Wednesday, October 17, 2012

In case inquiring minds want to know

and frankly they may not now, but they likely will eventually when I'm too busy to detail this process...

I'm in the querying phase with the book I wrote and heeding the advice of this chiquita/writer:

http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/16373/how-to-stay-sane-while-querying-literary-agents.html

I often have said I know I may have to knock on 400 doors.  And I'm game, I know it's a marathon not a sprint.  It's just a process, because you can't mass email your queries, you have to pick and choose agents who are potentially most partial to a project like yours and base that determination on what other books they've gotten published, authors they've launched, etc...

so

I've been working on "the book" since January of 2007 - had myself a nice little 5 year anniversary party this past Winter, and I completed my first draft in 2010 and the one that got vetoed by the gals in the Fall of 2011.  But prior to last week, even when it was a work of nonfiction and all I had to send around to potential agents was a completed nonfiction book proposal, I had only queried 4 agencies.

Whereas as of today, I've queried ten.

and

For anyone who's not so quick at their times tables,  I'm looking at 78 more weeks of querying 5 a week before I've hit that 400th... vs.  160 years of doing so (which is what I would have been facing based on the average of 2.5 per year that I'd been rocking since that first draft was done).

In it to finish it?  Sure.  Why not?  This won't be my first marathon, and I smiled through my last one.


Monday, October 15, 2012

"Chocolat"

had been sitting in a red netflix envelope in my desk drawer since July. 

6 weddings in 6 months, many of which would be held in Massachusetts, have made for a very merry Nomadic Naugs since my single modmate's and my Summer of Fun's Unofficial Start, and tonight was the first I could spare to watch Juliette Binoche woo Johnny Depp with her cacao powder voodoo.

So good.  So classic that I've been meaning to see this movie for 12 years now.  I love the concept of the queue.... I don't even know what I'll get once I've returned the red envelope but I do know it will be another I've been meaning to see for ages now.

I also love this dialogue and how Johnny Depp's character changes the subject so abruptly after Juliette Binoche's poses the tough questions:

Vianne
Don't you ever think about belonging somewhere? 
 
Roux 
The price is too high.
You end up caring what people expect of you. No.

Vianne
Is that so terrible?
Having people expect something of you?
 

Monday, October 1, 2012

All the single ladies / All the centipedes

I had one of the best weekends of my life on fanciful Shelter Island celebrating my BC roomie's wedding on Saturday to my big cousin, who grew up around the corner from me, and who I idolized because he was too cool for school - not even in a bad way, literally in a good way, he was like (and is still) super cool, but now I'm back in Manhattan, and I have gone from singing all the single ladies on the dance floor with the 4 remaining bachelorettes (out of 12 who I lived with in college) to single handedly killing all the (2) centipedes I have found just waiting to give me nightmares by creeping up on me in first my kitchen and now my bedroom.

HONEST TO GOD - I JUST HAD TO own up to being me, myself and I here against the world (since my roommate is a doll, but he would probably be more scared of these things than I was and less viciously willing to impale them with stiletto heels and or paper towel rolls). 

And the moral is a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.  I am just sitting here in a bit of shock and bewilderment wondering when I'm gonna find that bed, chair and bowl of porridge I know is waiting for me.