment to see my dentist last Monday. I thought I would preempt the onset of bigger problems and just figure it out.
It was my fourth time there since August (thanks to the two appointments I had for fillings) - yay. And the dentist asks: "What tooth is it?" and I can't tell her. She says, "You have to know what tooth it is." Well, I thought she could help me figure it out. I thought she'd take an x-ray. Or something. Because I didn't know what it was - maybe a crack, maybe receding gums, maybe a cut, or maybe actually pulpal damage or decay. Instead she sprays the teeth on that side with tepid air and tepid water - I feel nothing (why do I remember the water from those dental metal spray guns as ICY from when I was a kid?). She taps the teeth - I feel nothing. She hands me a bottle of water at slightly below room temperature and tells me to figure out what tooth it is, but the water's not cold enough and I try to put my finger on it and it's just a guessing game. She asks if it is sensitive to hot...and I know Dr. Google says if it's sensitive to hot AT ALL you need a root canal, and it's been slightly sensitive to hot but not as bad as to cold and usually just when my mouth is already cold.
Anyway, she says, "Give it another week." But I know we have this vacation coming up and nightmares of wasting it in a strange dentist's office fly through my head. Plus I took two hours off from work in the middle of a day to go over there.
I had an old silver filling (my only filling prior to this year) on one top tooth on that side from when I was a kid, so I made her replace it with a new filling. (That was my working hypothesis - an old leaky filling - thanks entirely to Dr. Google. And now - having feared dentists for 10 years - I was in the absurd situation of seeking out extra dental work.) I knew it hadn't fixed the problem even before the anesthetic wore off. So I went from work to CVS and I bought Sensodyne, and I bought Orajel just in case, and I've been careful about what I eat, and last weekend I bought a baby toothbrush and have been carefully brushing my teeth and gums, as well as religiously flossing.
It was never that painful (this problem was never about pain, but about what I took as possible warning signs) and it's gotten better - the cold sensitivity is largely gone but there's still a little occasional sensitivity to cold, hot, crunchy, whatever. I still can't locate it to one specific tooth, though it does feel like one spot. It might even just be a cut on the gum (I gargled hydrogen peroxide last weekend and there was pain in one spot - that can't possibly be pulpal damage, can it? it must be a flesh wound). But I am always afraid I will bite down on something and experience excruciating pain that will require emergency dental procedures. (Injured gums don't scare me but injured teeth petrify me.) A few nights ago I was daintily chewing Triscuits and felt one mildly unpleasant sensation and freaked out.
My wife has become a bit concerned - not by my teeth but by my psyche - and I know she is right. I am over-the-top on this. I need a dentist who is also a therapist. She said she didn't know what to do to help and I said "rationalize the worst case scenario" and she did (we're on vaca in the middle of nowhere and I bite down and feel excruciating pain - what would we do? we'd call the number on my insurance card and they'd give us a name and directions of someone who does emergency stuff and she would drive us there in the rental car and we'd get it under control) and I felt better. Since then things have remained alright, but I'm still on edge about my teeth, and I don't know if the grinding is the cause or the effect (or even, 100%, if I'm grinding). But we're going on vacation and I'm just going to take it easy and be cautious what I eat.
The whole querying thing has also added a bit to my stress. I use my main e-mail for querying, so the last thing I need is to be hiking and feel the bb buzz and look down to see another rejection (I'm up to 21 queries and 8 rejections and nada else at nearly four weeks into the process, by the way). Today the same agent sent me identical rejection e-mails twice. Like - in case I didn't get the message the first time. (Yes, I realize it was probably just a technical error. And yes, I'd rather get a rejection e-mail twice than not at all.) But fuck it - I don't need that while I'm on vacation.
I'm still also waiting to hear back on the scientific paper I submitted a little over two months ago. I know it was sent out for review, and I know the reviews are back. It's been "awaiting associate editor recommendation" for nearly two weeks now. As I've said before, I'm a little (pleasantly) surprised it even got sent out for review. Nonetheless, I'm not (can't be) optimistic, and my last experience with this journal was very bad. I don't need to be in the middle of enjoying the sun and the outdoors only to hear a buzz and learn it's been rejected and I have to start all over again.
