Trolling for an agent
Aug 21, 2003 Writing
I had an agent once. Or at least I thought I did. Katie referred me to her agent and so I submitted my unwieldy proposal there and it was accepted. Kind of. At least the agent said she was going to trot it around town after I emailed her asking for a response. I didn’t hear from her after that until I wrote her (again) for another update and she said that she had one interested publisher but wasn’t sure ‘cuz the market had tanked (this was right after 9/11). Then I got a form email saying she was leaving her job to start her own agency but that she would be taking her projects with her and that’s the last I’ve heard.
Obviously I’m not using her again. This is a totally different proposal. The last one was supposed to get me work but this one is one that I actually want to write. If it gets me work, I will be one happy camper but mostly I wanted something on my resume of which I could be proud.
I had a couple of other referrals from author-friends. The first is the one who rejected me already and the other is one I’ll hit up if the one I wrote to today doesn’t bite. The one for today is a cold-query; I have no in there but I like what I’ve read about her and her stable is impressive.
I think I know why that first agent rejected me: My query absolutely sucked. It was so boring. It sounded like this:
Approximately 4.6 billion people enjoy corn. I enjoy corn. I have written about the enjoyment of corn. This will interest people who enjoy corn as well as people who don’t enjoy corn but wonder about the people who do.
Only it wasn’t about corn.
My new query is much punchier. I even use the term “third-wave feminist.” I wasn’t sure if I was, in fact, a third-wave feminist or if I was simply the daughter of a second-wave feminist who was smart enough to take up the cause. I missed the grrl power movement by a couple of years: I don’t have tattoos or piercings and no longer listen to anything that sounds remotely like cool punk rock. But at 33, I suppose I am a third-wave feminist and I certainly identify more with their mothering creedo than the one (not) supported by my 70s era sisters. In any case, I thought it was a nice short-cut to explaining my viewpoint in the query so I ran with it. Labels can be useful when you’re trying to keep your query to a page.
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Tags: feminist
Email overload?
Aug 20, 2003 Uncategorized
Is the W32/Sobig.F-mm virus taking over your inbox? It is mine and it is Drublood’s, too.
Read more about it here.
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Random stuff
Aug 20, 2003 Writing
1. I’m so so so so so so so so so so tired.
2. I got a rejection from an agent I queried about my book proposal. Bummer ‘cuz it was an agent an editor of mine recommended after reading my sample chapter. On to the next one.
3. Noah finally decided that all of the various junk I’ve been saving for more than two years looked like fun. You know, the egg cartons, weirdly shaped boxes and berry crates that I’ve been putting in the big box in the basement. He built a zoo on his train table and then we put on the soundtrack to Oklahoma and danced around to celebrate.
4. My evil google plan worked, the one where I put some folks’ names into an entry to see if they would google themselves and find me. One of them contacted me last week after her friend found the entry. Very nice.
5. There seems to be a tinny little digital alarm going off somewhere in this room but I know not where. How odd.
6. I’m getting back into the work-out groove. When you scan in at Curves it tells you how many work-outs you’ve done so far and this morning was 14. I’m actually now looking forward to getting up early in order to work up a sweat accompanied by soulless covers of bad pop music. Despite appearance to the contrary, I actually love exercise.
7. It’s only been six weeks since our homestudy was approved but I am already tapping my foot impatiently waiting for a nice little baby to find his/her way to us.
8. I should be writing but did I mention that I’m so so so so so so so so tired? Because I am. Tired, I mean.
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What Bigwig found
Aug 18, 2003 Judaism
In a post titled Unseen History, poster Bigwig shares several disturbing pictures of a concentration camp taken by American infantry.
On April 12, 1945, Ohrdruf was visited by Generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton. The Generals viewed piles of bodies, implements of torture, and a butcher’s block used to smash gold fillings from teeth, among other sights. Patton became ill and reportedly refused to visit the punishment shed. As the tour progressed, Eisenhower’s mood turned increasingly grim. As recounted by Abzug, Patton’s aide Charles Codman described an encounter between Eisenhower and a G.I., when the soldier accidentally bumped into a Nazi ex-guard and giggled nervously: “General Eisenhower fixed him with a cold eye, and when he spoke, each word was like the drop off an icicle. ‘Still having trouble hating them,’ he said.”
These photos are difficult to see, difficult to comprehend. I grew up paging through my father’s military books and looking at pictures like these and trying to understand the truth of them. The bodies looked unreal — like hideous rag dolls that were tossed aside — and the horror that they conveyed was impossible for me to fully grasp. It hasn’t gotten any easier as I’ve gotten older.
The comments left for Bigwig’s entry illustrate my dilemma about Israel, which I shared in the post below.
UziDoesIt: “If ever there was a reason for Israel to have just a tiny sliver of the middle east for Jews to be secure in, these photos demonstrate so without the need for words.”
Colt: “And they wonder why the Jews need a state, a modern army and nuclear weapons…NEVER again.
Larry Lurex: “[W]hile I am for a Jewish state on balance, I have a lot of problems with modern Israel. She does not need nuclear weapons, and many countries do well without them. Her belligerent attitude towards her neighbours does her no favours either. To have learnt from the Holocaust, Israel must remember that using military force to solve political problems only leads to hatred.”
Greg: “If your political problem is that you’re surrounded by countries that all wish to see you exterminated, and that those countries are willing to viciously mistreat their own people in order to set those people up to be a weapon against you (look very carefully at what Jordan did with the West Bank)… then reasonable self-defense suggests certain military measures.”
It goes on and it’s worth reading.
I absolutely believe in the necessity for a Jewish state; I’m just not sure how to balance this with the reality of what’s happening in Israel.
One commentator on my post reminds me that, “To be pro-Israel doesn’t mean you have to be anti-Arab or Palestinian.” Yes, but how? In practical — not philosophical terms — how?
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Tags: Erica
Finding a moral place to stand
Aug 17, 2003 Judaism
A reader of this blog goes to my temple and warned me that the first grade curriculum was very focused on Zionism. I have been struggling for some time to understand the Isreali-Palestinian conflict and I haven’t gotten as far as I would like.
My family was pro-Isreal not just because my father is Jewish but because I think that most liberals of their generation are or at least were. It wasn’t something we discussed but when the subject happened to come up, whatever criticism my mom or dad might have about the way things were being handled, they were definitely pro-Isreal. So I came to the issue with that bias.
I have been reading some history and reading the various propaganda (both sides) and asking more knowledgeable people a lot of questions but am no closer to understanding it; I don’t think I ever really will. Read the rest of this entry »