The Dallas Arboretum
Tip of the Day
Following up in the Current Uncertainty
This advice may change from week to week, but for right now (April 3, 2020) I have the sense agents are working. It's much slower than usual. Many of my agent friends have small children at home. I've suggested hanging them in the closet till you need them, but I'm told that's frowned upon. It sure seemed sensible to me!
So, when to follow up? 30 days after a query is still the norm. A nice note, one that acknowledges that Things Are Not Normal is appropriate.
The NORMANS (no response means no) probably get some extra time before you move on. A good benchmark is 60 days. This is important if you can query another agent at the same agency if the first one passes.
And fulls? Well, 90 days is already the industry standard, so it's ok to ping after that. You might add some extra time, another 30 days.
I am getting my fulls read right now. It's one of the ways I'm coping with the Craziness.
Fending off 3am angst:
Unorthodox on Netflix.
Inspired by Deborah Feldman's memoir this is the story of a young woman who leaves her insular community and moves to Berlin. One of the things I love about movies set in NYC, and specifically Brooklyn, is looking for familiar spots. This movie's full of them. In fact, the community in the movie is about 10 blocks from where I live. It's been hard hit with the Corona virus of course.
Progress on biscuits:
None.
I need to buy more milk.Pet photo
For some bizarre reason I forget to include it on my Fresh Direct order for this week.
Princess Cheerio Muttface McChubbybutt
Also, here's a picture of my family's (mostly) sweet Cheerio (full name: Princess Cheerio Muttface McChubbybutt.) We adopted her from the SPCA when she was two months old and she views herself as a full-time protector against garbage trucks, cats, lizards, and . . . conference critiques.I'd just returned from a Florida SCBWI conference with great feedback from an editor who wanted to see more if I made some revisions. When I got back from work, Cheerio had eaten most of the first three pages of the critique. (Literally. There weren't bits of paper scattered around. She ate every single piece she tore off.)Have a great day on your snot green couch. I'm hosting distance learning from my bedroom with step-kiddos' art all over the walls. It is so getting real right now.--blog reader Sarah M
24 comments:
That is one gorgeous garden!
Awwww sweet Cheerio!
I am grateful for a day off. It's chilly in central Florida today, a pleasant change from the surface of the sun temps we've had lately. Disney has joined SeaWorld in furloughing people for who knows how long. This should be peak season so there goes the economy.
I feel as though I'm living in a parallel universe. We're still working but hospitals these days are bleeding money as the services that once paid the bills are mostly on hold. The parking lot gets emptier every day. For once I'm grateful to have a ton of vacation time. I may need it.
I am grateful for the handsome cardinal who visits my feeder, the squirrels who make me laugh, my white vinca and impatiens who bring me peace and my colorful begonias, bougainvillea, and plumbago in bloom.
I was working on a dystopian trilogy but here lately I'm revisiting my screenplay that placed in a screenwriting contest a while back (from memory as that computer is long since gone - I'm a better writer now anyway) and one that makes me laugh (it's basically Freaky Friday meets 9 to 5 at Christmas).
Peace and health to all.
Here is a wonderful interview with Deborah Feldman, who wrote the book Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.
That is one beautiful garden and one fun pup. I am vacillating wildly between calm and panic still. Fear will kill far more than this virus so trying to get that in check.
Our school district is closed for rest of school year so it is all distance learning. Trying to figure out how to handle grades, graduation, book collection so it keeps busy during day. Next week is Spring break and I think I will just turn the world off entirely. I may spend time on my 4 x 4 outside balcony for fun. I am hoping to write like I never have before.
We are told they may not open the school district offices over the summer (we usually work 4 days a week during summer in my department) which will be great if the rest of the world re-opens by June. I would love to do some work from my favorite bookshop, pub, and library. How my spirit longs to return to its favorite haunts.
I have started planning move to UK in earnest but pushing it out another year so Europe can recover. And so they can get football (soccer) back on track. I know it is only a game but not if you love it like I do. It is the light in the darkness for me - always has been since my player days as a kid and will be until my dying day. If you've ever heard tens of thousands voices of Anfield raised in chorus belting out "You'll Never Walk Alone", you might begin to understand even if you don't follow the game. How I miss that. Even sitting on a couch thousands of miles away, it is something to behold.
I think we're going to need a few more pictures of Cheerio. McChubbybutt seems an unfair nickname given the angle of the current pic.
