the wrong time for marketing
Overcast, thinking about rain but not actually precipitating. The most sunless June I can remember.
I read research books as usual yesterday afternoon: Rubicon, Origins of Scientific Thought, From Eden to Exile. This morning I keyed from the same books, having arisen with difficulty after lying awake from 3:10 to 5:00 or so. (Kimmie's alarm goes off at 5:30.)
I pushed at writing more of chapter 17, but found myself resisting. I wrote 2 pages--not terrible, but an underperformance considering my state of readiness, notewise. Sometimes it feels like a mechanical chore, and it's hard to believe that anything creatively worthwhile can come of it. I took a break to draft an e-mail to Warren in Chicago.
I think I've been corrupted by reading sites devoted to writing and publishing, with the inevitable splash of cold water about the difficulty of getting a) represented, b) published, c) promoted, d) bought. I've already talked about "odds" in a previous post, but I'm not immune to the negative influence of incessant warnings.
In fact, my own experience with agent-hunting has been relatively good. When I was still in my mid-20s I got several agents interested in looking at an adventure novel I had written (they all passed on it). Of course when I was doing The Odyssey it was easy to get an agent, since the show was already greenlighted for production. In 1994 I succeeded in acquiring a different agent, a partner in a prestigious London agency, for a New Age historical novel I'd written. But after a brief association with me she disappeared from the agency under mysterious circumstances--ones that I never learned the details of. So much for that relationship.
It's been a mixed trick. My overall feeling now is that it's important to find the right fit with an agent. I have no idea how, since it's hard to get any agent's attention. My deep feeling is that when it comes to publication (or anything else), it's not really a long-shot, but rather one of 2 possibilities: inevitable, or impossible. Of course, you never really know which you are, unless you happen to make it. The sprinkling of inevitables in a sea of impossibles gives the appearance of long odds.
I'm not at the right stage of my project to be thinking marketing thoughts. It's easy to kick a project while it's down, that is, while it's incomplete. It's all the easier for the creator to kick it. I hear that Edvard Munch used to spank his paintings. I can well understand it.
I read research books as usual yesterday afternoon: Rubicon, Origins of Scientific Thought, From Eden to Exile. This morning I keyed from the same books, having arisen with difficulty after lying awake from 3:10 to 5:00 or so. (Kimmie's alarm goes off at 5:30.)
I pushed at writing more of chapter 17, but found myself resisting. I wrote 2 pages--not terrible, but an underperformance considering my state of readiness, notewise. Sometimes it feels like a mechanical chore, and it's hard to believe that anything creatively worthwhile can come of it. I took a break to draft an e-mail to Warren in Chicago.
I think I've been corrupted by reading sites devoted to writing and publishing, with the inevitable splash of cold water about the difficulty of getting a) represented, b) published, c) promoted, d) bought. I've already talked about "odds" in a previous post, but I'm not immune to the negative influence of incessant warnings.
In fact, my own experience with agent-hunting has been relatively good. When I was still in my mid-20s I got several agents interested in looking at an adventure novel I had written (they all passed on it). Of course when I was doing The Odyssey it was easy to get an agent, since the show was already greenlighted for production. In 1994 I succeeded in acquiring a different agent, a partner in a prestigious London agency, for a New Age historical novel I'd written. But after a brief association with me she disappeared from the agency under mysterious circumstances--ones that I never learned the details of. So much for that relationship.
It's been a mixed trick. My overall feeling now is that it's important to find the right fit with an agent. I have no idea how, since it's hard to get any agent's attention. My deep feeling is that when it comes to publication (or anything else), it's not really a long-shot, but rather one of 2 possibilities: inevitable, or impossible. Of course, you never really know which you are, unless you happen to make it. The sprinkling of inevitables in a sea of impossibles gives the appearance of long odds.
I'm not at the right stage of my project to be thinking marketing thoughts. It's easy to kick a project while it's down, that is, while it's incomplete. It's all the easier for the creator to kick it. I hear that Edvard Munch used to spank his paintings. I can well understand it.
posted by paulv at
3:16 PM
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