No, I will relax and unplug this week. (My experience is that when I disconnect from the online world - be it for days or weeks or even months, as I was lucky enough to do a couple of times in my past life as a scientist - I do not miss it one bit.) And when I return, I will take a deep breath and then sit down at the computer and plunge back in. (The irony is that travel also stresses me out - I constantly fear missing flights, broken-down rental cars, misplaced hotel reservations, etc. Though what's at stake is very little and when I actually get into those situations I can almost always maintain a sense of humor and stay calm.)
The theory is that if I really do unplug I will come back refreshed and raring to go. I absolutely subscribe to this (instead of half-vacations with buzzing bbs and conference calls). I don't always do a good job taking care of myself emotionally but I really need to - life is too short and it's just not right to obsess over the (relatively) small stuff for which there are easy fixes. I strive to be a calm person - this post notwithstanding - and frequently succeed (again, not that you'd know it from this post).
I'm becoming interested in looking at options for vacations focused on relaxing and resetting: retreats of various kinds, maybe meditation. I may want to look into it for sometime in the future.
But I know that once my perspective starts to get totally skewed, it's time to withdraw for a little while. And that time is now.
This vacation comes at a good time - I've been feeling a bit tense lately. I couldn't exactly tell you why. Things at work have been picking up, and picking up is generally good. I don't like being consistently overburdened, such that I never get to take a breath or, even worse, wind up frequently staying late or working on the weekends. Plenty of jobs, especially in D.C., will happily overwhelm you immediately and you will never shovel away all the piles of shit you're buried under.
Mine, fortunately, is not one of those jobs. But in my job there can also be quiet periods...and too quiet makes me nervous. It means that I should probably be doing something to move things along faster, even if I have no idea what that something is. One of those counterintuitive truisms I've just realized relatively recently is that there is a default level of activity that suits me best at work, and it's a fairly high level. Not, as I said, overwhelming. But getting too low is just as bad as getting too high. Besides, it's when things are around that nice default level that the days fly by and I can really get into a groove, and I know I'm doing my job well...or at least the best I can.
I think I have been grinding my teeth at night, though I'm not sure. I'm developing what might be a full-on OCD around my teeth, which is strange considering that just a few months ago I finally overcome my longstanding fear and went to the dentist for the first time in over ten years. It wasn't bad, not at all. I needed some fillings, and not deep ones either, on my (fully-erupted) third molars - other than that I was fine.
(This, by the way, is not the first time I've noticed OCD-like symptoms in myself, but usually they are focused on something external - like some aspect of my job or some appliance at home - and not on something internal like my teeth. The worst happened while I was a postdoc and I became obsessed with a piece of lab equipment that needed watching and to be set a certain way or it would flood. I made up elaborate rituals to ensure I put it in the proper place before I left for the day and remembered doing so after I left. Despite that, I'd sometimes return once, twice, even three times to check. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night or very early in the morning and drive in to check. It was fucked up, but just a manifestation of how unhealthy that job was for me.)
I had Laquizzledizzle for a while but he went away.
Then about two weeks ago I noticed some sensitivity to cold outside my normal range of experience in the top right quadrant of my jaw. I made the huge mistake of querying "Dr. Google" about it. Anyone with latent hypochondria has probably been driven over the edge by the availability of atrocious medical "advice" online. I never thought of myself as a latent hypochondriac (goodness knows I tend to be healthy and never need to see the doctor). Yet here I, with a PhD in science and an unfailingly (even annoyingly) rational person, was finding myself worried sick because of postings on idiotic websites like Yahoo Answers that read something like: "hey my tooth hurt when i eat coldstuff and whaddaya think it could be i dont want to go to the dentast." and the "number one answer" - by "glamorgrl83" - is "YEA YOU NEED A ROOT CANAL!!!"
And now I'm convinced I need a root canal! Because of that crap above. It makes no fucking sense.
So, defying my nature, I made an appointment to see my dentist last Monday. I thought I would preempt the onset of bigger problems and just figure it out.