LOVE HER EARS!!!
EM, you know I know what you mean when you're talking about football love...
May I add a little banter? Maybe not 100% appropriate because of Damn-Pandemic, but we talked about this yesterday and then, since Fiancé seems so independent and goes here on the blog and reads people's comments (I wonder if he'll start commenting soon - he's got nothing to do with writing...). Yeah, so he read yours. And he was cheeky:
"Is EM's panick attack due to Liverpool and their title worry?" You know, season voided or not...
Of course he knew you didn't mean that. But I was like, hm, would she take the banter at this time?
YES, she would, I have decided today. ;)
And you know I am 'panicking' about the same thing!
And here is what "You'll Never Walk Alone" has turned into in the UK. Hospital staff using it to keep fighting:
https://mobile.twitter.com/NHSMillion/status/1244311309195378688
Colin, PLEASE! <3
P.S. I still keep getting goosebumps watching the NHS staff singing together!
Thank you for these daily blogs, Janet.
No 2 am wake-up for me last night but this morning I woke from a dream that stunned me...I was talking to the president in somebody's home. Holycow. Very weird. I never dream of government people.
Love the flowers. Around here crocuses and scillas are starting to bloom. My tulip leaves are up, except the rabbits are eating them. Stupid wabbits! The tulips are new transplants from my neighbor and I forgot to cover them with leaves last fall. Rats.
Katja I adore that you posted the hospital singing together. I did not know where to find it. It made me cry. I love scousers.
I am appropriately upset that Liverpool's miraculous season might come to naught due to this darn virus. It is not quite the cause of my panic. But it is definitely part of it.
You'll Never Walk Alone -NHS Liverpool - I think I got the link thing right. It's quite uplifting.
Didn't know you did SCBWI conferences - I will have to put other state's conferences on my radar! I wonder...do you see distinct personality differences between different genre writers?
Odd, but Cheerio doesn't look like a chubby butt to me! ;)
Thank you for the flowers. It was 30 degrees again this morning when we got up so the few bulbs I have that are trying to thrive are not. At least not yet.
Thing 1 was off yesterday because there is also a GI bug floating through the COVID unit she's working on and it was her turn. Late in the day, she started feeling better so she and her husband went to the grocery and picked up a few things for me along with their own stuff. It was so hard not to hug her when they left.
A short note here. Broadway World is offering a free trial week where you can watch pretty much any Broadway show including past shows. After the week is up, it's $8.99 a month. You cannot see a show for that price and you can stream anywhere so I'm just tossing that out for anyone interested.
BroadwayHD
Sarah M, Cheerio saved you time and work because the first three pages of revisions weren't important!
For people who like tulips, you can see daily Twitter videos and photos of Keukenhof, the gorgeous gardens in Lisse, The Netherlands.
@visitkeukenhof
Spectacular flowers - wow! The azaleas are especially gorgeous.
Awww, Cheerio Muttface, I love your adorable ears. Sometimes I also chew on a critique, but you've given it a new spin, lol. I hope your mom was still able to revise and resubmit :-)
Unorthodox sounds great - I'm adding it to the watch list.
Thanks for the rec, Janet, and for these encouraging posts. The links and tips being shared are wonderful. Hang in there, everyone!
I may or may not have suggested a large plastic dog kennel (crate) as a solution to a friend's wayward toddler on Twitter the other day. I may or may not have used such a (very safe, very clean) thing while babysitting a different friend's two kids many moons ago. I'm not sure my sense of humour is appreciated!
Beautiful flowers and sweet dog! Our irises are blooming right now.
Yesterday at pretty much exactly the same time as Disney's furlough announcement was made, my daughter [who works at Disney] was offered a job with Amazon. She's pretty jazzed about that as it means she doesn't have to move back home. My husband is also jazzed, for the same reason. He took over her former bedroom and wasn't thrilled about having to give it back.
As someone who tries to see the bright side, I have to say - I'm loving the traffic right now. I'm still going to the office, and it takes only 30 minutes to get there instead of 60-75. I keep telling myself that I do NOT want to get used to this.
Happy Friday. We made it through another week of madness.
Beautiful flowers, but oh, Cheerio. I would have cried.
