Believing--for now
Aug. 5th, 2006 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaI want to thank all of you who have replied here and privately by e-mail, and all of those on the ChickLit mailing list who shared their experiences with busy agents. The consensus seems to be that (1) this is real because I got the "out of office" reply and that probably wouldn't happen with a spoof, and (2) even though it seems a bit unusual not to go ahead and talk to me before leaving for the conference, it's not unheard of for agents to go for a week or two without returning calls from active clients *because* they're busy doing deals or traveling. So for now, at least, we'll assume that it's going to be a done deal. This agent is at or near the top of my list, and there's no way I'm not going to accept representation . . . (grin) . . . and she *does* phrase it such that I feel she's really going to offer it. Maybe she even has an editor in mind who'd like the book.
I was just a bit concerned because I'm used to a more loquacious and accommodating way of negotiating business. It comes from my being 999th-generation Southern and a native Texan. To me, a business deal is accomplished with a lot of the friendly back-patting and hand-shaking and barbecue-eating that you see Our Fearless Leader George W. doing around the world; that's just the way people deal with each other here, even if some of it is false-front (but no one lets on that they KNOW it is.)
She was actually being nice to tell me she was interested before she left, in fact. Maybe she just doesn't waste words with people she's doing business with. Here in the South, we can find that brusque and New Yorky and wonder if it's maybe kind of . . . that they don't like us that much. Here, we like to talk an awful lot about personal stuff as we do business ("bidness"), and are kind of like modems searching for the proper carrier tone as we work out deals, circling each other with noses to the ground like puppies playing and scoping things out.
There's an entire dance of "And how are you?" "School starts in a week, dudn't it?" "Hot enough for ya?" "How do you like that truck of his?" "Well, bless your heart," and Sweet Potato Queen-style talk of trivia and current minutiae that pads the business discourse--pads it front and rear and sometimes interstitially. It's kind of a different way of communicating. It's kind of like being Japanese. All that bowing and Honored Sir stuff, but replaced by the Southern version.
The hard part for me, as everyone has observed, is going to be the waiting. I know--I know--it's not THAT long! And after a twenty-year wait, what's two or so more weeks?
I'm going to continue doing the de-junking around here and will be working on the "new" (new-ish) novel in the meantime. I also have a request from another agent for the first five chapters of the mystery that finaled in the St. Martin's contest. Since Agent #1 doesn't even handle genre mystery (or at least it's not listed on her website), I think it would be kosher to go ahead and send the mystery partial to this other agent. I wonder how common it might be to have two agents--one for your fantasy/SF and one for your genre mystery? I don't suppose Carole Nelson Douglas has one speck of trouble getting agent(s) to handle HER stuff, so it's probably done. I guess I'll find out how.
I'm not going to make the usual mistake of getting all excited and "up," though, because I *am* superstitious. Any time I get a lot of confidence that some great thing is happening or get all happy about something, that blows it out of the water. Remember when I did all that positive visualization about the mystery winning the St. Martin's contest? And every other time that I've gotten all excited about a call from an agent or editor? Uh-uh, not again. Just going to Zen it out.
To mass-answer the most common question that people have asked, though, I can't exactly move away from Mama, because she ran out of money (she didn't provide for her retirement at all) and had to come live with hubby and puppy and me several years ago. When I was a child, I *told* her--*begged* my parents--to have other children for me to play with, but they weren't willing to risk it again, so I'm the sole safety net.
