Mistakes: I Can Has Made Them

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, not in public, on a blog entry where people I hope to interact with in a professional context might see, but I’ve made some mistakes querying this round. Embarrassing gaffes! Things that have made me blush and shake my head! At myself, even!

If you read message boards and agent blogs, you can easily become terrified of making the smallest mistake. So much of it is out of your hands, so any part that you can control becomes overwhelmingly important.

I always get the same feeling while on a job search. Human resource webpages have similar advice, about how the smallest mistake will give a hiring committee reason to reject you. You must do everything perfectly, experts warn, or risk being unemployed forever.

The funny thing is, I made mistakes in my job searches, too. In my search for my first professional job, a typo sneaked into my cover letter. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything–I still got a job. During another, more recent search, I accidentally sent an interview thank you note to the wrong party (almost identical name, same department). That wasn’t acknowledged, either. And they offered me a job, too. Most of these mistakes were only realized in hindsight because I obsessively comb through my emails and files for mistakes, even when that kind of thing is out of my hands. I’m hard on myself–harder, I think, than anyone else is.

My first round querying, I had an extremely detailed, color-coded spreadsheet. The process was heartbreaking and nerve-wracking and I was a mess about the whole thing, so afraid of Making Mistakes (capital M, capital M) and screwing up my chances forever. Somehow, I thought Excel could get me through that.

I did okay on that first round (I had requests), but not great (no offers). Throwing in the towel wasn’t an easy decision, but I’m glad I went through the whole query rigmarole before taking this second stab at it. Rejection is a lot less personal now–it doesn’t hit quite as deep. I have distance from the process. I realize that if I don’t get an agent now, then it’s just a matter of persistence with future projects.

I’ve also, ironically, done better.

This time around, I’ve abandoned the spreadsheet to rely almost entirely on querytracker. It’s been better for me, more intuitive, but I wonder if the lack of stringent organization and ridiculously detailed color coding (seriously, guys, I used varying shades of colors to denote which materials were requested with queries, how many pages an agent asked for, and so on) has contributed to the few stupid mistakes I’ve made.

Although I’m sure my habit of 2 a.m. querying has something to do with it, too.

I’m not advocating that you make deliberate errors, or give up on proofreading. I am, however, saying that mistakes happen no matter how careful you are. I proofread. I grade student papers. It’s my job to recognize errors, but sometimes they still slip-through. If it’s true for me, I’m sure it’s true for the rest of you, right? Everyone makes mistakes!

So, for the sake of completeness, and because I always find these things comforting, here are the stupid missteps made during this round of querying:

• I pasted the wrong e-mail for one agent (agent A) into the recipient line for another (agent B), thereby sending agent A two queries (one with agent B’s name in the greeting), and agent B none. It took me like half a day to figure out precisely what had happened!
• I included a personalized paragraph meant for another agent on one query (I caught this one almost immediately, and sent a quick apology. I didn’t want her to think I was trying to trick her into believing we had a personal connection, which I’ve heard some authors do).
• I queried one agent twice.

The funny thing is that the few agents I’ve had contact with regarding these mistakes have been incredibly gracious about the whole thing. They don’t assume that I’m a terrible person for making these mistakes–always, deep down, my fear. Nor do they seem to think the worst of me, that I’m an uneducated writer with no idea what she’s doing. They’ve reacted like, well, people. Like they don’t expect authors to be perfect querybots who never stumble. That feels good–to remember that other people are rarely so hard on you as you are on yourself.

All of that being said, I still might cool it on the 2 a.m. queries.

How about the rest of you? Have you made any dumb errors while querying?

The Slow Burn

Warning: spoilers for the current seasons of True Blood and Mad Men follow. Don’t read if you care about such things and are not up-to-date on your viewing!

Sundays this summer have been pretty awesome for me. Now that we have cable, Jordan and I spend every Sunday night watching two of my three favorite TV series True Blood and Mad Men back-to-back (in case you were wondering, my third favorite is Doctor Who). There wasn’t any True Blood this week, as it seems HBO is giving us a week off before the finale. We hadn’t realized that last night, but to my surprise, I wasn’t so disappointed to skip an episode.

