Today’s mail brought
1. Copy of latest issue
2. Form rejection letter (for “Cubs of Democracy” submitted about two months ago, unless it’s a rejection for something submitted 6-8 months ago I’d just assumed they’d lost)
I wonder if they timed that.
I’ll try and get Cubs of Democracy up on HLWT later today — I’ve got a bunch of delicious free fiction to throw up here.
So! Picked up the car (two-week total: $1700+, over 50% the value of the car).
Job 1: looped, no word yet. I couldn’t say how it went. Parts of it went quite well, others I couldn’t read.
Job 2: interviewed, loop is tomorrow. They want to talk to me more, I want to talk to them more.
Job 3: did an interview today, way cool, the people seem awesome, the company’s great. But there’s also no position to talk about yet specifically (I’d be doing x for y team…).
Job 4: contracting jobs. I’ve got some exploratory conversations booked. Might actually work out the best if I get into Clarion, which — hey, wow, I might actually hear back from them in the next few weeks! That came up fast.
So yeah, things are progressing. It’s strange to be job-hunting as the book comes out.
To fix a drip at a valve connection under a sink today, I pulled the valve off and part of the long-corroding pipe came off with it, leaving not enough thread to put it back on. Had to pull apart and replace pipe. The good luck was I only had to go back one connection.
Going to a hike, my car hit a pot hole and punctured the oil pan, which is great fun, and had to be towed back to my mechanic, again, for the second time in four days, the second time it’s seen a tow truck after years of absurd reliability.
I’m probably going to be out $600 for this, bringing my week-long total to ~$1500, or about half the trade-in value of my car.
This is extra-good since I’m unemployed. I mean, uh, writing.
Had a nightmare about being reviewed in the New York Times Book Review in which they liked the book but spent most of the review savaging the typos and minor errors that were included in the advance copy (which was pre-copy edits).
Woke up when the UPS guy delivered the first copy of the actual, finished, off the presses book.
Looked up the ski conditions for Snoqualmie – I’ve got not much time left on the rentals, I’m probably going to be employed soon, and the forecast looked promising. Conditions look awesome.
Throw my stuff into the car, tear off for Snoqualmie.
Ski for a long time. Mostly sunny, some new snow, and the face runs weren’t crusty, but a perfect slushy goodness. Most fun I’ve had all season.
Nearly get horribly mangled or worse when my coat catches on the edge of the chair. Really scary. I’m a little impressed I managed to act reasonably rational in figuring out what happened.
Lost my wallet.
Found my wallet when some good soul turned it in, contents entirely undisturbed. Yay humanity!
Brief skiing.
Planning to get back well in time to head out for my scifi workshop, return to my car, load it up – car won’t start.
Get a jump from security. Won’t crank over.
Call for tow. As phone battery cranks down while I’m on hold, get quoted really long wait time. Head to lodge, have beer. Tow calls, delay. Wait, wait, wait.
Tow shows up. Can’t jump the car with their massive cables etc. For the first time, get to see my Volvo put on a flatbed. Long ride back.
When I finally get home disastrously late, discover a lot of my galley changes didn’t get into the final version.
In the email:
Another job possibility.
A chance to write a piece for… I don’t even want to say it.
Been a weird, weird day.
A couple of years ago, when my initial, pretty aggressive deadline for turning in a manuscript came due, I talked to my editor and had a conversation that more or less went like this:
Me: Sooooo… how’s the weather up there in the northeast? Good? What’s going on? How are you?
Editor: Where’s my book?
Me: Ah. Good question. Really good question. Here’s the thing: I’ve got about 25% of a really great book done.
(pause)
Editor: Uh huh.
Me: And I could turn a manuscript with meeting the contractually obligated word count right now.
Editor: Okay.
Me: Or we could take more time and do a book that’s 100% great.
Editor: Yeah, let’s go ahead and take that option.
Doing the research for the book I discovered that almost every source I tracked down provided a hint of something else: Gaylord Perry led to Tommy John’s scuffing, tracing hecklers led to O’Toole and Adelis led to booster clubs. Every week I kept working at any chapter, all the other chapters improved.
But my list of research to-dos only grew.
Eventually, I had another conversation with my editor, which went:
Editor: Give me the book.
Me: I’m looking into this fascinating sideline about stadiums that burned down…
Editor: Give me the book.
Me: … and there’s this amazing thing that happened in the 1920s with bat manufacturing…
Editor: In a second, hired goons are going to come to your door. You need to provide them with the current version of the manuscript.
