Aug 12, 2005 | Uncategorized
Because when one blogs, one inevitably surfs blogs. And blogs lead to more blogs, links to links, in a never-ending universe big bang kind of way. And you realize that there are ten billion writers out there with the same dreams you have–and that's just the ones blogging because there are a whole lot who aren't! And you realize that talent and ideas are rampant, no matter that you read industry blogs that indicate otherwise. Perhaps it isn't that the talent and ideas are lacking so much as people really don't know how to communicate those ideas, etc, which sounds ridiculous because we are talking about writers, people who toil with the written word and who ought to darned well know how to communicate.
But we don't, not always. I, for instance, am a perfectionist Virgo. I'll rewrite that query 500 hundred times and still think it isn't good enough. And, probably, the best version was an earlier version that I've nit-picked myself out of by now. I couldn't say it that way again if I had to, and the trouble might just be that I have to in order to get the project read.
The more I know, the less I know. Years ago, as a newbie writer who was convinced the first book was saleable, I got good responses and even some requests for material. I didn't know enough to know I had to keep trying and keep writing, which is really dumb in hindsight. So, I packed up my writer's kit and went back to school instead. I didn't quit writing, though I wrote less and I figured I wasn't destined to sell anyway (dimwit!). But of course the writing bug bit again, and hard, and I reentered the game with the idea of selling.
And I'm not giving that idea up again, but day-um! Why was I so dumb back then? Why didn't I keep writing and submitting, because when I look at some of those old rejections, it was there. The encouragement, the secret if you will, that if you keep doing this, you'll get there because you've got something. Do I still have that something? Hell if I know. And this is where the blogs come in. They've shown me so many more people with the same dream that I wonder if what I have is any better or any more saleable than the next guy's is. What got me those “good” rejections then? Was it the greenery around my edges that translated into a certain freshness that's lacking in more seasoned word warriors?
Do I know more now or less? I'm a better writer now, I know that for sure, but am I any better at selling myself to those I need to entice into reading me? I'm not sure about that at all, and as I sit here trying to write a two paragraph pitch, I know there are dozens of ways I could say this, dozens of angles I could exploit. Which one is best?
Hell if I know.
Aug 11, 2005 | Uncategorized
Who the hell is William Gerhardi, one might ask? Dig this quote from the dude, mined from the copious notes to Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas:
Never yet have I committed the error of looking on women writers as serious fellow artists. I enjoy them rather as spiritual helpers who, endowed with a sensitive capacity for appreciation, may help the few of us afflicted with genius to bear our cross with good grace. Their true role, therefore, is rather to hold out the sponge to us, cool our brow, while we bleed. If their sympathetic understanding may indeed be put to a more romantic use, how we cherish them for it! — From Memoirs of a Polyglot by William Gerhardi.
Apparently, Mr. Gerhardi (1895-1977) was considered the “English Chekov” of his time. But really, is it wise to publicly call oneself a genius and to leave it for posterity? Because Time, that cosmic equalizer of giant proportions, has decreed that the “polyglot Englishman” is little more than a footnote in a Virginia Woolf rant. Who's rolling in whose grave now, eh? Spiritual helpers indeed.
Aug 10, 2005 | Uncategorized
In case you haven't been reading Miss Snark (which I HIGHLY recommend), here is a tale of woe about a fee-charging self-proclaimed literary agent (someone posted link in the comments section). Miss Snark detests fee-charging literary agents and has embarked upon a one-woman crusade to convince us desperate writers that we do NOT pay agents for representation. They sell our books, we all get paid. Not before. Long live Miss Snark and her gin pail!
Aug 10, 2005 | Uncategorized |
I love the New York Times. I read it every day. I send email links to friends and family all the time. A few months back, however, I noticed a change in how the emails were done. You used to be able to choose whether to send a brief synopsis and link or to send the whole article with a link. I always chose whole article because it was easier for those I was sending to. And for people like my hubby, who is on a firewalled out the ass server at work, it was the only way he could read the article. But then the NYT changed their options. Now there is no option. Synopsis and link is it. Annoying, yes, especially when I have to copy and paste the entire article if I want my hubby to read it. But, on occasion, when I want to have an article for my files, I just send myself the link.
Today, when I tried to access a link that's only 3 weeks old, guess what. The NYT wants $3.95 to let me see an article I already read. Bastards. Maybe I'm viewing this all wrong, considering I get to read the entire NYT online for free every day when there are folks who pay to have the print version delivered, but I'm pretty sure the NYT is flush with moolah and doesn't need nearly four freaking bucks for a two page article. I probably wouldn't pay even if it were only 50 cents, but still. $3.95? Ain't that a bit much? I buy the print version when I'm traveling and don't have Internet, or when I want to sit at a coffee shop and read the paper. I also get inundated by all the advertisers, and I probably buy some of what they are hawking. Yep, the NYT is doing A-okay without my $3.95 per article.
On the other hand, I get the last laugh. All I have to do is log into my university library and head for dear old Lexis Nexis and voila, free article. But you know what, that's a hassle and it isn't that important to me at the moment. Lesson learned though. From now on, I cut and paste if I want the damn article.
Aug 9, 2005 | Uncategorized |
From the divine New York Times today comes a story about alien abduction. Now I've never been abducted by aliens, but I have had that sleep paralysis thing happen three times in my life.
While in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders.
I didn't have any of that stuff, but I did wake up unable to move. Each of the three times, someone was standing there. Scared the hell out of me, and then I woke up fully to an obviously empty room, so I knew it was sort of a state between sleep and complete wakefulness. But imagine that happening to you in the sort of detail the article describes! And then your mind, already at work on War of the Worlds, tosses some aliens into the mix. Yeesh. I'd be a basket case.
Also from the NYT, an article that makes you mad.
More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.
And no one did anything about this why?
