I submitted my first query letters tonight. I hacked and edited and wrote and rewrote. I agonized over whether or not I could use the word "background" twice in the same paragraph. I decided that OF COURSE I can't use the word "background" twice in the same paragraph. Then there was a fairly fraught 10 minutes where I worried over a semicolon. I decided to go for a comma instead, because while I tend to really like semicolons, I often suspect them of grammatical pretension. And then, I hit "send" at the first query letter and was immediately filled with a chilling sense of dread and inadequacy.
My problem is that I've watched far too many terrible movies marketed to women. So, as soon as I hit "send," I imagined some sleek, svelte, sophisticated woman (did I mention svelte?) sitting in an office that has, like, a charmingly worn Persian rug and a mahogany desk on which sits one of those new, super thin Mac laptops. Her $2000 Mac DINGS alerting her that there's an email. And then she reads it and audibly (but tastefully) scoffs.
This works well since I was wearing cargo pants and my hair is kind of dirty and my desk is shamefully cluttered and my laptop is a PC that's kind of old (but to which I am, nonetheless, very attached). Also, there is nothing more intimidating to me than thinness. If I ever met Victoria Beckham I'd be summarily rendered into an idiotic stupor. I'd probably drool or fart or something. Victoria Beckham, by the way, is who I picture the literary agent who read my first query letter looks like.
But it's Saturday night. No one will be scoffing until Monday afternoon at the very earliest.
I say Monday afternoons, because I'm quite sure that literary agents (who are all sophisticated and svelte) have posh Monday morning meetings where they talk about the parties they went to where they chatted with Arthur Miller and Judi Dench (yes, I know Arthur Miller is dead and I don't know why Judi Dench is hanging out at smug parties in Chicago, but this is a figment of my neurotic fantasy, so just go with it). And I bet the one that got my email pulls it out at her posh Monday morning meeting (where no one ever eats the bagels because they are all very svelte) and says, "Listen to this, darlings, some bloggity nerd who probably EATS the bagels at Monday morning meetings thinks she can re-do Eliot. Have you ever?" And then they laugh and laugh.
This is what it's like to live in my world.
Then I sent a couple of more queries.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Rules
I had an interesting student/teacher conference yesterday and spent most of last night agonizing over what to do about Laney's ongoing education. I won't go too much into it; suffice it to say that I'm on the horns or a rather luxurious dilemma. I got a smart kid who goes to a good public school that we didn't have to work too hard to get her into. But the question has come up if she should, perhaps, think of another school with programs designed for kids like her.
Laney, as the two or three of you reading this already know, was adopted. She sprang whole from the loins of another woman. As such, I often feel like she's a walking, talking, giggling, goofy four foot tall piece of anecdotal evidence supporting the primacy of nurture over nature. She is much like me: good and bad. For example, the kid hates to write. I don't mean the act of thinking stuff up - I mean the physical operation of writing. Me too. I hate to use a pen. I have terrible handwriting (as does Laney) and making things legible means sloooowwwwiiiinnnngggg it down so much. Laney's the same way and it drives both me and her teachers crazy to see her writing assignments with such meager detail and wanting depth. She's a good little critical thinker, and creative in her interpretation of text. I'm eager to get her onto a keyboard to see what happens when she's no longer responsible for making sure the person can make out the words she's trying to express.
Also, she's hard to get to focus. It took me a long time to finally come to grips with the fact that it doesn't matter how smart you are, if you're not willing to do the work. I often talk to her about that famous Barack Obama story where his mother woke him up two hours before school to do extra work. He'd complain and she'd say "You think I'm having a barrel of laughs here, kid?" She's a fan of Barack Obama (don't know where she got that), and so I often pull that story out when I'm pushing her to sit down and do her homework.
But back to the point of this blog: when I was working on my book, I'd get distracted so often. I had to turn the wireless off my laptop, hide the remote, let the battery run down on my phone, keep the cork in the wine bottle. But I made it through. I did the work.
But now comes the even more boring part - googling for literary agents and publishers and taking strict notes about how, exactly, they expect to be queried. I can't photocopy 50 copies of the baseline query letter I wrote Tuesday, stick them in the mail and wait for fame and fortune to come following. Instead, I have to be painstaking and tedious, which are not things that come naturally to me. But I'll do the work.
