I love to write. I don’t love wasting time. I pack a lot into a day, starting my morning very early, at around 3:30AM and ending it around 8PM…after dinner and, sometimes, a good movie. Lately, instead of writing, though, I’ve been researching literary agents, and, let me tell you, it’s frustrating as all hell.
Used to critiquing at least one manuscript partial per day, then going on to produce anywhere from 4000 to 8000 words that same day, sometimes up to 10,000, to have to spend my hours and days cracking reference sources, then surfing the Net to decipher cryptic, even obscure, references feels like I’m idling. And the clock ticks another minute by…and another. All this effort just to try to make heads verses tails on, first, which one (the “who” part), then on what, when, where, why, and how to contact is beginning to feel like torture. I can compose a letter to my lawyer…and get it shipped out in the mail, even walking it down to the local post office faster than I can just find a candidate. Hence, I suppose, why not many queries have left my inbox.
Like I told a group of writers, I’m about ready to revert to my old standby of: “Here it is. If you want it, great. If not, no problem.” “Irreverent,” they all said. Too true. One must, after all, play the game by the rules, now, mustn’t one! But, you know, I’d really rather be writing, and I don’t mean query letters.
I don’t know why I bother anyway. The majority of my e-mail queries will just wind up razor-ed off the servers before they even reach their intended destinations. The few that do get through will wind up inside Junkmail boxes to be flushed with the spam. The meager one or two that make it, then get opened, will most likely find bored eyes who are just so tired of “yet another pitch.”
At that point, I just throw up my hands, realizing I’ve just flushed down life’s toilet hours upon hours of fruitless, pointless, frustrating labor for “nothing.” What I’ve done is waste my life. And that’s when I just don’t see the point to even trying.
Now, I can’t fault the agents. I mean, I know what I do with my e-mail and the multitude of help requests that come in. It’s got to be at least that bad for literary agents. Or worse. After all, there are only about a thousand of them out there, verses a million-million wanna-be writers. Their inboxes have got to be overwhelming.
That said, though, on the other hand, it would be pretty bad if, as someone suggested over on AgentQuery, literary agents decided that, henceforth, they will only take referrals. Uh…I don’t know anyone who knows you? So, then, how does that work? Ah…I see. It doesn’t, and that’s the point. Right. Gotcha.
Recently:
- Moving is Tough on Writing Novels
- Move complete & back online…when the DSL doesn’t falter
- Offline for a week.
- The ‘I’ Proposition
- No, I didn’t get eaten by my novel.
- Scott Heim reads We Disappear at last reading at Chelsea
- Hunger in the World
- What a Beta Reader Can & Cannot Do
- A Gift for Eternity Finds a Home
- Today’s Giggle: SE vs Employee, the Benefits — Not.
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