Joseph Snoe sent me pictures of bluebonnets from Fredericksburg. I am so homesick. Fredericksburg has a very old racetrack. They first started racing horses there in the 1800's. It continued racing during WWII, which no other track did due to the blackout rule. I guess they figured the Nazis weren't interested in hill country Texas. It has a rich history of continual racing, which may be stopped this year.
Here's a recipe for turtle cookies you can make in your waffle iron. An elderly lady in North Dakota first introduced me to them and they are awesome and easy.
For those who need a lift, Lori Benton, who is a very sweet person as well as being a great author, posted this video. Someone may need it. I did.
I still have a love hate relationship going on with Leilah. I've repositioned the vibration platform machine so I can do the workout on it while I'm shaking to pieces. I think I much prefer the fetal position workout where you just curl up in a ball on the thing and whimper.
I'm going to cause heart failure everywhere, but I've been using an egg yolk and brandy wash on my hair once a week. I tried it out for research because women used to use it for shampoo. I mix up
2 egg yolks
5 tbls brandy
1 tbl honey
2 tbls oil
Leave it on 30 minutes and rinse out. It leaves the hair pretty soft and shiny.
Who knew?
I've learned how to say go f*** yourself in Gaelic. Purely research and he deserved it. The bounder stole her favorite horse.
The Extante diet order is lost, yet again. It may be on its way back to England because they put the wrong address on it. The post office is trying to find it. This is war now. I will have that darned lemon cheesecake shake if it takes another month and it probably will.
I'm listening to The Corries sing Annie Laurie. Research. My sociopath villain is singing it to my captured MC.
C.C. Humphreys' Fire is on sale for 99 cents on Kindle if y'all haven't read any of his works.
Several of Tawna Fenske's books are on sale.
All right. I hope y'all have a good day. Listen to some good music. Get some writing done.
With your shield or on it.
Central Texas keeps bouncing between the 80s & sunny and 60s & wet (today is the latter). But it's green with lots and lots of flowers!
Sarah, if I were your dog and you gave me that name (Princess Cheerio is fine but it gets dicier as it goes), I'd probably eat your homework, too.
Janet, WRT biscuits ... Never surrender! Never give up!
This adds a whole new dimension to that old favorite of excuses having been used by lackadaisical students for millennia: “The dog ate my homework.”
I'm sorry to have been AWOL. There's been SO much videoconferencing with students this morning!
Cheerio is not at all a chubbybutt. However, her name was a patchwork of suggested names from every member of the family . . . and there might have been a few who simply liked the way "McChubbybutt" rolled off the tongue. (And I love her ears, too!)
Love the photo. A reminder I was there almost exactly two years ago for a nephew's wedding, and the tulips were amazing.
Cherio is lovely, and her title doesn't do her justice. She sounds quite dutiful, as well. I'm sure she only ate the critique because resented the implication that your words weren't already perfect. Dogs are loyal like that.
Cheerio is a discerning reader and so adorable. Julie Weathers, my husband is a research chemist for AVEDA/Estee Lauder and he works on lots of hair potions. He got a kick out of your shampoo recipe, but I imagine it could get even spendier than his products!
The Arboretum picture is the best thing that's ever come out of Dallas. It woke me up and brighten my day all at once.
I really liked Unorthodox. One of my friends also escaped from the Satmar community and knew Deborah Feldman. Deborah made her dash for freedom first, and eventually my friend did as well, though she was lucky enough to have a husband who left with her and they were allowed to keep their two children. Not everyone is that fortunate when it comes to that community.
I've now moved on to Self Made on Netflix, which is just delightful. I love the soundtrack too. Highly recommended.
For those restless moments when I don't know what to do with myself, I started reading Sea of Lost Girls, by Carol Goodman. SO GOOD! Really, just top notch domestic suspense.
New York is about to make it mandatory for people to wear masks when they leave the house, and since we don't really have any, my husband rigged a couple of his motorcycle masks for us. So the next time I brave the supermarket I'll look like a cross between a bank robber and a transformer.
Best wishes to everyone.
That photo at the arboretum is lovely. I love (and miss) our arboretum. I can see it from our house but can't visit at the moment. It's my favourite out-of-home writing location.
One of the reasons that I have a fear of writing conferences is that an agent will say that she wants to see my work in first person. After doing that they will say that liked it better in third person but it doesn't fit their portfolio.
Cheerio did you a favor, maybe, but that is why she is mostly sweet, like all real dogs.
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