Blobs of Moving Colour
As usual, I have reams of notes on fings wot have happened to me in the last week or so, but in a break from tradition I'm not going to promise to write about it all, even though I want to and fully intend to... cos I know from experience that I probably won't find the time.
There have been many emails and phone calls with literary agents. It's all getting a bit hectic, and quite hard to keep tabs on. I have a little text file which I update every time I have contact with an agent, and at the top are five lists of names, which fall into the following categories:
1. Has offered me representation,
2. Has asked to see the full manuscript,
3. Has asked to see a partial manuscript,
4. Has not responded to anything yet,
5. Has rejected me.
The names move up and down the lists. They start at number 4, and then typically move up through 3 and 2, before landing on 5 - but can find their way to 5 at any point during the process. I'd like to turn each name into a coloured blob and animate their movement through the lists; I think it'd look a little like that bouncing balls advert. I currently have a few names sitting at the number 2 spot, and altogether 50% of the agents I've approached have asked to see the whole book. Which is brilliant. And rather daunting. And brilliant.
In other news, the Big Chill got off to a rather weepy start when I did a negative pregnancy test on the first day and was knocked for six by my reaction, which was more upset than I'd expected. And we camped in Family Camping, which was all very well but there were cute toddlers everywhere and I missed Felix (who was on holiday elsewhere with his Aunty Em) and got horribly broody. So I buried my head in Harry Potter Number Seven (sorry, I long ago gave up keeping track of which title is which - I feel safer with numbers) and got frustrated by the Series of Superficial Social Interactions which is the Big Chill.
We've been going there for years, and Ally works there (he comperes / DJs the Sanctuary Stage for 13 hours or so on the Saturday), so we know about a gazillion Big Chillers, and particularly on Saturday when I was being a Sanctuary Stage groupie, there was an awful lot of "Hello, how are you, are you having fun?" to which the only really acceptable answer is "Yeah, great," and then they disappear. It's not anyone's fault - I don't want anyone to give me a deep breakdown of their psyche in circumstances like that any more than they want it from me - and to be fair I did have some proper in-depth conversations with a few people, but I wasn't exactly Mrs Happy and it was a little wearing after a while.
But never mind all that, I heard some great music, I finished HP ('twas great and made me cry, although the hallows themselves seemed a little superfluous) and on the Sunday My Man did an extremely good job of cheering me up, so many hats off to him.
And now I'm alternating between the rather pleasing job of Agent Juggling and the also-pleasant function of Holiday Mum. We're skint, so Felix and I are getting back to the simple enjoyments of packed lunches, climbing trees, fishing in streams, walking up hills and visiting friends. And cuddling. Lots of cuddling.
___
There have been many emails and phone calls with literary agents. It's all getting a bit hectic, and quite hard to keep tabs on. I have a little text file which I update every time I have contact with an agent, and at the top are five lists of names, which fall into the following categories:
1. Has offered me representation,
2. Has asked to see the full manuscript,
3. Has asked to see a partial manuscript,
4. Has not responded to anything yet,
5. Has rejected me.
The names move up and down the lists. They start at number 4, and then typically move up through 3 and 2, before landing on 5 - but can find their way to 5 at any point during the process. I'd like to turn each name into a coloured blob and animate their movement through the lists; I think it'd look a little like that bouncing balls advert. I currently have a few names sitting at the number 2 spot, and altogether 50% of the agents I've approached have asked to see the whole book. Which is brilliant. And rather daunting. And brilliant.
In other news, the Big Chill got off to a rather weepy start when I did a negative pregnancy test on the first day and was knocked for six by my reaction, which was more upset than I'd expected. And we camped in Family Camping, which was all very well but there were cute toddlers everywhere and I missed Felix (who was on holiday elsewhere with his Aunty Em) and got horribly broody. So I buried my head in Harry Potter Number Seven (sorry, I long ago gave up keeping track of which title is which - I feel safer with numbers) and got frustrated by the Series of Superficial Social Interactions which is the Big Chill.
We've been going there for years, and Ally works there (he comperes / DJs the Sanctuary Stage for 13 hours or so on the Saturday), so we know about a gazillion Big Chillers, and particularly on Saturday when I was being a Sanctuary Stage groupie, there was an awful lot of "Hello, how are you, are you having fun?" to which the only really acceptable answer is "Yeah, great," and then they disappear. It's not anyone's fault - I don't want anyone to give me a deep breakdown of their psyche in circumstances like that any more than they want it from me - and to be fair I did have some proper in-depth conversations with a few people, but I wasn't exactly Mrs Happy and it was a little wearing after a while.
But never mind all that, I heard some great music, I finished HP ('twas great and made me cry, although the hallows themselves seemed a little superfluous) and on the Sunday My Man did an extremely good job of cheering me up, so many hats off to him.
And now I'm alternating between the rather pleasing job of Agent Juggling and the also-pleasant function of Holiday Mum. We're skint, so Felix and I are getting back to the simple enjoyments of packed lunches, climbing trees, fishing in streams, walking up hills and visiting friends. And cuddling. Lots of cuddling.
___
Labels: Cheese Sandwich, Writing About Writing
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