query / manuscript dilemma

So check this out, today is six weeks exactly since DAW should have gotten my query letter, and I hadn't heard back about it, (read: didn't get the rejection I'd been expecting, but then, didn't get anything, which was more frustrating.) Then yesterday the postage went up from 39 to 41 cents. SURPRISE! So I bit the bullet and called the publishers. Those of you who know me, know that I loathe--LOATHE--talking on the phone. It takes a lot for me to just walk over to that sucker and pick it up, and I cringe when it rings. But I did it anyway, because I had to find out how the SASE was going to work, since it still only had the old stamp on it.

I talked to a really young sounding guy who was very nice, and who informed me that the submissions editor had been out for a while and had recently come back to work. Now he's backlogged with tons of manuscripts and query letters. He also said that they basically are accepting unsolicited manuscripts and that those were first priority. And that although they were backlogged, he would get around to rejecting answering those before he even looked at the query letters. And that since he mostly said "yes" to all query letters as long as they were clearly in regards to fantasy or sci-fi, I could go ahead and send the manuscript anyway.

...

O_O

So now my first order of business is to freak right on out the door. My second order of business is to get cracking on tuning up the crappy manuscript. That means putting down the book I had been writing (part three, even though I'd been slacking on that, too, in part because I couldn't see, but mostly because I got lazy,) and picking up part one again. Which, for the record, I'm SICK of reading that thing. I've looked at it so much that I have blind spots, I can't tell what sucks and what doesn't anymore. It's like saying the same word over and over again, after a while it doesn't make sense.

Then there's the wait period. We're looking at months here, maybe even a year. Do I send it to the hugest company I can find and just hold my breath, go about my life, and probably have it get rejected anyway in the end? Or do I shoot for a smaller company in order to get a quicker response and move on?

Truth is, I'm going to send out a manuscript one way or another no matter what, so I know that I do have to try to make that first draft into a real manuscript. And I'm going to have to send it to some company or other soon. Question is, which?

What should I DOOOOOOOOO?

/angst

query / manuscript dilemma

So check this out, today is six weeks exactly since DAW should have gotten my query letter, and I hadn't heard back about it, (read: didn't get the rejection I'd been expecting, but then, didn't get anything, which was more frustrating.) Then yesterday the postage went up from 39 to 41 cents. SURPRISE! So I bit the bullet and called the publishers. Those of you who know me, know that I loathe--LOATHE--talking on the phone. It takes a lot for me to just walk over to that sucker and pick it up, and I cringe when it rings. But I did it anyway, because I had to find out how the SASE was going to work, since it still only had the old stamp on it.

I talked to a really young sounding guy who was very nice, and who informed me that the submissions editor had been out for a while and had recently come back to work. Now he's backlogged with tons of manuscripts and query letters. He also said that they basically are accepting unsolicited manuscripts and that those were first priority. And that although they were backlogged, he would get around to rejecting answering those before he even looked at the query letters. And that since he mostly said "yes" to all query letters as long as they were clearly in regards to fantasy or sci-fi, I could go ahead and send the manuscript anyway.

...

O_O

So now my first order of business is to freak right on out the door. My second order of business is to get cracking on tuning up the crappy manuscript. That means putting down the book I had been writing (part three, even though I'd been slacking on that, too, in part because I couldn't see, but mostly because I got lazy,) and picking up part one again. Which, for the record, I'm SICK of reading that thing. I've looked at it so much that I have blind spots, I can't tell what sucks and what doesn't anymore. It's like saying the same word over and over again, after a while it doesn't make sense.

Then there's the wait period. We're looking at months here, maybe even a year. Do I send it to the hugest company I can find and just hold my breath, go about my life, and probably have it get rejected anyway in the end? Or do I shoot for a smaller company in order to get a quicker response and move on?

Truth is, I'm going to send out a manuscript one way or another no matter what, so I know that I do have to try to make that first draft into a real manuscript. And I'm going to have to send it to some company or other soon. Question is, which?

What should I DOOOOOOOOO?

/angst

Hazy May, and wet Kung Fu

Thanks, everyone, for your input on that manuscript question. The response got the most was to go for Daw, which, yeah. I've waited this long, so why not just go for it and then wait a bit more?

Anyway, so today was another one of these typically fine May days. It started out warm and humid, all hazy when I pulled up to SITF. The hills and the woods beyond them were just vivid with springtime, really bright, but with this mellow softness that I tried to capture with my digital, but didn't manage. Either I need to go back to traditional photography, or I need one hell of an incredible digital camera that I can't afford. I just carry this one around 'cause it's little and easy. Frank said, "Hey, Dove" when I came in, Bruce the rooster followed me pulling on the leg of my jeans. Outside in the aviary, you could smell the water from a few miles away and the lilacs from everywhere.

Oh, I forgot to mention that on Friday, SITF took our pigeon, Fifty Cent, from th hospital. He'd been basically our pet pidge, our house pidge for about two years. You guys all probably have seen pics of him, he's perfectly tame and he had a little yellow sex toy that he'd always hump. She'd said that 50 could have the run of the main room (or the fly of it, I guess,) and I did send his toy along with him. But I was bummed out when I got there today and he was in a little cage and his toy was gone. 50 was freaking out, totally not himself. So once I was done with the pigeon room, I closed the screen door on the bottom floor and took him out into the main room with me. He was so freaked out that he was pretty much stapled to my shoulder for the first twenty minutes, just adjusting himself around whenever I would move this way or that. (Which, there is a lot of moving in this job, I'm never still for more than a minute or so.) When I'd have to bend or crouch down, he'd walk down to my back. Stand back up, and he'd walk back to my shoulder. Eventually he got a little more comfortable and he started flying around the room. He even landed on Hilda's head once or twice. By the end of the day, I could not get that little botch back into his cage. Usually I get him back in my throwing his sex toy on the floor and then grabbing him when he goes to hump it, but with no sex toy, there was no way for me to distract him. He eluded me for about five minutes. >_>

And I think Tucker fancies me. He bows and coos and talks to me all day. He also makes this little noise that sounds like he's saying, "crow, crow," almost in a human voice. I wish he could come out and fly around, too.

