2 posts tagged “love”

Now that you have your newly-edited manuscript down to 143,122 words, (not including the 36,310 words of the ‘Back Section’ which includes recipes, a guide to additional reading, a history lesson, a wine list, and other information you deemed pertinent to your readers as addendums to your manuscript), you start looking for a book publisher. The only problem there is that you have no idea how to find a book publisher. Someone wiser than you, or maybe someone who just overheard someone else talking to another someone about this, suggests you get a “literary agent”. But you’ve no idea how to find one of those, either.  So:

1)     You go into your husband’s office and ask him, “Have you any thoughts on how I can get an agent for my women’s empowerment memoir?”

 

Your husband, a stockbroker who reads the financial pages, baseball biographies, and P.G. Wodehouse, and is at that very moment trying to make an important stock trade, replies (quite flippantly, you think), “None whatsoever.”

 

2)     Unreasonably irritated, you leave his office, go back into your own, and type, “How to Get A Literary Agent” into the search engine on your computer. This is when you discover that Google has approximately 818,000 articles on how to find a literary agent, and amazon.com sells more than 50 books on the subject.

 

Surely you don’t need to read a whole book and all those articles? After all, how hard can it be to get an agent? Aren’t they like realtors? Don’t they want to sell your work? That’s how they make their money, after all, isn’t it?  

 

Thus, assuming that selling a work of literature is like selling a house, you choose to follow the directives in a concise, one-page article you find on ehow.com.

 

3)     The ehow.com article says that you need to first write a ‘query letter’ to an agent. Again, you are clueless. So again, you rely on Google, typing in, ‘what is a query letter?’ to find out on Wikipedia, another of your ‘unfailing’ information sources, that “a query letter is a formal letter sent to magazine editors, literary agents, to propose writing ideas.” 

 

This seems simple enough, so you sit down and write your first ‘formal’ query letter, which goes something like this:

 

Dear ____________:

 

My name is Patricia Volonakis Davis, and I have written a women’s empowerment memoir called, “Amerikanaki”, which is my story about being raised first generation Italian-American, marrying a Greek national, and moving to Greece with him.

 

I hope you will be interested in reading my manuscript. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Patricia Volonakis Davis

 

Address

telephone number

email

 

4. After formulating your concise query letter to match the concise instructions which you followed to write it, you make a list of the top ten agents in the United States, finding their names through Google, too, of course.

 

You go to the agents’ individual websites and discover the particularized instructions on each. Some want you to post your query letter, along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Others will only accept queries submitted by email. Some ask you send the first 30 pages of your manuscript, to also be included in email, pasted, not attached, in “WORD format only”, or “RTF format” (a format you assume is an anachronism for RUT the F*ck?!). Some want you to include any three random chapters, to be sent along with your SAE. And yet others ask that along with your query letter, you send the x-rays of your teeth your dentist took during your last exam.

 

Following all these instructions diligently (you were a teacher, after all) you send out your ten query letters/emails to your ten top choices of agents, and expect to hear from them all within a week or two at the most.

 

5. Three months later, you’ve written and emailed over fifty literary agents and received two replies detailing further instructions, and after having complied with those, you never hear from those two again. You now have six of those fifty available books sitting on your desk, with one more on order from amazon.com, and have taken five writing courses. One of those includes a three-day class given by a literary agent, (who shows no interest in your manuscript at all, by the way), simple titled, “How to Write a Query Letter”.

 

It was during this class that you learned how pathetically inadequate your first query letter was,  and you rewrote it so many times that it actually took longer to complete than the manuscript itself.  You also learn that apart from your manuscript and your query letter, you need to write something called a “book proposal”, and you have a new list of books written down and ready to order on how to write one of those.

 

You’ve spent hundreds of dollars on postage, photocopies, books, and classes. Additionally, you suspect your husband is seriously considering moving his office from home, so that you can’t barge in every day to cry over the latest rejection or out-and-out disregard from literary agents. You know these suspicions are well-founded when he suggests that you go to a writers’ conference where you can meet agents in person.

 

“But, writers’ conferences are very expensive,” you point out to your beleaguered husband.

