Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Q & A 41 Do starving artists exist anymore?

Against the odds, a few people I know have read my drunken chicken scratchings and most have said words to the effect of “that is good, you should publish it.” I thank them for their ever so useful constructive criticism. Although I'd like to believe them I also appreciate that most of my friends are imbeciles who don't know shit about shit. Still, there's no harm in trying.

I do have one minor problem. For reasons that escape me I am still stranded in the melancholy shit hole of Warsaw, staring out of my window at an insipid gray concrete box and I'm wondering how to send my manuscripts to places where people speak English. I have perused a few agents' websites and most demand an SASE. Unfortunately I can't give them one as Polish stamps are even more worthless than Polish money, if such a thing were possible, and to compound the issue a lot of agents no longer accept an IRC. However, this is rather salient point as I am currently so skint I've resorted to wandering around like Sal Paradise looking for viable cigarette butts in ashtrays.

Therefore my question to you is this: would it be considered an extreme faux pas if I were to send my manuscript devoid of its SASE provided I mention this in my letter? Or this a particularly stupid and naive thing to do? They can shred my stuff for all I care and I am sure that informing me of this by email is not exactly a strenuous task even for an embittered, coke addled editor who rather be shagging bimbos in Hawaii than reading the rants of a nobody like me.

I'm guessing a lot of the agents you query would toss your letter before getting to the part where you explain why there's no SASE. Perhaps if you start the letter:

Dear Agent:

No, there's no SASE here. STOP! WAIT! I BEG YOU, LISTEN TO MY SITUATION! I Don't want anything returned, and my email address is very short. HAVE YOU NO HEART? IS THERE NO SHRED OF COMPASSION IN YOUR BEING?

A few agents might be intrigued by the Warsaw postmark, but even more might consider that a negative, in that you won't be an active participant in promoting your book in the U.S.

But all is not lost. Many agents and some publishers accept email queries. One site where the agents can be found is agentquery.com. How up-to-date they keep their info I don't know, but many agents do claim to accept email queries. Of course, if you find a willing agent, odds are they won't want to print off your novel, or read it on a computer monitor, so you're going to need paper and ink and postage for a heavy package. You may need this many times, unless you get very lucky. So my guess is, you'll need to improve your situation somewhat while waiting for responses to your queries. Good luck.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow -- this writer has bigger problems than just figuring out how to get around the SASE. I'd like to sit him down and explain that "tortured soul mandatory; alcohol problems a plus" are not in the job descriptions for writer and artist. In his letter he puts up barrier after barrier between himself and success and seems to see each one as insurmountable. Once the barrier of the SASE is removed, I wonder what else he will find to replace it?

It comes down to this: if you really want to be a writer, you'll find a way. If you'd really rather be a tortured soul, you'll find a way to do that, too.

Sam said...

I live in Europe and have often asked if the agent / publisher would consider an e-mail query - response because of the high cost of mail. It costs about 10 US dollars to send a query and sample chapter, and each SASE costs upwards 3 dollars. So, it's not an unreasonable request and I have often gotten favorable answers.
Balancing a tight budget does not make you a tortured soul, simply a thrifty soul.

Anonymous said...

I dunno, just from the imagery in the question, I'm liking this guy. I think if he was successful, he might lose some of that certain, special something...

coke-addled editor
rather be shagging bimbos


Love it!

Well, Mr. Nobody, have you a valid, un-maxed-out credit card? The USPS website accepts them. Perhaps one of your imbecile friends could lend you their card? You order a schwack (is that a word?) of stamps and go from there. At least you don't have to ask your evil skank of an ex-wife to buy them for you. (In my case, it was my husband's evil skank of an ex-wife.)

Oh, and smoking is a bad habit anyhow. If butts cost even a tenth as much in Poland as they do in Canada, they're sucking a ton of cash out of your battered and abused wallet.

