How are you feeling?
Got my full MS out to the agent who requested it on Friday, which is a good thing since this week is already shaping up as the “week of no writing.” Too much other stuff going on, including days off for the kids for “teacher professional enrichment days.” Which makes me think of that Simpsons’ episode where the teachers are partying at the ski lodge and doing the conga line dance during their “professional day.”
Also got a very nice rejection (for Polkadots) in which the agent called my pitch “both intelligent and intriguing,” but she’s “taking on close to nothing now.” The agent goes on to detail how harried and stressed out she is. Which made me feel bad for her, tempting me to recommend some stress-reducing herbal remedies and maybe even some Zoloft.
Or better yet, let’s get her to send a video to Sen. Bill Frist so he can diagnose her and suggest appropriate treatment. In fact, I recommend Sen. Frist as the cure-all to our nation’s health care woes. To hell with going to see your doctor, just send a tape to Frist, just like you were auditioning for Survivor, and he’ll tell you what’s wrong with you. Put all those HMOs out of business, and just name the kindly doctor as the nation’s Physician Laureate. So what if he sees that blemish on your face (or dust on the camera lens!) as the Bubonic Plague, we’ll save billions!
The only downside to this is that the old boy may get a bit jaded with being the only doc in town and take on a Simon Cowell complex. We’ll just have to get used to the insults—“You think that tie looks good with that Port Wine stain? Please!” and… “Is all America waiting to hear your whiny complaints about your lumbago? I don’t think so!”—with the diagnoses…
Only in America, right? Janet – No power in the ’verse can stop me (except that tiny little misshapen mole…right…there…)
High Anxiety
Went to a workshop on anxiety and depression in adolescence tonight, which didn’t help me learn anything about my kids but helped me to diagnose myself. I've apparently been clinically depressed and pathologically anxious since I was three years old. Guess I should've known something was up when I missed the entire nine-times table in fourth grade due to that nervous breakdown.
The woman who led the workshop was a therapist, which I would've guessed even if she didn't plaster her credentials in big bold letters on the projection screen. She kept saying things like, "Does anyone have thoughts on obsessive compulsive disorder?" and "What do you think of free-floating anxiety? Anyone? Anyone?"
Her written presentation, projected on the big screen, was riddled with grammar/spelling errors such as those ubiquitous misplaced possessive apostrophes, the word "disguise" spelled "disquise," and such statements as "more girls THEN boys suffer from phobias..."
I discovered a new phobia of my own—typo-phobia. It makes my heart pound, my fingers itch, makes me want to grab the offending text and circle all the glaring errors! Sure, I can take a deep, cleansing breath, I can “redirect” and write about my feelings, but I'm afraid typo-phobia is a compulsion I'll never beat. I'll be sniffing out misplaced apostrophes and your-for-you’re everywhere...
Janet - No power in the 'verse’s can stop me
No power in the 'verse can stop the postal service!
I am officially sick and tired of rejection letters. I know, I’m in the wrong business if I’m going to let “the big no” from an agent bother me, but it does sting when you get four in one day!
And wouldn’t you know it, after I dissed the post office in last week’s rant they go and deliver some of my SASEs—faulty zip codes and all. Not all of them have come back, and I don’t think they all will, but some sharp-eyed postal employee caught a few of them and directed them my way. That adds to my “rejection overload,” I now have the pleasure of being rejected twice by the same agent!
The good news is one of the letters contained a request for pages, which I’ve dutifully printed and sent out. Not before rereading and re-editing the chapters of course. I’m anal…which reminds me of last week’s digression into my bottom and its trials and tribulations. I just can’t seem to get off my ass, can I? Explaining the ever-expanding girth of said bottom as well.
Okay, putting that topic behind me, I’ll get back to writing. I put aside my contemporary romance—boring—and picked up “…And the Angels Sing” again, my follow-up to the mystery, Polkadots & Moonbeams, so I’m back in WWII, writing about spies and interracial romance and tough guys who smoke and say “doll” a lot. Couldn’t be happier.
I’m also noodling with another mystery (I’ve been “noodling” with it for about ten years!). It’s a contemporary and I swear to follow every formula rule in the book if it means I might get it published. It’s called “Murder in Salem: The Curse of Hannah Barlow.” Here’s the pitch: The staff members of the local history museum are dropping like flies. Have they fallen prey to the curse of a woman hanged as a witch in Salem centuries ago—or is one of the museum’s employees on a vengeful rampage?
This story’s true to life given that I worked in a museum in Salem for six years and I contemplated murder of more than one of my coworkers at one time or another—something anyone who’s ever worked with other human beings can surely relate to.
Janet…no power in the ‘verse can stop me (but being buried under a multitude of rejections can certainly slow me down!)
Too dumb to live...
That’s how I felt after realizing I’d made a stupid mistake while sending out queries to my last batch of agents. I was moving along pretty damn well, having finally honed my query letter to perfection, a brilliant pitch guaranteed to get me rejected only 98% of the time rather than 99%. I’d slashed chapters 1-3 into a tight, fast moving narrative that sings. I’d gotten another request for a full (via e-mail). I’d sent out ten queries over the last two weeks…
And then I realized my mistake. Somehow I’d transposed the first two numbers of my zip code on my SASE address labels. So all the rejections—and maybe that one request for a partial or a full—were or will be sent by our good friends at the Post Office into a black hole. I feel like a stupid dummy girl, as my kids say. A teeny, tiny mistake that effectively wastes my time, the agents’ time, and several $$$ in stamps.
What to do? Well, I could just write the queries off as painful experience. I’m sure if the SASEs were returned to the agencies as “undeliverable” they went or will go right into the circular file. If they didn’t make it back to NY, then I could try to find the post office in the town where they ended up. Given my oft negative experience with the postal service that’s probably not a good idea. I mean, does anyone working there NOT suffer from a serious case of stinging hemorrhoids? (And before you, constant reader, slam me for dissing the USPS, let me assure you, I KNOW how that feels, only worse. I'm an expert on afflictions where the sun don’t shine--a long story involving words like "fissure" and "cauterize" followed by "scalpel," shouting in the O.R. that I had to pee, a nitro-glycerin treatment and subsequent “explosion” jokes, and a humorous, award-winning, PUBLISHED essay. Yes, writing about my aching ass actually got me published!)
Anyway… I finally decided to make lemonade out of my bitter lemon and re-sent my query, explaining what a stupid dummy girl I am and would the agent please take the time to reject me again. This was my top tier of agents and I at least want to have it confirmed they weren’t interested before I go on to the next. When I finally do land an agent (and provided he/she isn’t hit by a bus the day after signing me—see “Janet’s Law”), then this will be just another amusing, slightly irritating story to look back on…like my ass escapades.
Janet – No power in the verse can stop me (except maybe the fearful power of zip codes!)
