That's what Leonore calls it when I get like this. She's referring to the Bellow novel, which I've never read and don't intend to, but the title is useful.
As I mentioned here before, an agent requested a partial of Time and the Soldier. I sent it and have been waiting with zero patience for the response. Another agent has the whole book (he wanted it as part of the original query) and recently asked for a full bibliography and sales figures. A third asked for a partial, but on an exclusive basis, so I can't send him anything pending the response from the first agent (which of course I hope will be a request for the full ms.).
So now I'm dangling. And unable to do anything productive at all.
8 comments:
That, in my opinion, was the worst part of the whole agent-search process. On the whole, I'm not wild about sales pitches, but it helped that I believed I had something worth selling. The waiting, though, made me a nervous wreck, and paradoxically did more to convince me what I'd written was utter dreck than did the, ahem, one or two rejections I recieved.
Rejections almost certainly based upon my forgetfulness with regard to the whole "I before E except after C" thing...
The process is a lot like applying for jobs while unemployed.
Even the dangling man part is the same. When I've been unemployed and get a job, I feel angry at myself that I didn't spend the "free" time writing madly, and I know I'll feel the same way about this period.
That deleted post was an unintentional duplicate. I hope I haven't duplicated any queries!
I had the same trouble -- I couldn't focus on writing during the query process. It's a bit like insomnia, that way: you've got all the time in the world, and yet it's somehow fundamentally impossible to get anything productive done.
that is NOT what I thought you meant by "Dangling Man Syndrome."
I need to converse with adults occasionally, and not just immature college kids.
Gasp! I'm shocked, I tell you! These young people today -- ! And their music ...
And you an English majuh! Gasp again!
Oddly enough, immature though I am, that image never occurred to me. Instead, I tend to think of some unlucky bastard dangling on a gallows. Now I'm wondering if something like that was used on some old edition of that novel.
Post a Comment