She can actually be fun. Her caustic rapier-wit can be funny, even when it's directed at you (you know, when it gets so extreme that it's self-parody and she starts carrying on and laughing at it herself.) It wouldn't be so bad if she could adjust to the idea that she is now the guest, that she can't yell in the grocery store "We're not buying that!" and snatch it out of my hands to throw back on the shelf because I am no longer her 12-year-old daughter spending HER money on crazy shampoo, but instead am now the one with the money who pays for everything. I realize this is a tough adjustment for a lifelong bossy domineering person to make. *grin*
For whatever reason, I never have felt the need to hover over someone else's plate commenting on how there's too much on it, that they shouldn't eat THIS and should eat more of THAT (often actually pouring gravy and other unwanted substances on top of the food because SHE likes it that way!), or to follow people telling them over and over how skirts make them look fat and always have, so PLEASE TAKE THAT HIDEOUS GET-UP BACK TO THE STORE. I think the reason I have a laissez-faire attitude is partly because I never could have any children. I didn't feel responsible for the other people. I've always figured, hey, if eating X makes this person happy, what business is it of mine? If he or she wants to eat less or more of an item that I'm not paying for, what's it to me? If I'm asked for advice, I will usually give it, but I don't like to pop off telling people how bad their butts look in skirts or what-have-you. So their butts look big (or ARE big)! But they're happy and they feel pretty in the skirt! Heck, it's not the end of the world. Nobody's paying any attention anyway, 'cause they're all too occupied worrying about how THEIR butts look. Whatever makes you happy.
I'm sure this is a reaction against the commentary I've always had to listen to. I'm also sure this is the reason my husband doesn't worry enough about his health, his appearance, his neatness, the condition of the house, etc. I really never nag or mention stuff because in the larger scheme of things, most of it really IS the Small Stuff that you're not supposed to sweat. It means that when I *do* bring something up and am firm about it, he realizes it's important (but he still doesn't necessarily do it!)
My grandmother had no tact, but she wasn't like my mother. She would say, diplomatically, "At least that dress isn't that hideous green color that you wore to the dance last week, so you won't turn as orange as a pumpkin like you did then." This was meant as a compliment. *GRIN* But if you wanted to compete in the mud wrestling wet T-shirt ring, although she would consider that a sin, she would sew your costume and then say, "Go out there and be the best mud wrestler that they've ever seen," and would sit in the bleachers telling people, "That's my granddaughter down there with the purple hair wrestling with the tattooed map lady." She wouldn't tell you not to pursue your dream (as long as you kept your room picked up and homework done, as well.) So I don't know where this bossy stuff comes from. When I get rich, I am going to hire a couple of people for Mama to talk to and boss around and comment on their appearance and manners for "improvement." They'll have to be the kind of people who see this as amusing, though, or it'd be one of those Jobs From Hell. (GRIN) And of course we'll have to get a house with a guest house or cabana where she can set up her queendom a few feet from my main door. Best of all worlds! Visit when you please! Leave when you want to watch something else on TV!
Dreaming on. But if you don't dream it, you'll never achieve it. Except maybe by accident.
She's in her lair watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre and quoting the dialogue along with Bogie. "We don't need no stinking badges!" Hubby is in the bedroom watching "Marat/Sade" with Michael Caine. Ol' Mike must have needed to make that yacht payment. That is one weird play that became a bizarro film. I'm familiar with the play (oddly enough) only because when I was in junior high and high school, we used to go to UIL contests in dramatics, and students from more liberal school districts would do edited scenes from that, from Equus (yuck!), and from Harold Pinter plays. And they often won, mostly because they were not the 100th couple doing that same scene from The Odd Couple where Oscar flings the linguini against the wall and says, "Now it's garbage. Take your pots, your pans, your ladle, and your meat thermometer," and throws Felix out. Or that scene from Plaza Suite where the parents try to coax the daughter out of the bathroom. *grin*
At least TV keeps them home and out of the pool halls, right?
I was just a bit concerned because I'm used to a more loquacious and accommodating way of negotiating business. It comes from my being 999th-generation Southern and a native Texan. To me, a business deal is accomplished with a lot of the friendly back-patting and hand-shaking and barbecue-eating that you see Our Fearless Leader George W. doing around the world; that's just the way people deal with each other here, even if some of it is false-front (but no one lets on that they KNOW it is.)