I hope I can teach Laney the value of doing the work so that it doesn't take her into her 40's before she settles down and just fucking does it. It's difficult though, because there are Harry Potter novels to be read. And re-read.
Seriously - she's SO much like me! I've read them all at least four times each.
Laney, as the two or three of you reading this already know, was adopted. She sprang whole from the loins of another woman. As such, I often feel like she's a walking, talking, giggling, goofy four foot tall piece of anecdotal evidence supporting the primacy of nurture over nature. She is much like me: good and bad. For example, the kid hates to write. I don't mean the act of thinking stuff up - I mean the physical operation of writing. Me too. I hate to use a pen. I have terrible handwriting (as does Laney) and making things legible means sloooowwwwiiiinnnngggg it down so much. Laney's the same way and it drives both me and her teachers crazy to see her writing assignments with such meager detail and wanting depth. She's a good little critical thinker, and creative in her interpretation of text. I'm eager to get her onto a keyboard to see what happens when she's no longer responsible for making sure the person can make out the words she's trying to express.
Also, she's hard to get to focus. It took me a long time to finally come to grips with the fact that it doesn't matter how smart you are, if you're not willing to do the work. I often talk to her about that famous Barack Obama story where his mother woke him up two hours before school to do extra work. He'd complain and she'd say "You think I'm having a barrel of laughs here, kid?" She's a fan of Barack Obama (don't know where she got that), and so I often pull that story out when I'm pushing her to sit down and do her homework.
But back to the point of this blog: when I was working on my book, I'd get distracted so often. I had to turn the wireless off my laptop, hide the remote, let the battery run down on my phone, keep the cork in the wine bottle. But I made it through. I did the work.
But now comes the even more boring part - googling for literary agents and publishers and taking strict notes about how, exactly, they expect to be queried. I can't photocopy 50 copies of the baseline query letter I wrote Tuesday, stick them in the mail and wait for fame and fortune to come following. Instead, I have to be painstaking and tedious, which are not things that come naturally to me. But I'll do the work.
I hope I can teach Laney the value of doing the work so that it doesn't take her into her 40's before she settles down and just fucking does it. It's difficult though, because there are Harry Potter novels to be read. And re-read.
Seriously - she's SO much like me! I've read them all at least four times each.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Baby Step One - Writing the Query Letter
I wrote my first draft of a query letter and sent it to my mother. She's pretty good at that kind of thing and will give me some good tips. I also spent a good chunk of time scouring the internet for advice about how to write a good query editor.
My pal, neighbor and fellow writertype person, Michael, sent me to a blog that was just chockablock with valuable advice. It's kept by a literary agent with scads of experience in the field. She has a bit of a mantra: "write well and query widely." This seems very sensible. She also seems to view any kind of attention-getting cuteness as anathema. "Follow the rules," she exhorts.
And so I did. I did not get cute. I did not give into my urge for funny digressions. I did, as is expected, one page, three paragraphs. Almost.
Paragraph One - A hook. Think of the thing you read on the back of a dust cover.
Paragraph Two - A summary. That was a bitch. man. Have you ever tried to summarize 80,000 words? I have. It is not for the faint of heart - especially when you feel like every plot point is Entirely Vital To the Comprehension of A WORK OF STAGGERING GENUIS! (you know, I didn't much care for the book I just riffed on there, but, honestly, best title ever)
Paragraph Three - Who are you. Well, what with that National Book Award I won in my own imagination and the time that a blogpost I wrote got more than 20 hits? I decided to make this paragraph about how I bartended and studied English lit at the same time and finally figured out how those two things gelled.
Here's where I broke the rules - I sneaked a paragraph in between two and three about how I revisioned Middlemarch. I fancy this is pertinent and I kept it onto one page.
Mom will tell me if it's any good.
In the meantime, I'm left wondering if people (and by that I mean literary agents and/or publishers) just fucking hate the word "revisioning"? It was totally trendy back in the dark ages when I was getting a Masters and still wanted to put quotes around the word "email." But now I wonder if it makes people's ears bleed like "meta" and "fierce."
I used "reimagining" too. Which might also make the people to whom I am appealing want to barf.
Well, I've kicked off my first baby step and plan on giving myself a week to polish and finesse my query letter (do you think using the word "finesse" as a verb is also barfalicious?). Baby step after that will be finding people to send it to. Baby step three will be bracing for the rejection.
