Happy New Year 2022—CoronaLife Day 663

January 6, 2022 By Leave a Comment

Happy New Year, everyone! I feel a bit like life is just on repeat: here in NJ we are in the middle of a COVID case spike that dwarfs the original wave in 2020. When the pandemic started, I began the counting of CoronaLife Days. I never thought I would still be counting the days almost two years later.

2021 was in many ways, a year of waiting for me. Waiting for illustrations for my YA book. Waiting for the proofread of my genealogy book. Waiting for this pandemic to end. Lots of waiting.

My hope for 2022 is that it will be a year of action as the waiting ends. I will get my illustrations. I will get my proofread. Both those books will be published. And I hope with all I have that we will also finally see this pandemic burn itself out, and life can return to normal—although with over 826,000 dead and hundreds of thousands more permanently disabled from COVID, life will never again be normal for many of our neighbors.

Living in the uncertain limbo of the last few years has been stressful for me. Many times I have just wanted to scream from sheer frustration. I am hoping this year I will find some relief, and that I will have the mental and emotional space to work creatively again.

I wish you and yours a safe and happy New Year, and hope 2022 will be healthy and productive for you!

The Waiting Game – CoronaLife Day 131

July 23, 2020 By 1 Comment

I don’t know about you, but I have gone through many times in my life where I feel like I am waiting for something—although a lot of times I didn’t know what. Just that feeling that something was going to happen. Like you are marking time.

I’m feeling like that this week, although this time I have a pretty good idea of what I am waiting for. There are long-term things: a coronavirus vaccine, a slam-dunk treatment for COVID, the November elections. But the ones more on my mind are the short-term things. Next week our district decides what to do about school in September. Next week my mom has back surgery. Next week my family gets COVID tested so we can hopefully have a visit with some friends also getting tested.

Lots going on next week. The anticipatory anxiety is killing me this week. It feels like a wire inside me pulled so taut it hums with the stress. I want it to snap, to relax, but at the same time it feels like the only thing keeping me from falling to pieces. Anticipatory anxiety sucks.

We did go out this week—to the dentist. My daughter needed her checkup, and I am glad I decided to brave it and go because she has 4 cavities—2 in baby teeth, 2 in permanent teeth. Time for another lesson in brushing. In an odd juxtaposition, the Tooth Fairy also came this week, just a day or two before the dentist appointment.

So that’s where I am this week—playing the waiting game. Something’s coming. I guess I won’t know what that something is until it gets here. I hope it gets here soon, because the tension is draining me.

How about you? What are you waiting for? Something you’re worried about? Something you are excited for?

No Answer Means No Interest

July 26, 2010 By 3 Comments

The Backspace blog STET! recently ran a series of posts on how to deal with waiting—which there is a lot of in this business! They spoke mostly about waiting once you are agented, and they spoke specifically about if you send in a requested partial or full and then never hear back. They did not address in detail the no-response-means-no-interest from agents phenomenon. Since this practice stirs up a great deal of ire with many writers, I started thinking about why that is.

Certainly, we writers are all aware of the state of the publishing business these days. We know that agencies and publishers are severely understaffed and chronically overworked. We have heard about (and contributed to) the vast mountain of queries that agents get in a day. And we have heard them tell us that if they responded to every query they would have no time for their actual clients. All of this makes sense. So why do writers still get so ticked off when they run across a no-response-equals-no-interest agent?

I think it comes down to respect. Most of us respect the agents enough to research them. We find out if they rep our genre, we find out who they rep, we spell their name properly, we find out precisely what their submission guidelines are and we even check out their blogs. We spend months crafting a query letter, send it off and…nothing.

This silence, even when expected, echoes with disrespect. It says, “My time is more valuable than your time.” Now, I understand that this is not what the agent intends. The agent is trying to get done a boatload of work in the most efficient way possible. But even unintentionally, this is the emotional impact on writers. And that is why so many get so upset.

It would be nice if the no response-no interest agents would specify on their website how long to wait for an answer before assuming no interest (to be fair, some do). I have at times gotten responses to queries 6 months later—long after I had assumed no interest. It would also be great if they could set up an automated confirmation for email queries/online submissions. Otherwise, we writers have no way of knowing if their silence is no interest or computer error.

As for the actual rejections? I don’t have the full answer, because everyone works differently. I know many agents who used to have interns to send out the form rejections no longer do. Perhaps simply cut and paste all the rejection email addresses into a document as they go, then when they’re done with queries for that day BCC the entire batch with a single form rejection?

More and more agencies seem to be switching to the no answer-no interest model, so it is here to stay. Personally, I don’t bother getting wound up about it. I send and forget about it. That way, if I hear from someone, it is a wonderful surprise!

What are your thoughts on the no-response-no-interest model?

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