Well, the end of the querying process is getting closer—and, with that knowledge, my shoulders feel a slight lightening of the usual, invisible weight. I sent the final set of email queries last weekend. And, with my web post on the Publisher’s Marketplace, the last thing on my to do list is to send out query letters by post with Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes dutifully enclosed. Once those are sent out, the Graces go to bed to sleep a fairy tale sleep of, quite possibly, years. Which is OK. I have faith that a prince—or princess, for that matter—will eventually trot along on a white steed and waken them from their slumber.
And once those letters are out, I can solely concentrate on the new manuscript. Turn a page, so to speak.
With the prospect of mailing out a dozen or so letters, however, I can’t help but ponder the strange relationship I have with paper. In my former career, it wasn’t unusual to have 30 banker boxes full of documents and be tasked with the job of summarizing their contents. The hours of my daily life were spent delving into an evidentiary morass, detailing the mundane and describing the meat of the matter. Mine was a life of fraud; thankfully, the fraud perpetrated by others but a fraud at my fingertips, nonetheless. The victims and their financial sufferings were familiar to me on paper alone. All in all, it wasn’t an occupation to restore your faith in mankind, not one that left you with positive thoughts on the long commute home every night—knowing that all of it, the awful ways people take advantage of and steal from others, break fiduciary trusts, and are motivated by sheer greed was, nonetheless, all reducible to clinically white paper, without a trace of sympathetic or philosophical language.
The truth is, I’m not a big fan of paper. Not the usual sort of white, bonded paper, that is. I’m big on recycling, absolutely high about hemp, and get misty over hand-made tactile treasures. But office paper? The kind that’s bleached to unnatural whiteness? Yeah, not too fond of the stuff. Without a doubt, my childhood years living in a pulp and paper town, spending my university summers working at one of those pulp and paper mills, really turned me off paper for good. There, I saw beautiful trees turned into pulverized mounds of wood chips, those wood chips then turned into a frothy mix of bleached goo, effluent ponds churning chemical-ridden sludge that would eventually get pumped into the mighty Fraser and Nechako Rivers and, finally, see massive rolls of what looked like toilet paper for Titans. Visually, it wasn’t easy on heart. The regular waft of sulphur and chlorine from the bleaching process wasn’t easy on the sinuses, either.
Years ago, I had written a short story for an anthology on labour—not the birthing kind of labour, but the labour experience of the key industries of the province. The labour behind paper was my theme…and now it seems that’s the theme of this blog entry, as well.
I guess there’s a dread. A dread of the waste of paper. As it is, with my email queries, of the 17 who responded back (either with form or thoughtful “no, but thanks” responses, or with requests to see sample chapters or the whole manuscript), 3/4ths of them responded within three days. Either I heard right away, or I have heard nothing. But it’s the wait that’s the worst part—and sending out letters only means longer waits (sigh).
Then again, it’ll be interesting to see if posted queries get more responses (any sort of response). I wonder if agents feel more obligated to send a response to someone who’s gone to the trouble of sending out query letters by post with Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes dutifully enclosed…
I guess we’ll see. I guess we’ll also see if the bubble gum chewing teenager at the nearest postal outlet understands what an International Reply Coupon is...
And once those letters are out, I can solely concentrate on the new manuscript. Turn a page, so to speak.
With the prospect of mailing out a dozen or so letters, however, I can’t help but ponder the strange relationship I have with paper. In my former career, it wasn’t unusual to have 30 banker boxes full of documents and be tasked with the job of summarizing their contents. The hours of my daily life were spent delving into an evidentiary morass, detailing the mundane and describing the meat of the matter. Mine was a life of fraud; thankfully, the fraud perpetrated by others but a fraud at my fingertips, nonetheless. The victims and their financial sufferings were familiar to me on paper alone. All in all, it wasn’t an occupation to restore your faith in mankind, not one that left you with positive thoughts on the long commute home every night—knowing that all of it, the awful ways people take advantage of and steal from others, break fiduciary trusts, and are motivated by sheer greed was, nonetheless, all reducible to clinically white paper, without a trace of sympathetic or philosophical language.
The truth is, I’m not a big fan of paper. Not the usual sort of white, bonded paper, that is. I’m big on recycling, absolutely high about hemp, and get misty over hand-made tactile treasures. But office paper? The kind that’s bleached to unnatural whiteness? Yeah, not too fond of the stuff. Without a doubt, my childhood years living in a pulp and paper town, spending my university summers working at one of those pulp and paper mills, really turned me off paper for good. There, I saw beautiful trees turned into pulverized mounds of wood chips, those wood chips then turned into a frothy mix of bleached goo, effluent ponds churning chemical-ridden sludge that would eventually get pumped into the mighty Fraser and Nechako Rivers and, finally, see massive rolls of what looked like toilet paper for Titans. Visually, it wasn’t easy on heart. The regular waft of sulphur and chlorine from the bleaching process wasn’t easy on the sinuses, either.
Years ago, I had written a short story for an anthology on labour—not the birthing kind of labour, but the labour experience of the key industries of the province. The labour behind paper was my theme…and now it seems that’s the theme of this blog entry, as well.
I guess there’s a dread. A dread of the waste of paper. As it is, with my email queries, of the 17 who responded back (either with form or thoughtful “no, but thanks” responses, or with requests to see sample chapters or the whole manuscript), 3/4ths of them responded within three days. Either I heard right away, or I have heard nothing. But it’s the wait that’s the worst part—and sending out letters only means longer waits (sigh).
Then again, it’ll be interesting to see if posted queries get more responses (any sort of response). I wonder if agents feel more obligated to send a response to someone who’s gone to the trouble of sending out query letters by post with Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes dutifully enclosed…
I guess we’ll see. I guess we’ll also see if the bubble gum chewing teenager at the nearest postal outlet understands what an International Reply Coupon is...