It was my fourth time there since August (thanks to the two appointments I had for fillings) - yay. And the dentist asks: "What tooth is it?" and I can't tell her. She says, "You have to know what tooth it is." Well, I thought she could help me figure it out. I thought she'd take an x-ray. Or something. Because I didn't know what it was - maybe a crack, maybe receding gums, maybe a cut, or maybe actually pulpal damage or decay. Instead she sprays the teeth on that side with tepid air and tepid water - I feel nothing (why do I remember the water from those dental metal spray guns as ICY from when I was a kid?). She taps the teeth - I feel nothing. She hands me a bottle of water at slightly below room temperature and tells me to figure out what tooth it is, but the water's not cold enough and I try to put my finger on it and it's just a guessing game. She asks if it is sensitive to hot...and I know Dr. Google says if it's sensitive to hot AT ALL you need a root canal, and it's been slightly sensitive to hot but not as bad as to cold and usually just when my mouth is already cold.
Anyway, she says, "Give it another week." But I know we have this vacation coming up and nightmares of wasting it in a strange dentist's office fly through my head. Plus I took two hours off from work in the middle of a day to go over there.
I had an old silver filling (my only filling prior to this year) on one top tooth on that side from when I was a kid, so I made her replace it with a new filling. (That was my working hypothesis - an old leaky filling - thanks entirely to Dr. Google. And now - having feared dentists for 10 years - I was in the absurd situation of seeking out extra dental work.) I knew it hadn't fixed the problem even before the anesthetic wore off. So I went from work to CVS and I bought Sensodyne, and I bought Orajel just in case, and I've been careful about what I eat, and last weekend I bought a baby toothbrush and have been carefully brushing my teeth and gums, as well as religiously flossing.
It was never that painful (this problem was never about pain, but about what I took as possible warning signs) and it's gotten better - the cold sensitivity is largely gone but there's still a little occasional sensitivity to cold, hot, crunchy, whatever. I still can't locate it to one specific tooth, though it does feel like one spot. It might even just be a cut on the gum (I gargled hydrogen peroxide last weekend and there was pain in one spot - that can't possibly be pulpal damage, can it? it must be a flesh wound). But I am always afraid I will bite down on something and experience excruciating pain that will require emergency dental procedures. (Injured gums don't scare me but injured teeth petrify me.) A few nights ago I was daintily chewing Triscuits and felt one mildly unpleasant sensation and freaked out.
My wife has become a bit concerned - not by my teeth but by my psyche - and I know she is right. I am over-the-top on this. I need a dentist who is also a therapist. She said she didn't know what to do to help and I said "rationalize the worst case scenario" and she did (we're on vaca in the middle of nowhere and I bite down and feel excruciating pain - what would we do? we'd call the number on my insurance card and they'd give us a name and directions of someone who does emergency stuff and she would drive us there in the rental car and we'd get it under control) and I felt better. Since then things have remained alright, but I'm still on edge about my teeth, and I don't know if the grinding is the cause or the effect (or even, 100%, if I'm grinding). But we're going on vacation and I'm just going to take it easy and be cautious what I eat.
The whole querying thing has also added a bit to my stress. I use my main e-mail for querying, so the last thing I need is to be hiking and feel the bb buzz and look down to see another rejection (I'm up to 21 queries and 8 rejections and nada else at nearly four weeks into the process, by the way). Today the same agent sent me identical rejection e-mails twice. Like - in case I didn't get the message the first time. (Yes, I realize it was probably just a technical error. And yes, I'd rather get a rejection e-mail twice than not at all.) But fuck it - I don't need that while I'm on vacation.
I'm still also waiting to hear back on the scientific paper I submitted a little over two months ago. I know it was sent out for review, and I know the reviews are back. It's been "awaiting associate editor recommendation" for nearly two weeks now. As I've said before, I'm a little (pleasantly) surprised it even got sent out for review. Nonetheless, I'm not (can't be) optimistic, and my last experience with this journal was very bad. I don't need to be in the middle of enjoying the sun and the outdoors only to hear a buzz and learn it's been rejected and I have to start all over again.
