Patience, fortitude, and the Ferris wheel

[shalanna]

I sent requested partials to that agent from the RWA convention (by e-mail) back on April 7th. Only a little over a month. Has it been enough time that I should e-mail to ask whether she received them? Might they just be sitting in some forgotten corner of the in-box or the "read sometime" box? Or maybe she was just being nice at the convention and really never had any intention of reading them in the first place. Either way, I don't want to make contact if the result is likely to be bad. (If she feels pushed, or if it irritates her, or if she just rejects to get it off her desk because I made waves.)
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Victoria Roberts, _New Yorker_ cartoonist: "When folks ask me where I get my ideas, I say they’re a big gift that I am busy unwrapping. And whenever I find something new, it invariably contains something of the past."

Comments

[dennismhavens.livejournal.com]

If this were 1968, or even 1978, I'd buy the argument that "only a little over a month" perhaps was a little premature to ask whether one's work had been looked at or not. But we live in, and have come to expect, a world of near-instant communication. Think about our personal e-mail: If I haven't heard from you in three or four days, knowing how many health issues all the members of your family are dealing with, I send a brief (well, sorta brief) message asking if y'all are all right. Yes, friendship of long standing has something to do with that, but in the business world -- which presumably includes writers and even _musicians_ -- one is expected to move with something approaching the speed of light. Why would this agent, even given her youth and relative inexperience, not maintain contact with someone who potentially could be a source of income? Why would she "feel pushed" or be irritated by a legitimate, polite inquiry, especially if you tossed in an "if there's anything I can do to be of assistance, please don't hesitate to contact me at www.flopsweat.org/starvingwriter." As for rejecting to get it off her desk because you made waves, well, if you did it on 21 consecutive days, she might have cause to feel that way; one concise, polite inquiry, on the other hand, over a month after she high-tailed it back to New York with your manuscript should be no problem at all. It may even give her memory a gentle jog.
A little persistence -- kept under control, of course -- is a good thing.