On another topic, you know what word I really hate? Utilize. I really hate that word. I don't believe that there are such things as synonyms in English. Every word means something different (you don't, for example, say "nice" when you mean to say "goodhearted"). You know what the difference between "utilize" and "use" is? That the person speaking wants to sound smart but instead sounds like he's intentionally trying to put space between his idea and the action that follows from it. It's uselessly fancypants.
On the other hand, I prefer "utilization" to "usage." Ah, the vagaries of English and my senselessly strong opinions about it.
My pal, neighbor and fellow writertype person, Michael, sent me to a blog that was just chockablock with valuable advice. It's kept by a literary agent with scads of experience in the field. She has a bit of a mantra: "write well and query widely." This seems very sensible. She also seems to view any kind of attention-getting cuteness as anathema. "Follow the rules," she exhorts.
And so I did. I did not get cute. I did not give into my urge for funny digressions. I did, as is expected, one page, three paragraphs. Almost.
Paragraph One - A hook. Think of the thing you read on the back of a dust cover.
Paragraph Two - A summary. That was a bitch. man. Have you ever tried to summarize 80,000 words? I have. It is not for the faint of heart - especially when you feel like every plot point is Entirely Vital To the Comprehension of A WORK OF STAGGERING GENUIS! (you know, I didn't much care for the book I just riffed on there, but, honestly, best title ever)
Paragraph Three - Who are you. Well, what with that National Book Award I won in my own imagination and the time that a blogpost I wrote got more than 20 hits? I decided to make this paragraph about how I bartended and studied English lit at the same time and finally figured out how those two things gelled.
Here's where I broke the rules - I sneaked a paragraph in between two and three about how I revisioned Middlemarch. I fancy this is pertinent and I kept it onto one page.
Mom will tell me if it's any good.
In the meantime, I'm left wondering if people (and by that I mean literary agents and/or publishers) just fucking hate the word "revisioning"? It was totally trendy back in the dark ages when I was getting a Masters and still wanted to put quotes around the word "email." But now I wonder if it makes people's ears bleed like "meta" and "fierce."
I used "reimagining" too. Which might also make the people to whom I am appealing want to barf.
Well, I've kicked off my first baby step and plan on giving myself a week to polish and finesse my query letter (do you think using the word "finesse" as a verb is also barfalicious?). Baby step after that will be finding people to send it to. Baby step three will be bracing for the rejection.
On another topic, you know what word I really hate? Utilize. I really hate that word. I don't believe that there are such things as synonyms in English. Every word means something different (you don't, for example, say "nice" when you mean to say "goodhearted"). You know what the difference between "utilize" and "use" is? That the person speaking wants to sound smart but instead sounds like he's intentionally trying to put space between his idea and the action that follows from it. It's uselessly fancypants.
On the other hand, I prefer "utilization" to "usage." Ah, the vagaries of English and my senselessly strong opinions about it.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Post the First
I wrote a book. I think it's pretty good... I think it's terrible... I think it's really great... Eh, it's all right... I can't decide. So much depends on the time of day and how much wine I've had to drink. But I wrote a book and have spent every free moment over the past 20 months either working on it or feeling guilty that I wasn't working on it and now suddenly it's done and it's time to do the next thing.
It occurs to me that there's a fairly large area between writing a book and getting anyone to read it. And that's just when I'm talking about my friends - who are mostly people who seem to like me and would do stuff like help me move or loan me money. I'm not sure any of them want to read a book I wrote. If I start thinking about getting it published by someone who is (a) not me and (b) willing to give me money for it, well there's a damn ocean between that and writing it, no matter how much fucking work the writing of it was.
But I don't care, because I wrote a book and I decided that the very least I could do was try to publish it.
But how?
Long ago, when I was still palavering away behind the bar at Streeter's Tavern (greatest bar below earth) and trying to find a way to stop palavering behind the bar, I was doled out a piece of advice that I've long felt was the best advice I've ever gotten: baby steps. In other words, don't think of the long game, think of the thing that you have to do next. And then do that thing. This is solid advice and you can have it for free.
