Set out first thing on Labor Day to query agents I had read about in Writer's Digest that were looking for new writers in my genre. I had identified four potentials, based on the article, but when I got serious about it and started looking them up on their websites I found one of them takes mysteries, but only for Middle Grade. Somehow that wasn't clear to me from the article. The agent is only looking for Historical Romances for adults, so there's one down before we even get started.
Sent three for A Killer Blog. As I'm sending them, I'm anticipating the rejection email or worse the never to be received response. There are a million things working against me or any other writer. I find the query process very stressful. If I ever had self-doubt about my talent, sending off a query letter always reinforces that. I read what the agent is looking for and hope that they'll see this in my writing. So far, they haven't.
Didn't have to wait long to get my first rejection; it came the following afternoon. The good thing is that I have an answer; it's not the answer I want, but it's an answer. No advice, just a couple of websites that he sends to everyone he rejects. Generic advice is probably worse than no advice at all. It doesn't help to know there's something possibly wrong with your story, but I won't tell you what. Here's a haystack, now find that unknown needle.
Spent most of my morning writing time putting together blog posts for the month. Since I decided on a Shakespeare September, I thought I'd go ahead and finish them up. It seemed like the best use of my time, since it's really only about 20 minutes; not enough time to start anything really big. Published the review on Saturday for The Merchant of Venice (2004), starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Lynn Collins.
My comment about readership may have been a little premature. The page views for the week ended up at about 30, which I'm afraid to say is about average. But remember you don't do a blog to have people read it, at least that's been my experience; you do it because you want to. Over at TCM's CFU, Romeo and Juliet have gotten almost 100 page views, which is also normal and pretty good for that blog site I might add.
I did start working on a review for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for October. It's a film I had seen back in film school, so when I had a chance to see it again, I thought it would be a good choice for what has become for me horror film month on the blog. This is one of the most written about films, so I'm trying to do some research as I go. Only about 1000 words into it.
This weekend, I did write about 2000 words on The Mouse That Roared (1959); a British comedy starring Peter Sellers in three roles. It will be another future post. I was in an English film frame of mind, so I made the suggestion for our Friday night film.
As far as the comic book goes, I did make some progress on the thumbnail storyboards. I was getting to what would be page 12 of the book and realized I was trying so hard to squeeze and cut so much that I had more pages to draw than I would end up with script. I've gone back to the drawing board, so to speak, trying to space things out better. I figured it would be a trial and error experience for me, so I'm going to keep working on that this coming week.
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