No, I will relax and unplug this week. (My experience is that when I disconnect from the online world - be it for days or weeks or even months, as I was lucky enough to do a couple of times in my past life as a scientist - I do not miss it one bit.) And when I return, I will take a deep breath and then sit down at the computer and plunge back in. (The irony is that travel also stresses me out - I constantly fear missing flights, broken-down rental cars, misplaced hotel reservations, etc. Though what's at stake is very little and when I actually get into those situations I can almost always maintain a sense of humor and stay calm.)
The theory is that if I really do unplug I will come back refreshed and raring to go. I absolutely subscribe to this (instead of half-vacations with buzzing bbs and conference calls). I don't always do a good job taking care of myself emotionally but I really need to - life is too short and it's just not right to obsess over the (relatively) small stuff for which there are easy fixes. I strive to be a calm person - this post notwithstanding - and frequently succeed (again, not that you'd know it from this post).
I'm becoming interested in looking at options for vacations focused on relaxing and resetting: retreats of various kinds, maybe meditation. I may want to look into it for sometime in the future.
But I know that once my perspective starts to get totally skewed, it's time to withdraw for a little while. And that time is now.
Monday, November 2, 2009
More H.P. Lovecraft Humor
This is not new, but it's too funny not to post:
Selections from H.P. Lovecraft's brief tenure as a Whitman's Sample copywriter.
Selections from H.P. Lovecraft's brief tenure as a Whitman's Sample copywriter.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Literary Update
It's now been three weeks since I began querying for my novel. During that time, I've sent out 20 queries and received 5 rejections. And that is it. No requests for partials or fulls. None of the rejections contained any rationale for rejection...not that this is surprising, but it sure would be great if they did.
My query letter has slowly evolved (and been tweaked a bit for each agent), but the meat of it hasn't changed. With no feedback, it is hard to know what about it is/is not working. I believe with all my heart and soul that my central idea is both interesting and saleable, but the key is whether this is being effectively conveyed in the query (I think it's being effectively conveyed in the story, and so did my beta readers, but that's something to worry about once I'm getting full requests).
Certainly I agonized over the query long enough that I'm no longer able to look at it straight. If I didn't expect to learn during the process, I would just blitz every agent I could find. There's no reason to prolong the agony - I'd just one-by-one query 75 or 100 agents and then sit back and wait. But I do, perhaps naively, expect to learn, so I am trying not to go too fast. Since my time in this process is not particularly valuable (sigh, but it's true), I still think being more cautious is wiser.
My queries spanned the range from "sure why not this agent" to "wow this agent would be awesome for my book because...[specific reason]" and in (the relatively few) cases where I had the latter I tried to put it into the letter.
I will also admit to my (few) blog readers that in query letters I've sometimes labeled my book "literary fiction" and other times "commercial fiction." I really don't think I am being disingenuous in doing this - I feel like it's a lot more literary than a lot of stuff out there, but it's still pretty plot- and character-driven. If "literary" and "commercial" are a continuum rather than a dichotomy (and I think they are), then my work is somewhere in the middle (where the ven diagram circles overlap). Still, I'm deciding what to put based on what I think the agent wants to hear, and it sometimes feels a little weird to be doing this.
Maybe it's too early to assess how things have gone, but honestly, right now it doesn't feel particularly good. It's not even so much the rejections that bug me as the silence. I feel like I'm shouting into the wind. Because so many agents do not respond to queries unless they're interested, I have no idea how many of my 15 unanswered queries are still in play. Of the 10 queries I sent out at the beginning (three weeks ago), I've still only heard back from 3. On my agent spreadsheet I make a note if the agents give you some clue how long they'll take (i.e. "if you haven't heard back in 4 weeks, assume we're not interested") but that is still quite unsatisfying.
I be will going away from November 8-14 and will be out-of-commission electronically during that time, so I figure I won't submit any more queries between now and when I get back. Hopefully I will get some more responses between now and then.
The other thing I might have mentioned before is that I made a list of literary journals where I might submit short stories. I actually submitted something I reworked to a journal (and not the New Yorker or the Paris Review - some place realistic) this weekend...what I need to do now is send around my old short stories more widely. Partly this is because it would make me feel less impotent to have something published, partly this is because it would be very nice to have a "writing credit" to stick on my query letters.
