Sometimes a girl’s gotta vent

I’ll try not to let this be too much of a rant, but darn it all I think I’m justified. (Give me a minute or two, that feeling might pass.)

Anyhow, I’m already published as part of a team, but I also want to write some novels on my own. Okay, no biggie, right? Well, the oddities and antics have seriously begun now that I’m receiving lots of rejection letters.

Not that I’m bent over all the rejections. They don’t surprise me at all. I’ve been exposed to the actor’s life where the rejections are even higher and more scathing. I’ve also been privy to some of Jason’s letters and his trials and tribulations, too. So, getting rejection letters is not a big deal to me.

It’s their content or lack thereof, their politeness or lack thereof, etc. that’s causing this little rant.

I’ve gotten quite a range in different styles from different agents–some of which I won’t submit anything else to because I really did screw up in thinking my work might fit what they represent, others were just plain rude and even if I wrote what they represent, I wouldn’t want someone so rude representing my work.

But without naming names, etc. I need to get one particular irritation out in the open…

It’s mainly about the form letter, but a special breed of form letter–the partial page.

Okay, I send in a full page query and get back a half page form. That’s fine.

I send a full page and get back a third page form. That’s fine.

I send a full page and get back a quarter page form. Even that’s fine, too.

But when the agent’s listing requires the query to include a synopsis and first three chapters, how the hell is it okay to reply with a form rejection that is only about a twelfth of a page. Yes, a twelfth. It’s only slightly larger than my business card!

What’s worse is that I’ve received full page rejections with less written on them, but for some reason that was okay. The fact that I got the full page–without more than a “no, thanks”–honestly didn’t bother me. But if I send out about 40 pages and get a twelfth of a page back, why on earth would I want that person representing me?

I do find it bizarre that in a few instances all I sent was a query and I’ve received rejections with more than one paragraph on them–more than simply, “We’re not interested.”–and those made my day. Those are people whom I’d want representing me whether they’d sent a form letter or a personal response.

Even a form letter says a lot about an agent just by the way it was written. I don’t care that I was sent a form letter–if I didn’t write a unique piece of work in their eyes, why should they send me a unique reply–I care what the content is. I’ve always thought that being nice is good business practice. Being polite is even better.

Really, I’m the one who bled on the pages and dangled them out there like naughty laundry on a front yard clothes line. I should be prepared to suffer the consequences. But if a neighbor had come by, pulled down all the clothes, tossed them in the trash and left a note that simply read, “What were you thinking? Are you really that stupid?” isn’t that a bit harsh? Personally, if my neighbor were to be displaying the naughty wares, I’d knock up and say, “You might wanna put those in the backyard where you and your husband can enjoy them more.”

But hey, that’s me.

And I feel much better now!

I wish I knew when the mailman actually arrives because I can’t wait to see what rejections (or hopefully requests for partials) I’ve gotten today!

Good golly I’m back

I had a fantastic vacation. Came home sick with a cold, but happy as a clam.

I’ve been back a day and I’ve already managed to ruin a new skirt… This was a replacement for the one I ruined last month after RWA National. Perhaps this is the real reason I shop at thrift stores…every time ‘spend the money’ for something new, it’s never as good as it should be. And what’s the fun of shopping if the funky, unique blue shirt you like is available in fifteen sizes. Doesn’t that mean it’s not really unique and one-of-a-kind? There’s fifteen in the store–add up how many stores–that’s a lot of people wearing your unique shirt, huh?

Whoa, I digressed there, didn’t I? Let’s just attribute it to my head cold. I feel like my head is normal size, but somehow someone shoved a bowling ball into it. Good golly, I just want this cold to drain away!

So, I made a surprising discovery today. It should seem like a ‘well duh’ kind of thing for part of it, but I did find the rest of it fascinating to say the least.

My local and favorite coffee shop [where I drink snooty tea while writing my novels] is having a month-long promotion where they’re giving away free tea between the hours of 1 and 3.

I’m sick. I’m grumpy. I’m looney.

…But I’m not gonna pass up free tea and an environment that might help me clear the headgoo away and get a scene written so I figure all’s gonna be great.

I get there and I’m still miserable! I grimace at my laptop. I sip my snooty tea. Grimace again.

Maybe the novel wasn’t gonna get attention, but my journal…oh my journal needed to hear exactly how fed up I was with being sick. Oh yes.

My journal got an earful…er…screenful.

But that’s not the fascinating thing about all this. See, I’d happened to look at the clock when I started writing. (I rarely ever do.) It was 2:19. By the time I’d looked again, it was 3:11, just after I’d received a short phone call.

Yawn…get to the good stuff, right?

Well, I kept writing until 3:19 rolled around and I discovered that in an hour, I was capable of writing at least 2300 words.

2300 words.

All it required was passion.

2300 words. That’s a book in roughly 2 days if I didn’t stop to eat, sleep or take a wiz.

And all that was required was passion and my laptop? Wow! It was like I saw my life with a new set of eyes. I’d previously thought I wrote about a thousand words an hour, so sometimes, if I didn’t quite have an hour, I wasn’t quite motivated to write because when I write, I like to WRITE.

But now that I know what I can get done in an hour, I’m wondering why the hell I’d made any excuse ever. Sure, if the passion isn’t quite as high, my productivity will go down, but coming down from 2300 words in an hour, I’m sorry, that’s not enough to care about.

I’ve got another hour before Jason gets home…guess I should go write something, huh?