That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy True Blood. I do–though sometimes I wonder how much of my continued fondness for the show is because of my concurrent fondness for really any male member of the Skarsgard family. But frankly, it’s just been such a mess over the past few weeks–and Mad Men has just been so, so good. I know the series seem to share little in common besides their Sunday night timeslot, but it’s difficult not to compare them when they’re held up against one another like that. And apparently, I’m not the only one who does so. After last night’s absolutely phenomenal, why-aren’t-you-watching-this episode, I started looking around on the internet for reviews–and I came across a blog comment bemoaning the fact that True Blood gets passed up for the Emmy accolades that Mad Men gets. “It must be genre prejudice!” the nerdy commenter opined. “Because so much more happens in one episode of True Blood than in an entire season of Mad Men!”

Which was funny because, you see, I thought that was precisely True Blood‘s problem.

I might be speaking from a position of prejudice. If you read through my reviews, you’ll see that I’m generally more of a fan of character-driven, rather than plot-driven, works. But honestly, I can’t help but feel that True Blood consistently fails when looked at through either lens. The series’ first three seasons have only taken place over a handful of months, and already there have been more plot points than I can honestly count. It’s really difficult to view the action through a macro lens, and easier to see the problems on a micro-basis: in this season alone, secondary character Tara has mourned one boyfriend, had a one-night stand with a vampire, been raped and kid-napped by said vampire, killed the vampire, tried to deal with the ordeal, been attacked by the vampire again, gone back to mourning her first boyfriend, and started sleeping with her boss. Again. Don’t even get me started about romantic-lead vamp Bill Compton’s muddled motivations. He changes his mind more than (insert folksy Southern idiom here). I’ve seen every episode and I have no idea what he wants.

My big problem with this is that it’s relentless, and not in a good way–the viewer has no breathing room to muse over what are supposed to be big revelations. Every secret that’s been revealed this season–and there have been quite a few–falls flat. I’m thinking of the revelation of Sookie’s true nature, the existence of werewolves, our first meeting with Nan Flanagan, the fact that Crystal is a panther (God, does anyone care about this character?), how Sam used to be and is now a jerk . . . I’m certain there are more, but I just can’t think of them–which shows how emotionally involved I am, I suppose. I would say that these pacing problems are part of what makes True Blood‘s cliff hanger endings so integral to the series. All of the scenes with the greatest emotional impact have come right before the close of the episode. These twists are often better executed, sure, but the audience also has time to mull over them. Head-twisting sex, Russell Edgington’s television appearance, the sexy murder of Talbot, Pam’s expression as her maker sacrifices himself–these are the scenes that will stick with me this season. They also all happened in the final ten minutes of their respective episodes.

Generally, I just don’t have faith in True Blood‘s writers anymore to have any restraint when it comes to story development or pacing. It’s as if they think “action” is synonymous for “story”–but the truth is, falling action and respite between suspenseful moments is just as important to a long-form story as the rising tension and the ultimate reveal. It’s what gives big twists their impact. It allows viewers to see how all the pieces fit into place, how the story makes sense. It lets us feel for the characters. A good story shouldn’t be an onslaught. It doesn’t need to be relentless. Less really can be more.

Case in point, last night’s Mad Men episode, “The Suitcase.”

Yes, it’s true–often very little happens in any episode of Mad Men, much less in any season. Last night’s was no exception. This was a bottle episode, set almost entirely in the SCDP offices after everyone’s gone home. The plot could be summarized thusly: on her birthday, Peggy’s alcoholic boss makes her work late.

And yet this episode was undeniably and clearly important. The forward momentum of the series, and the season, has long been working up to this. Don Draper’s drinking has slowly escalated. Over the past season, he’s gone from a celebrated businessman to someone who is largely pitied by those working below him. Divorced, embittered, he’s started to lose whole days to drinking. The facade of his life has begun to crack, such as when he gave a waitress he bedded his real name in the episode that aired two weeks ago.