She was actually being nice to tell me she was interested before she left, in fact. Maybe she just doesn't waste words with people she's doing business with. Here in the South, we can find that brusque and New Yorky and wonder if it's maybe kind of . . . that they don't like us that much. Here, we like to talk an awful lot about personal stuff as we do business ("bidness"), and are kind of like modems searching for the proper carrier tone as we work out deals, circling each other with noses to the ground like puppies playing and scoping things out.
There's an entire dance of "And how are you?" "School starts in a week, dudn't it?" "Hot enough for ya?" "How do you like that truck of his?" "Well, bless your heart," and Sweet Potato Queen-style talk of trivia and current minutiae that pads the business discourse--pads it front and rear and sometimes interstitially. It's kind of a different way of communicating. It's kind of like being Japanese. All that bowing and Honored Sir stuff, but replaced by the Southern version.
The hard part for me, as everyone has observed, is going to be the waiting. I know--I know--it's not THAT long! And after a twenty-year wait, what's two or so more weeks?
I'm going to continue doing the de-junking around here and will be working on the "new" (new-ish) novel in the meantime. I also have a request from another agent for the first five chapters of the mystery that finaled in the St. Martin's contest. Since Agent #1 doesn't even handle genre mystery (or at least it's not listed on her website), I think it would be kosher to go ahead and send the mystery partial to this other agent. I wonder how common it might be to have two agents--one for your fantasy/SF and one for your genre mystery? I don't suppose Carole Nelson Douglas has one speck of trouble getting agent(s) to handle HER stuff, so it's probably done. I guess I'll find out how.
I'm not going to make the usual mistake of getting all excited and "up," though, because I *am* superstitious. Any time I get a lot of confidence that some great thing is happening or get all happy about something, that blows it out of the water. Remember when I did all that positive visualization about the mystery winning the St. Martin's contest? And every other time that I've gotten all excited about a call from an agent or editor? Uh-uh, not again. Just going to Zen it out.
To mass-answer the most common question that people have asked, though, I can't exactly move away from Mama, because she ran out of money (she didn't provide for her retirement at all) and had to come live with hubby and puppy and me several years ago. When I was a child, I *told* her--*begged* my parents--to have other children for me to play with, but they weren't willing to risk it again, so I'm the sole safety net.
She can actually be fun. Her caustic rapier-wit can be funny, even when it's directed at you (you know, when it gets so extreme that it's self-parody and she starts carrying on and laughing at it herself.) It wouldn't be so bad if she could adjust to the idea that she is now the guest, that she can't yell in the grocery store "We're not buying that!" and snatch it out of my hands to throw back on the shelf because I am no longer her 12-year-old daughter spending HER money on crazy shampoo, but instead am now the one with the money who pays for everything. I realize this is a tough adjustment for a lifelong bossy domineering person to make. *grin*
For whatever reason, I never have felt the need to hover over someone else's plate commenting on how there's too much on it, that they shouldn't eat THIS and should eat more of THAT (often actually pouring gravy and other unwanted substances on top of the food because SHE likes it that way!), or to follow people telling them over and over how skirts make them look fat and always have, so PLEASE TAKE THAT HIDEOUS GET-UP BACK TO THE STORE. I think the reason I have a laissez-faire attitude is partly because I never could have any children. I didn't feel responsible for the other people. I've always figured, hey, if eating X makes this person happy, what business is it of mine? If he or she wants to eat less or more of an item that I'm not paying for, what's it to me? If I'm asked for advice, I will usually give it, but I don't like to pop off telling people how bad their butts look in skirts or what-have-you. So their butts look big (or ARE big)! But they're happy and they feel pretty in the skirt! Heck, it's not the end of the world. Nobody's paying any attention anyway, 'cause they're all too occupied worrying about how THEIR butts look. Whatever makes you happy.