Prior to that, the best piece of advice I'd ever gotten was from my mother who told me that "you're never too poor to afford a good moisturizer." I thought this was good advice but it turns out that sometimes you are too poor to afford a good moisturizer and besides, the cheap offbrand shit you buy at CVS works just as well. If I were going to dole out advice in this arena, I'd tell you to wear a hat in the sun and wash your face every night prior to moisturizing it with the stuff that comes in the $4 jar at CVS. Besides, just between you and me, my mother's been moisturizing with Vaseline which is even cheaper than the $4 shit you can get at CVS and her skin looks great - but that's off topic. I'm stalling. I'm kind of scared of the whole process and skin care comedy is my whistling in the dark.
Onwards!
A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the A&T Cafe in Rogers Park with a grilled cheese, a diet coke and my laptop and I was plugging away at The March (which is the name of my brainchild and sometime nemesis) and I felt so happy to be doing that. The idea of a future where I could sit by myself in a public place and play with words and pick things out my own brain seemed so tantalizing and so wonderful and so impossible.
But I remembered that advice from oft in my 20s and instead of thinking of that impossible, tantalizing goal, I decided to think of the next thing to do.
First, I've started this blog wherein I shall document the process of trying to get a book published (consider the skin care advice a happy bonus). This, I thought, might prove instrumental to other young(ish... who am I kidding, knocking at middle-age with extreme prejudice) writers trying to get a start in this business. But more importantly, I thought it would remind me to do these baby steps, to engage in the process and try. At least: try. To remember to think of the next thing to do instead of the whole thing to be done.
And the next thing now?
Write a letter that describes what this book of mine is about. Join me in that pursuit, won't you?
If anyone out there in the blogosphere has some ideas about what my baby steps should be, please let me know. I'm making this up as I go along.
It occurs to me that there's a fairly large area between writing a book and getting anyone to read it. And that's just when I'm talking about my friends - who are mostly people who seem to like me and would do stuff like help me move or loan me money. I'm not sure any of them want to read a book I wrote. If I start thinking about getting it published by someone who is (a) not me and (b) willing to give me money for it, well there's a damn ocean between that and writing it, no matter how much fucking work the writing of it was.
But I don't care, because I wrote a book and I decided that the very least I could do was try to publish it.
But how?
Long ago, when I was still palavering away behind the bar at Streeter's Tavern (greatest bar below earth) and trying to find a way to stop palavering behind the bar, I was doled out a piece of advice that I've long felt was the best advice I've ever gotten: baby steps. In other words, don't think of the long game, think of the thing that you have to do next. And then do that thing. This is solid advice and you can have it for free.
Prior to that, the best piece of advice I'd ever gotten was from my mother who told me that "you're never too poor to afford a good moisturizer." I thought this was good advice but it turns out that sometimes you are too poor to afford a good moisturizer and besides, the cheap offbrand shit you buy at CVS works just as well. If I were going to dole out advice in this arena, I'd tell you to wear a hat in the sun and wash your face every night prior to moisturizing it with the stuff that comes in the $4 jar at CVS. Besides, just between you and me, my mother's been moisturizing with Vaseline which is even cheaper than the $4 shit you can get at CVS and her skin looks great - but that's off topic. I'm stalling. I'm kind of scared of the whole process and skin care comedy is my whistling in the dark.
Onwards!
A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the A&T Cafe in Rogers Park with a grilled cheese, a diet coke and my laptop and I was plugging away at The March (which is the name of my brainchild and sometime nemesis) and I felt so happy to be doing that. The idea of a future where I could sit by myself in a public place and play with words and pick things out my own brain seemed so tantalizing and so wonderful and so impossible.
But I remembered that advice from oft in my 20s and instead of thinking of that impossible, tantalizing goal, I decided to think of the next thing to do.
First, I've started this blog wherein I shall document the process of trying to get a book published (consider the skin care advice a happy bonus). This, I thought, might prove instrumental to other young(ish... who am I kidding, knocking at middle-age with extreme prejudice) writers trying to get a start in this business. But more importantly, I thought it would remind me to do these baby steps, to engage in the process and try. At least: try. To remember to think of the next thing to do instead of the whole thing to be done.
And the next thing now?
Write a letter that describes what this book of mine is about. Join me in that pursuit, won't you?
If anyone out there in the blogosphere has some ideas about what my baby steps should be, please let me know. I'm making this up as I go along.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)