(ding-dong)
Me: Okay.
That defined the book’s scope. It had to happen eventually, but I still felt disappointed.
An abbreviated summary of my feelings towards the book since then:
Turned it in: excited, uncertain
Everyone loves the first draft but they want huge changes: relieved, happy, terrified
Drafts 2-4: increasingly weary
After copyediting, when I’d read the book for the 79th time: I despise this book. It’s boring, it’s flat, I should replace all the anecdotes and examples.
After a break: I don’t know. I’m too close to make judgments
After hearing from advanced readers: They seem really happy, but maybe my editor sent the goons around.
Library Journal review: Woo-hoo! It really is good! This is great!
Then yesterday, I got the Entertainment Weekly review, which liked it but gave it a ‘B’ (stand-up double) and I was, initially, really mad: how dare they only give it a B! I worked on it for years!
And then I thought “hey, they liked it enough to review it and say nice things, even if they didn’t think it was a masterpiece… that’s pretty cool.”
It’s like getting a bad review in the New York Times Book Review: as the editors will tell you, the fact that they’re reviewing you at all says something about the quality and noteworthiness of the book.
It’s strange, though — the book’s out. The quality of the book is set. It’s not going to get better, or worse. All that remains is for people to read it, and yet here I am, pulling for the next review to be positive, the same way I try and body-english a line drive down the line fair when I’m at a game.
So it looks like I’ll be doing two interviews this week, one with Ye Olde Expedia, and one somewhere else. The interesting thing to me is that I ranted a while back about my frustration with the on-again, off-again recruiting of a company I really wanted to work for, and how I stopped trying.
Anyway, I got a note from a recruiter for a company, and I remembered that I’d talked to her as a job reference for a friend maybe six months ago, and it was a pleasant conversation and they were good about the whole thing – they called when they said they’d call, they were efficient but not forced about getting through it, and seemed as concerned about whether my friend would be happy as anything.
And I don’t think I’d have an interview scheduled if I hadn’t had a previous, positive contract with them.
I’m going to throw this on my list of to-do items for if I ever run my own business:
– interview and hiring processes run smoothly, fast
– hire great HR people when you’re too big to handle the process yourself
I’ll put those next to “don’t ever, ever outsource customer support” on my business plan.
But yeah, two interviews this week.
One of the reasons I’ve been slower on getting decent scifi stories out (there’s two in the queue) is that I’ve been spending a lot of time on book proposals and a novel-length fiction project, a mystery written with the lovely and talented Mrs. Zumsteg.
Anyway, the first draft’s done, and now it’s time to get into the re-writes.
It’s weird, I haven’t written a novel since college (which 2, maybe 3 people read), and my re-entry into scifi’s been almost entirely short stories (except, as my friend calls it, “that book about the genetically engineered Kiwi criminal mastermind teenager”), and yet here I am, with a fully-formed mystery. Let the re-writes begin.
One of the things that’s made a big difference in my long path from general jerk to occasional jerk has been my conscious effort towards empathy, and to recognize that, as I’ve been told, reality is what you make of it. This means, in baseball writing terms, I have to push myself towards certainty. I think it’s made me a much better actual analyst — I’m not afraid to say “we don’t know how this turns out” and I say “It’s unlikely that we’ll see this” or “there’s no evidence to suggest that…” or to circle a big area like clubhouse politics and say “I don’t know.” This was a great strength as a program manager, too, where being able to gauge perception against evidence and the known against the probable helped make things happen.
It’s really weird because today, I feel like I botched it, in a way — I took a piece of ambiguous information and managed to bungle decisions until I totally blew it. The results were that it generated all kinds of bad events, chaining on down, until there was a point this afternoon where I despaired of ever repairing it.
But it was based at least in part on a faulty assumption. What’s strange, though, is that I bit it, other people bit it without my prompting, and from there, things cascaded. I didn’t think to look at the tenets and ask second questions, and neither did anyone else.
When it all snapped for me, I felt strange for a long minute or two, because I realized I’d spent all day viewing things incorrectly, that when I first encountered piece of information #1, I’d been tired and in a bad mood and then once I formed that opinion. I slipped into the very habit I’ve been trying to avoid for so long, and once I slipped, it took something huge to get me corrected.
Time to redouble my efforts.
“Conversations With And About My Electric Toothbrush” sold today. More details soon.