I'm sure this is a reaction against the commentary I've always had to listen to. I'm also sure this is the reason my husband doesn't worry enough about his health, his appearance, his neatness, the condition of the house, etc. I really never nag or mention stuff because in the larger scheme of things, most of it really IS the Small Stuff that you're not supposed to sweat. It means that when I *do* bring something up and am firm about it, he realizes it's important (but he still doesn't necessarily do it!)
My grandmother had no tact, but she wasn't like my mother. She would say, diplomatically, "At least that dress isn't that hideous green color that you wore to the dance last week, so you won't turn as orange as a pumpkin like you did then." This was meant as a compliment. *GRIN* But if you wanted to compete in the mud wrestling wet T-shirt ring, although she would consider that a sin, she would sew your costume and then say, "Go out there and be the best mud wrestler that they've ever seen," and would sit in the bleachers telling people, "That's my granddaughter down there with the purple hair wrestling with the tattooed map lady." She wouldn't tell you not to pursue your dream (as long as you kept your room picked up and homework done, as well.) So I don't know where this bossy stuff comes from. When I get rich, I am going to hire a couple of people for Mama to talk to and boss around and comment on their appearance and manners for "improvement." They'll have to be the kind of people who see this as amusing, though, or it'd be one of those Jobs From Hell. (GRIN) And of course we'll have to get a house with a guest house or cabana where she can set up her queendom a few feet from my main door. Best of all worlds! Visit when you please! Leave when you want to watch something else on TV!
Dreaming on. But if you don't dream it, you'll never achieve it. Except maybe by accident.
She's in her lair watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre and quoting the dialogue along with Bogie. "We don't need no stinking badges!" Hubby is in the bedroom watching "Marat/Sade" with Michael Caine. Ol' Mike must have needed to make that yacht payment. That is one weird play that became a bizarro film. I'm familiar with the play (oddly enough) only because when I was in junior high and high school, we used to go to UIL contests in dramatics, and students from more liberal school districts would do edited scenes from that, from Equus (yuck!), and from Harold Pinter plays. And they often won, mostly because they were not the 100th couple doing that same scene from The Odd Couple where Oscar flings the linguini against the wall and says, "Now it's garbage. Take your pots, your pans, your ladle, and your meat thermometer," and throws Felix out. Or that scene from Plaza Suite where the parents try to coax the daughter out of the bathroom. *grin*
At least TV keeps them home and out of the pool halls, right?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 05:57 am (UTC)I've dealt with transplanted Southerners, and I've been on the other end of that cultural difference.
"Hello, Dan. How's your mother doing? Your....[thirteenth cousins]. How are you feeling?" Eventually "I thought you should know that the building's on fire."
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 12:03 pm (UTC)It's a cultural gulf. It's just a wonder that we can even TALK to New Englanders. *GRIN* Well, I swan.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 01:45 pm (UTC)Love how you bring it all to life for me. A great Sunday morning laugh!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 02:48 pm (UTC)ANYway, I hope I have not been too fretful or loquacious regarding the agent. It seems that a number of people in Australia have guessed who I was talking about, and so if they tell her that I had an angst attack over here, I'll have to send Guido out to break their kneecaps. *wink* I wasn't trying to impugn her way of doing business, but merely to say that it kind of mixed me up. I'm hoping we'll come to a firm commitment of some kind, of course.
That still doesn't mean she can sell the book, but I have a hunch that someone as savvy as she seems to be wouldn't take on anything just 'cause it seemed to have artistic merit. She wouldn't want to mess with something that wouldn't be really likely to sell. Makes me feel much more optimistic!
SO . . . how IS your mama and all them back home? Hope they're in high cotton. It's warmin' up to be another scorcher around here. I got up at 6:30 and went for a walk, did the dishes, puttered a bit, took the puppy out, and now that it's nearly ten AM, I'm going to have to take a nap during the heat of the day. **GRIN** AFter all, it's the day of rest.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 03:26 pm (UTC)