And if you really wanna make things easy on yourself, set up a blog, get famous like EE and Miss Snark, and the book deals will come to you. It sounds like you can rant with the likes of both Leary and Miller. Just don't get so optimistic that you lose your voice.

-Kis

Freaking word verification is driving me nuts! This is my third try. One more mistake, and I'm just gonna say f@#$ it.

Anonymous said...

You can have US stamps shipped to you. Surely the post office can help you out. Just buy a bunch of international-rate US stamps for your SASEs. That's what we Canadians do, eh?

http://www.usps.com/

Rei said...

Well... as someone who lives in the US, I would be willing to help you out, as long as:

1) It required relatively little work on my part (average 10 minutes or less per week)

2) It cost no money on my part; any expenses would be provided by you.

3) I found the work interesting enough to spend my time trying to help you out.

4) It was in a different genre than what I'll be submitting soon.

If I found your work interesting, I'd be willing to send things from my US address in your name and forward the results back to you. Bulk pages could be printed over here to avoid international shipping costs. The only thing is that I'm busy enough that I couldn't invest much time in it.

Do you have any friends in the US? I'm sure they'd do the same for you if they liked your work.

A much easier and cheaper solution would obviously be e-queries. I would exhaust your e-query options first.

Anonymous said...

I hear ya' about the word verification, kis. -JTC

Coincidentally, this time it is dvsuk

Anonymous said...

Tragic tale, but I love his voice/attitude. I hope all works out for Mr.Warsaw.

The Rejected Writer said...

ms jones, do you recommend that those of us living in north america also go for querying british agents? i've been toying with that idea mostly because, even though i'm not british, i've spent many years there and all of my favorite writers are european (mostly, but not exclusively, british). miss snark seems to think this silly, but then she's from new york, and new yorkers have trouble comprehending a world beyond the hudson, much less whole other countries.

Evil Editor said...

Those who love the voice might want to revisit it in Face-Lift 21.

Anonymous said...

Can't you print off US postage at stamps.com?

-A, who's never tried it

Sam said...

I don't even have to look, I know who you mean. Damn - I knew it was him.
If I were an agent I'd sign him up in a minute...
Hey, starving artist - I really like your style.

Anonymous said...

Can't you buy US stamps on the internet? The agent is going to be mailing the letter from somewhere in the US, so buy stamps, not IRCs, and put enough stamps on the SASE for a letter.
If he actually wants the manuscript, you can send it to him online. Many people request the manuscripts be sent online anymore and print them out themselves.

Anonymous said...

Those who love the voice might want to revisit it in Face-Lift 21.

Ha! I thought this sounded a lot like Face Lift 21 guy . . .

Sharon Maas said...

Here's my experience, querying US agents from Europe.
I selected only agents who accept equeries.
The first one to request a partial said I could send it as an attachment if the cost of postage was too high.
Two others requested a full, and told me to send it per email.
So you see, no problems up to now.
If I were you I'd look for agents who accept equeries first, and mention the postage problem. (I didn't mention it; the suggestions came from them, but just to be safe, do so.)

Sharon Maas said...

Just another thing: before I started querying I stocked up on US stamps for SASE's, expecting that I'd have to send any requests per snail mail. I simply got a friend to buy stamps for me and send them.
However, it was a pain in the ass figuring out how many stamps I'd need. The friend sent me 10 1st class stamps, and I couldn't believe that's all I'd need. I checked with anothetr friend, who called the Post Office, and she said, yes, normal 1st class stamps are OK.
I had to ask 2 other frineds before I figured out that the letter would need TWO 1st class stamps PLUS 6-cents.
Even if I had bought the stamps online I would not have known how many stamps to buy for international postage, as the online stamp shop does not tell you.

Anonymous said...

The USPS site will also tell you how much postage you need (admittedly it takes a bit of finding)
I've queried many US agents by post from the UK. You need 84c postage for your SASE

Kanani said...

In regards to your original question, the issue of starving artists:

What I've found is that almost all writers have day jobs.

Including me.