Best Phone Call of the Day

Monday, June 15, 2009

Best Phone Call of the Day

I get many goofy phone calls from people who don't read the text on our website that says "Don't Call" and in fact most of them are people asking for advice on how to query an agent, information which is readily available online, but today, I got one that takes the cake.

CALLER: Is this [literary agency]?

YOURS TRULY: Yes, it is. How can I help you?

C: Well, um, I queried an agent there.

Okay...

YT: Have you heard back?

C: Yes, I got a letter saying that my book isn't right for [Agent].

YT: How can I help you?

C: I was wondering who [Agent] thought would be right for my project.

YT: I'm not sure. [Agent] gets a lot of query letters each day and doesn't always have a colleague in mind for every project. Have you checked some of the online resources that list agents and what they're interested in?

C: But [Agent] didn't send back my materials.

YT: Your materials?

C: I sent a proposal with my query, and I didn't get it back.

YT: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. (About to say something else, but fumbling for the right words...)

C: Maybe my envelop wasn't big enough.

YT: Oh, well yes, if the postage didn't look like it was enough, we probably wouldn't have returned it.

C: Could you send them to me?

YT: Your materials?

C: Yes, I don't have any more copies at home.

YT: I'm so sorry but we recycle query letters and proposals if we aren't considering them for representation.

C: You recycle them?

YT: Yes.

C: So what should I do?

YT: Um, did you save it on your computer?

C: Maybe, I'll have to check.

Silence...

C: I don't think I saved it.

YT: I'm really sorry about that, but as I said, we don't hold onto those materials if it isn't for us.

C: Well, I don't know what I'm going to do if I don't have a copy of it.

....

After going back and forth for several more minutes of this, I finally had to politely extricate myself from the conversation. Who are these people who write proposals, query an agent, and don't SAVE the proposal on their computer?

3 comments:

Steph said...: Somewhere, deep deep down, I feel bad for this person.

But also? In this day and age there's no excuse to not have at least one backup of your work.

But still, I can't help taking pity on them. It's sad.

Steph; June 15, 2009 at 9:31 PM
suzie said...: On some level, I do too. I usually feel bad for the people who call, and despite the agents who tell me just to cut the calls short and hang up, I try to make an effort to make sure I'm polite and talk through whatever problem they're having. But I start to go a little crazy. And I just start to wonder What do they expect me to do?; June 15, 2009 at 9:35 PM
Rabid Fox said...: Good gravy! I will never chastise myself for wanting to e-mail an editor for an update on a query. I have yet to follow through with that impulse, but at least I won't feel guilty ... because there's no way I'll ever be as bad as that writer. :); June 22, 2009 at 1:06 PM

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Five Random Things About Suzie

1. I drink so much orange soda, it's probably running through my veins. I've been known to go through a twelve pack of diet sunkist in a day.

2. I'm legitimately nocturnal (or a vampire). I will be so exhausted at two pm that I'm falling asleep standing up - it has happened before, at Six Flags no less - but as soon as the sun goes down I'm wide awake.

3. I have a gorgeous unused $6000 Reem Acra wedding dress hanging in my closet, and it showed up on my doorstep the same day my (now ex) fiance broke up with me. And thank God for that. I wouldn't have wanted to waste that dress on him.

4. Social anxiety plagues me daily. I write a script and practice in front of the mirror when I have to make a phone call, but most people who interact with me have no idea how nervous I am (or perhaps they lie) because I've worked so hard to try to overcome it.

5. I'm actually worried that I will never love my children (when I do have them in the far off future) as much as I love my dogs. I just like animals better than people - they're sweet and innocent and soft and furry - is that so wrong?

quotes

金不一定閃
流浪者不都迷路

"I dreamed you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane
I think I made you up inside my head
I fancied you'd return the way you said
But I grow old and I forget your name
I think I made you up inside my head" ~Silvia Plath, Mad Girl's Love Song

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." ~ Robert Frost

"Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds." ~ William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116"

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning-...So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

"For deadly secrets strike when understood
and lucky stars all exit on the run:
never try to knock on rotten wood,
never try to know more than you should." ~ Sylvia Plath, "Admonitions"

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become." ~ Milan Kundera, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

William Wilberforce: "No one of our age has ever taken power."
William Pitt Jr: "Which is why we're too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." ~ Mark Twain

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." ~ Mark Twain

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace.” ~ Charles Dickens, A MUTUAL FRIEND

"I think the idea of life after death is a bad idea. It distracts you from appreciating the uniqueness of the here and now, the moment you are living." ~ Joseph Campbell

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear...Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end." ~ Alan Paton, CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY

"To laugh often and much.. to endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better... To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived, This is to have succeeded." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover or friend, I have changed in their eyes...[Some see it as] a mission, as if ...they can pull me back from the wreckage of that day. Of course, their best efforts are largely useless. No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved." ~ Alice Sebold, LUCKY

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared." ~Tupac, The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Confessions

Monday, June 15, 2009