And Peggy’s relationship with him has long been complicated. For three seasons, we’ve watched them dance around one another, indelibly connected through similar creative personalities and career-minded natures while keeping one another at arms’ length. Don and Peggy know some of one another’s secrets, but not most of them–and they certainly don’t talk about it. As Don tells her in the first season, certain events “never happened,” a sentiment echoed by Peggy last night when she said that they don’t talk about things and that’s the way both parties prefer it. Of course, we, as the viewers, know better–we know how hungry Peggy is for Don’s approval, and how desperate Don’s become for a confidant now that Anna Draper is out of the picture.

But unlike True Blood, Mad Men doesn’t go for cheap thrills. On almost any other show on television, last night’s climax would have been a sexual one–as the office population dwindled down to two, that certainly seemed like the way things were going. Instead, we got arguments about their working relationship (“All couples fight,” Peggy’s mother told her now ex-fiance last night. If only Peggy had been there to hear her!), conversations about suitcase advertising, and still-veiled references to their personal lives. Peggy and Don are still keeping one another at a distance, rendering those few small references to Don’s childhood as Dick Whitman, and to Peggy’s pregnancy, that much more meaningful. Even Don’s swing at Duck Philips at the climax of last night’s episode missed the mark–and yet it meant so much.

Don and Peggy didn’t screw last night. They didn’t even kiss. But when they held hands in the morning, hardly even looking one another in the eye, it meant something–so much more than the violent, explosive, and gory sex on True Blood. It was satisfying in a deeply emotional way. It was what television should be.

Again, I don’t hate True Blood. But I think we’re living in a golden age of TV right now–a time when writers are beginning to exploit its narrative potential, starting to respect its viewing audience and trust that they’re emotionally invested in the characters. And when you trust in that, and have a format as sweeping as a multi-season television show, then you can do a lot more than create something episodic and relentless. You can illuminate truths in fits and starts, give your audience–and your characters–time to rest and time to breathe. You can let your story slowly burn.

Goodreads Review: Feed

Feed by M.T. Anderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review contains spoilers.

This is where I eat my words.

I resisted Feed. It was recommended to me by several close friends, but I put off reading it and put off reading it for what I now realize were fairly shallow reasons–first, that it looked like such a boy book, and, secondly, because I feared that this would be like Uglies: filled with grating slang and the glittering veneer of SF conceits but without any substance beneath them.

I was so, so wrong. Because Feed wasn’t anything like Westerfeld’s more recent dystopian series. Instead, it hearkens back to earlier, more substantial speculative fiction aimed at adults–there are shades of A Clockwork Orange here, but mostly I couldn’t help but think of Philip K. Dick. Anderson’s future world gleams with a Dick-like intensity; it is well-rendered and foreign and yet utterly recognizable, but more importantly, and again as is the case in many of Dick’s novels, the emotional core of the book is what makes it transcendent.

At first, as is the case with Uglies, it’s the technology of Feed that stands out: set in a far future where humans live in domed enclosures and have internet advertising, called Feeds, zapped into their heads, it’s the story of Titus, a teenage boy who was never taught to question the world around him–or the one inside his skull. On the moon, Titus encounters Violet, a pretty, slightly unusual girl, and takes her to a club where both of their feeds are hacked. This is a minor inconvenience to Titus, but has terrible side-effects for Violet, leading her down a long road toward her eventual death.

The setting here is much more textured than the above probably implies–this isn’t a clean utopia, but rather a commercial empire built upon the death of our planet and humanity. Hints of this texture are given early on, in the earliest references to the mysterious lesions that have begun to plague teenagers. But as the novel proceeds, the reader begins to learn precisely how diseased the planet, and human society, truly is, in fits and starts and stolen glimpses. Anderson doesn’t condescend to his audience by stating the cause for all of this decay explicitly, but there’s enough here that it’s clear and implicit.

In a way, Feed is really a treatise on grief–Titus’ grief for the still-living Violet as she declines, the grief of both Violet and her father for all of their world–and an examination of how commercial society offers insufficient comfort in the face of death. It’s not insignificant that, when discussing things she would like to do in her short life, the only dream Violet can conjure that doesn’t come from a sitcom opening is visiting the sacrificial grounds of Mayan temples. The commercial society of Feed has no vocabulary for sacrifice, for horror, or for death.

This was truly a challenging, beautiful read, and I’d highly recommend it, not only for young readers, but for anyone interested in layered, complex science fiction.

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