Of course, literary journals make most agents seem like speed demons by comparison. The likelihood of publication is still astonishingly low. And I read the descriptions of lots of these journals and I'm just like what? the? fuck? I totally don't get it...I mean, I read the words and understand them individually, but in the aggregate they seem either like jibberish or code (or maybe both at once).
I know I should be spending more time on my new novel idea, but honestly I am not sure I am ready yet. At least, if I was, I'd expect more of a compulsion to do it. I've been thinking about it a lot (to clarify: I mean thinking about the story idea, not thinking about writing anything down). But am I ready to start writing things down (even writing down the background)? I'm not so sure. Maybe I'll give it a few more weeks and then take stock of where I am.
It'd be great to make the new novel the primary focus, and do the queries/other submissions for a couple of hours a week and otherwise not worry so much about them (at least not day-to-day).
My query letter has slowly evolved (and been tweaked a bit for each agent), but the meat of it hasn't changed. With no feedback, it is hard to know what about it is/is not working. I believe with all my heart and soul that my central idea is both interesting and saleable, but the key is whether this is being effectively conveyed in the query (I think it's being effectively conveyed in the story, and so did my beta readers, but that's something to worry about once I'm getting full requests).
Certainly I agonized over the query long enough that I'm no longer able to look at it straight. If I didn't expect to learn during the process, I would just blitz every agent I could find. There's no reason to prolong the agony - I'd just one-by-one query 75 or 100 agents and then sit back and wait. But I do, perhaps naively, expect to learn, so I am trying not to go too fast. Since my time in this process is not particularly valuable (sigh, but it's true), I still think being more cautious is wiser.
My queries spanned the range from "sure why not this agent" to "wow this agent would be awesome for my book because...[specific reason]" and in (the relatively few) cases where I had the latter I tried to put it into the letter.
I will also admit to my (few) blog readers that in query letters I've sometimes labeled my book "literary fiction" and other times "commercial fiction." I really don't think I am being disingenuous in doing this - I feel like it's a lot more literary than a lot of stuff out there, but it's still pretty plot- and character-driven. If "literary" and "commercial" are a continuum rather than a dichotomy (and I think they are), then my work is somewhere in the middle (where the ven diagram circles overlap). Still, I'm deciding what to put based on what I think the agent wants to hear, and it sometimes feels a little weird to be doing this.
Maybe it's too early to assess how things have gone, but honestly, right now it doesn't feel particularly good. It's not even so much the rejections that bug me as the silence. I feel like I'm shouting into the wind. Because so many agents do not respond to queries unless they're interested, I have no idea how many of my 15 unanswered queries are still in play. Of the 10 queries I sent out at the beginning (three weeks ago), I've still only heard back from 3. On my agent spreadsheet I make a note if the agents give you some clue how long they'll take (i.e. "if you haven't heard back in 4 weeks, assume we're not interested") but that is still quite unsatisfying.
I be will going away from November 8-14 and will be out-of-commission electronically during that time, so I figure I won't submit any more queries between now and when I get back. Hopefully I will get some more responses between now and then.
The other thing I might have mentioned before is that I made a list of literary journals where I might submit short stories. I actually submitted something I reworked to a journal (and not the New Yorker or the Paris Review - some place realistic) this weekend...what I need to do now is send around my old short stories more widely. Partly this is because it would make me feel less impotent to have something published, partly this is because it would be very nice to have a "writing credit" to stick on my query letters.
Of course, literary journals make most agents seem like speed demons by comparison. The likelihood of publication is still astonishingly low. And I read the descriptions of lots of these journals and I'm just like what? the? fuck? I totally don't get it...I mean, I read the words and understand them individually, but in the aggregate they seem either like jibberish or code (or maybe both at once).
I know I should be spending more time on my new novel idea, but honestly I am not sure I am ready yet. At least, if I was, I'd expect more of a compulsion to do it. I've been thinking about it a lot (to clarify: I mean thinking about the story idea, not thinking about writing anything down). But am I ready to start writing things down (even writing down the background)? I'm not so sure. Maybe I'll give it a few more weeks and then take stock of where I am.
It'd be great to make the new novel the primary focus, and do the queries/other submissions for a couple of hours a week and otherwise not worry so much about them (at least not day-to-day).
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