04 January 2010
Today, Jennifer and I watched episodes #11 and 12 of the new NBC show Community. We just started getting into it this week, actually. Last fall, I saw some commercials for it, and they looked funny. And I like Chevy Chase. Or, more correctly, I like the Chevy Chase that was. So, when the TV season began and the season premier of the Office concluded, I left the TV on as Community started. But I only watched 10 minutes. Turns out, they make a lot of easy jokes at the expense of community colleges. I’m not sure why this is warranted, but it seemed a bit excessive to me. There were jokes that only middle-agers or high school drop-outs go to community college, and an ongoing joke is that the dean is an incompetent idiot. None of the teachers seem to have any training for their positions, either.
But then I saw some other clips from the show, and I figured it was worth checking out a second time. The thing is, that’s what sitcoms do: they make fun of the easy stuff. It used to be family-based, but now it’s community-based (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Community).
05 January 2010
Speaking of colleges: why do they have to stick their hands into your wallet at every turn? “Do you want to park here?” “Oh, that will be $90…” My bill for last semester even has a $12 fee that they charged me for waiving their health insurance option. I think I’ll start doing that: I’ll call it the friend option. If you want to be my friend, cool. If not, cough up $12, Mr. Enemy!
Anyway, I went to pay my bill on-line, and they tried charging me a $107 convenience fee. Sorry, nothing’s that convenient. I called the college to ask if I could stop by and pay the bill in person in an effort to alleviate the ‘convenience’. “Sure,” they said, “you can stop by, “but we still charge the convenience fee.”
06 January 2010
I spent my lunch break yesterday and today sending queries to literary agents.
When I first completed my book, I began looking into prospective publishers. I obtained this really thick book from a friend that lists every publishing house in North America. The book was, like, 4 inches thick. You’d think with that many options, you’d be bound to find someone.
A few people have said to me: “Did you know that Harry Potter woman got rejected 157 times before someone finally agreed to publish her book?” This has all the ear-marks of an urban legend, but I’m sure that some author, somewhere, did write to an insane number of publishers, only to finally get an acceptance. But my problem has been different: it’s not that I’ve been rejected oodles of times, it’s that I can’t find anyone to write to in the first place.
Take that 4-inch book, for example. Big chunks of the book are only for short stories, poetry, and essays. This left about 300 pages of book publishers, which I carefully paged through. There were probably 2,000 publishers listed. Of those, about 100 said they weren’t accepting any new submissions. Another 1,000 only work with fiction. Another 300 only work through agents – they don’t want to hear from the writers directly. Most of the remaining publishers had very narrow markets: only cook books, only Jewish-interest, only computer-related. This left me about 100 publishers, of whom several had closed up shop, and a few more (who said they were interested in works of a religious nature) turned out, upon closer inspection, to only want faith-affirming manuscripts. This left me with a list of 16 publishers.
At any rate, I expanded my search into the field of agents today. I’ll see how that goes.