As I was leaving work and heading to Kung Fu, this huge purple cloud came in from the West and everything went blue and yellow. WHen I got to Green Cloud, the sky ripped it up. It went on and off until around 7, and then it was just on. I led blackbelt club warmups (80 situps and lots of leglifts and stuff like that,) and we kept it short because we wanted to go outside and do the staff form again. Sife was like, "Aww, it's raining. Should we ... I mean, do you guys still want to..." and we were all basically, "YES, WE WANT TO GO OUTSIDE, PLEASE LET US GO OUTSIDE, SIFU!" So out we went into the pouring rain. It was very Yimou Zhang, I have to say, with the group of us doing the staff form in lines outside, soaked to the marrow and sliding all over the parking lot. It was almost Matrix-y, actually. I had one of the kids videotape some of it, but it was a little too dark and hazy, and kind of distant, so it didn't come out as well as I wanted it to. Still, what fun.

Tomorrow is the presale for the Projekt Revolution tickets and I've got my pee in a dazzle over what kind of seats I may or may not get. More nervous because I'm buying Jess's ticket, too, and I want everyone to be together and the best bet would be general admission, but I suck at this kind of thing. Why can't bands I like just come and play in my backyard? They could use the pool afterwards if they wanted. I'd even buy them The Big Sandwich. Geez.

Anyway.

Hazy May, and wet Kung Fu

Thanks, everyone, for your input on that manuscript question. The response got the most was to go for Daw, which, yeah. I've waited this long, so why not just go for it and then wait a bit more?

Anyway, so today was another one of these typically fine May days. It started out warm and humid, all hazy when I pulled up to SITF. The hills and the woods beyond them were just vivid with springtime, really bright, but with this mellow softness that I tried to capture with my digital, but didn't manage. Either I need to go back to traditional photography, or I need one hell of an incredible digital camera that I can't afford. I just carry this one around 'cause it's little and easy. Frank said, "Hey, Dove" when I came in, Bruce the rooster followed me pulling on the leg of my jeans. Outside in the aviary, you could smell the water from a few miles away and the lilacs from everywhere.

Oh, I forgot to mention that on Friday, SITF took our pigeon, Fifty Cent, from th hospital. He'd been basically our pet pidge, our house pidge for about two years. You guys all probably have seen pics of him, he's perfectly tame and he had a little yellow sex toy that he'd always hump. She'd said that 50 could have the run of the main room (or the fly of it, I guess,) and I did send his toy along with him. But I was bummed out when I got there today and he was in a little cage and his toy was gone. 50 was freaking out, totally not himself. So once I was done with the pigeon room, I closed the screen door on the bottom floor and took him out into the main room with me. He was so freaked out that he was pretty much stapled to my shoulder for the first twenty minutes, just adjusting himself around whenever I would move this way or that. (Which, there is a lot of moving in this job, I'm never still for more than a minute or so.) When I'd have to bend or crouch down, he'd walk down to my back. Stand back up, and he'd walk back to my shoulder. Eventually he got a little more comfortable and he started flying around the room. He even landed on Hilda's head once or twice. By the end of the day, I could not get that little botch back into his cage. Usually I get him back in my throwing his sex toy on the floor and then grabbing him when he goes to hump it, but with no sex toy, there was no way for me to distract him. He eluded me for about five minutes. >_>

And I think Tucker fancies me. He bows and coos and talks to me all day. He also makes this little noise that sounds like he's saying, "crow, crow," almost in a human voice. I wish he could come out and fly around, too.

As I was leaving work and heading to Kung Fu, this huge purple cloud came in from the West and everything went blue and yellow. WHen I got to Green Cloud, the sky ripped it up. It went on and off until around 7, and then it was just on. I led blackbelt club warmups (80 situps and lots of leglifts and stuff like that,) and we kept it short because we wanted to go outside and do the staff form again. Sife was like, "Aww, it's raining. Should we ... I mean, do you guys still want to..." and we were all basically, "YES, WE WANT TO GO OUTSIDE, PLEASE LET US GO OUTSIDE, SIFU!" So out we went into the pouring rain. It was very Yimou Zhang, I have to say, with the group of us doing the staff form in lines outside, soaked to the marrow and sliding all over the parking lot. It was almost Matrix-y, actually. I had one of the kids videotape some of it, but it was a little too dark and hazy, and kind of distant, so it didn't come out as well as I wanted it to. Still, what fun.

Tomorrow is the presale for the Projekt Revolution tickets and I've got my pee in a dazzle over what kind of seats I may or may not get. More nervous because I'm buying Jess's ticket, too, and I want everyone to be together and the best bet would be general admission, but I suck at this kind of thing. Why can't bands I like just come and play in my backyard? They could use the pool afterwards if they wanted. I'd even buy them The Big Sandwich. Geez.

Anyway.