Summertime and the living is easy for literary agents. Only insofar as they usually take off early on a Friday, that is. The rest of the business is a misery.
If only Martha Hoffman at Judith Ehrlich's agency would put in a few extra hours and get caught up. She's had a partial since the middle of January, and six months later, I've yet to hear from her. Has me wondering if she asked for partials from just about anyone who queried when she joined the agency, and now there's a backlog that threatens to crash her computer. Smart woman, to ask for a downloadable file rather than fifty pages of real paper. Can you imagine the weight of dozens of partial manuscripts? The legs of the desk would give out and crush her little feet.
Don't know if Frank Scatoni of Venture Literary is off to the Hamptons for the weekend, or if he's hauling my partial manuscript off for a cozy weekend. Curl up in a comfy chair and pore over the pages, sip a glass of wine...life is good.
Can't say the same for the literary journal editors, who are either teaching summer school or doing research for their own publication credits. Publish or perish out there in the scholastic world. My short story submissions from March are languishing, I imagine, or dozing in the summer heat. I suppose that the 2-4 month window of consideration gets dragged out when summer vacation intrudes, or that 2-4 months means months when school is in session.
I'm getting so tired of waiting that I'm not doing a very good job of tracking submissions anymore. When the rejection letter turns up, I'll log it in and cross off another agency. In the meantime, I can curl up on the plastic lawn chair, sip a cold gin and tonic, and read whatever is selling these days. If the agents and the editors are on shortened hours, why obsess over outstanding submissions? More productive to slice up a lime and chill the Bombay Sapphire.
No comments:
Post a Comment