Internet Up In Here!

Let's get right into it, shall we? I've been gone for a while, for a really long while. For a year while. Well, I'm back. Sorry for the delay, but moving on to bigger news: I've got internet up in my house! Most of you may miss the incredible feat this really represents, but this is the very first time I've ever in my whole adult life had internet in my very home. Can I tell you how weird it is to be posting this sitting on my couch and not drinking a $4 coffee drink? It's fantastic. I can't imagine letting my blog go for as long as I did this time around, what with the internet at my fingertips above and beyond regular midwest business hours. Crazy. All you who have had this luxury for so long, revisit the magic, the wonder of the world wide web, if only to remind yourselves of how excellent it is, because excellent it truly is. I try not to ascribe the word "love" to inanimate objects, but I love this internet!

Interest!

Yes, that's correct - an agent (or rather, a reader for, and representing an agent) is interested in viewing the first 50 pages of my manuscript. As Mrs. Bennett would say, I am extremely diverted! Actually, I am very excited, hopeful, leery, optimistic, doubtful, and hungry at the same time. Still, the fact that the very idea of my manuscript has generated even the slightest of interest (and an email form letter could very well be described as the slightest of interest) is exactly what I would have wished (again, a Jane Austen-ism). So off it goes, my manila envelope containing pages and pages of hard work and lofty dreams (okay, without Lady Jane, I might as well stop).

I'm excited!

3 Things That Really Chap My Hide

1. Salesmen who inform you of hidden costs only after you have picked out a cool new cell phone to replace your old ugly one. Last weekend at the Legends, I was informed by a slightly too-elderly-to-be-selling-cell-phones gentleman that in addition to paying for the phone I had just picked out, I would also need to pay an $18 processing fee to update my account. $18 dollars to spend $124 dollars on a phone that was advertised as $49.99. So, in essence, I am expected to pay $18 so that I can then spend $124 dollars on a phone that is apparently only worth about $50. Is that so?

2. It doesn't matter what #2 is, I'm talking about an establishment that expects customers to pay in order to pay, to spend money in order to spend money. What business can possibly stay afloat with tactics like these? I mean, what is a processing fee supposed to cover? The old man behind the counter punches a few keys and for that I'm supposed to pay $18? Or is there some kind of Cingular/AT&T monkey that must be fed a constant stream of organic bananas to keep him pushing the "processing button?" Is there a trainer involved? Am I buying his lunch too? Androids? Small children? Who is doing this "processing," if not the computer itself which, I'm sorry, but does not deserve a tip for doing its job. It's a computer! There is no such thing as "processing expenses," therefore there is no such thing as a processing fee, and therefore I refuse to pay it.

3. Did this guy really expect me to spend $124 on a $50 phone, after paying him an $18 processing fee for an account that costs me nearly $100 dollars a month to maintain? The sense of self-importance that I was counting on with the purchase of a brand new sleek and silver LG Shine can wait! I will not be taken advantage of by these thieving wireless companies with their Kung Fu grip on the ego of society. I don't care. Though I must use it in secret, or hide it behind a cardboard cut-out of a Blackberry, I will continue to use my old, ugly, hideously uncool black flip phone until the insanity has ceased. I will not monetarily contribute to the idea that this is okay. I am not spending more than a phone is worth, I am not mailing in a rebate, and I am not - I repeat, am not paying a processing fee! Until we all say it, I won't get a cool new phone. Back me up America! I need an LG Shine! Make it happen.

A Word About Agent Queries

In a word, they're frustrating. Be original without being cute, be confident without being cocky, condense the last two years of toiling over a hot laptop into a single paragraph and yet still convey just how brilliant and original your work really is. Impossible. Even with only 31 queries under my belt, I have come to the realization that the little extras you put in there, the catchy first sentence, the references to stuff you found on their website to prove that you've actually been to their website, it all does very little, if anything to increase your chances of capturing their attention. Your work alone must do it, and do it in 4-5 sentences. 46,600 words in 60. Impossible. Well, I'm sick of it. I've decided to cut right to the point. No cheeky little openings, no material-related statistics, just the facts. Here's what I got, here's what it's about, here's who I am, how to contact me, thank you good night. If they like it, they like it, and if they don't (a much more plausible scenario), then hang it all I tried. I put myself out there, even though I am continuous and relentlessly, and sometimes even rudely, rejected. I'll not belabor my plea, which in essence is what a query truly is: a very serious, properly formatted, well-constructed beggar's beg to be singled out among the rest of the masses. Desire without desperation, a plea without pleading. A question without any hope of a favorable answer. Like asking your dad for a new bike when you know, oh you just know good and well, that you're getting your brother's old used up one. You just know it.

I Am Sooooo Green

I realize this is a marked deviation from my usual, and very strict policy of sticking to the theme of the blog, that is my quest to become a published author. But some things are just too important to be ignored, like our environment. HAHAHAHAHA! Oh man, I'm just kidding. No, seriously though, I did get these bags at Hyvee for $0.99 a piece. They are bright, quite sturdy, and cut down on the use of plastic bags. My groceries actually look better in these things. And, you can fit like twice as much stuff in one of these than a regular plastic bag, and these handles will never break, dropping your glass bottles of spaghetti sauce to burst open on the kitchen floor. The handles are also very thick and wide, unlike the plastic bags, the handles of which stretch under the weight of your cartons of ice cream, creating a thin string of plastic which acts like a tournaquet against your aching fingers. They feel good, they look good, they're good for the environment. You also get $0.04 per bag off your purchase every time you use them. $0.04! Hey, it adds up, okay!

School Shmool

Hang it all, why should I go to school? To better myself? To raise my standard of living? I think I'm good enough already, you're welcome, and my standard of living is high enough. No, today I say nay to it. Nay to school, nay to homework, nay to stuffy classrooms and stuffy professors and stuffy students with over-inflated senses of self-esteem, and nay to the naysayers who would say that I should do otherwise. Today I won't do it. Today I refuse, outright, regardless of what educational convention dictates. Today I stand here and say to you that I am an immovable force against the corruption and money grubbing facilitated by our government through the higher education system. Today I do not yield.

Tomorrow, inevitably, is another story.

Internet Rejection

I imagine literary agent offices to be a busy place, a flurry of papers and fax machines and computers all being overloaded with query letters, like mine, being hastily rejected, like mine. I know agents are busy, and the lackeys that read our lowly query letters even more so, but is it really too much to ask that they actually read the query? Really? Take my most recent rejection as an example:

Dear Joselyn Martin:
Thank you for your query letter. I’m sorry but I’m overwhelmed with fiction submissions and the novel you outline didn’t pique my interest enough to add to my pile of manuscripts. Good luck to you.
Yours,
Mickey Choate

Wait, wait, wait. Fiction? Novel? My manuscript? The word "true" appears right in the title! The query begins "My non-fiction work." Are you telling me that after going to the library to look you up in the Writer's Market, going to your website, doing my homework, crafting a personal query letter, affixing two stamps, one for the return envelope which you didn't even use, you can't even click on the correct rejection template? Really? My reply:

Dear Mr. Choate:
Sorry it has taken me so long to get back with you, but I have spent the time pouring over my manuscript and I cannot agree with your assessment. Try as I may to see this as a fiction manuscript, I can quite clearly recall each detail as it happened to me, and so I am afraid I am forced to differ with you. It is indeed non-fiction. I hope you will understand. The word "novel" also is ill suited for my work, as it is not an actual novel, but again non-fiction. Perhaps this rejection has reached me in error. If so, a reply is not necessary as I am much overwhelmed with my pile of rejections at the moment.
Yours,
Joselyn Martin

I await a reply.