“True, but a lot less expensive than my having to move my office,” he replies.

 

(You see? You were right.)

 

6. And so, you register for BEA (Book Expo America) in New York. You need to pay the conference fees, flight, hotel, meals, and transport to and from BEA, so that once there, you, along with hundreds of other hopeful writers, will have two hours to meet with as many agents as you can, who will give you three minutes each to pitch your manuscript to them. You have no idea who any of these agents are, you only read a short blurb description of them, and of whether they are looking for ‘fiction’ or ‘non-fiction,’ ‘children’s’ or ‘adults.’ You can also clearly see, as you stand on a queue waiting to speak to them, that all of the ones you’ve chosen are already annoyed at and/or bored with the writer who’s talking to them at the moment. And you’re up next.

 

7. You’ve spent thousands of dollars and another three months up to now, but guess what? ─ you walk away from the conference with seven business cards from agents who have told you to send them your manuscript! A month later, of the seven, two actually offer you a contract! Once again, you have no clue which of the two you should choose, so you go with the one who shows the most enthusiasm for your work. She turns out to be the less experienced of the two; as a matter of fact, you learn that you are her very first client, but no matter. You have an agent! You’ve done it!

 

8. You run into your husband’s office again, this time with excitement, kiss him and thank him for his brilliant suggestion.  You then ring your best friend joyously, informing her that you finally have a literary agent! You will be published within weeks!

 

Or so you think.

 

                                               (To be Continued.)

 

Note: Please remember that comments and replies are now at http://patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com.  I am really sorry for this inconvenience. I hope VOX fixes the bug on my blog someday.

 

     

 

Last week, we flirted with our husbands. With luck, they’ll return the favour this week. I don’t know if I’m speaking for every woman with the ideas I list here, but I did gather them from a hefty sample of females in long-term relationships. I welcome comments or suggestions and mention that I’ve already heard two important ones:

Bob Godley said, “I wouldn’t want to be in love with a woman who wasn’t in love with me.”

That’s so true. Unrequited love is only ‘romantic’ in novels, not in real-life partnerships. If the person you’re married to, or in a long-term relationship with, doesn’t appreciate you and/or is with you for some self-seeking reason of his or her own, I’ll tell you from personal experience, this will only lead to heartache. The love you feel for your partner, will not make your partner love you back.

In addition, as another wise blogger, Ilias K., pointed out, “flirting techniques” are only joyfully effective, if the person you’re flirting with fancies you as much as you fancy him/her.

Bearing this in mind, here’s the list I’ve compiled:

 

1) The average male (in the western world) has the following grooming products: soap, water, shampoo, razor or beard trimmer, toothbrush and toothpaste and nail clippers. His “extra special” grooming preparations might include, mouth rinse, cologne, and running a comb through his wet hair, so it will dry in place. (I could be wrong, but I don’t think men use hair dryers anymore.)

The average female in the western world uses the following grooming products: tooth brush and tooth paste - the special kind that ‘whitens’ teeth, soap - the special kind with moisturizers in it, water, shampoo - the special kind for her hair type, which includes, curly hair, straight hair, frizzy hair, damaged hair, or hair that’s been coloured and/or ‘permed’ and hair conditioner for same ‘hair types.’ After shower, grooming products include skin moisturizer, special shave cream for sensitive skin and special razors or cream hair removers designed for women’s ‘tender’ skin. We might also use daily, something to darken and lengthen our eyelashes, something to redden our lips and cheeks. The more creative or vain among us (take your choice of adjective there) use something to even out the skin tone on our faces, something to enhance the arch of our eyebrows and make our eyes ‘stand out.’ We can’t just run a comb through our hair - we have to blow dry it, or curl it, or gel it, or mousse it, or clip it up, or pull it back, or ’tease’ it a bit. Our “extra-special” grooming preparations might include, getting our faces squeezed, pinched, steamed and scrubbed in something called a ‘facial.’ And having hot wax smeared on our private parts, then covered with linen, which is stuck to the wax (on purpose) and then pulled off, taking any ‘stray hairs’ with it, in something called a ‘bikini wax.’ Then, we might sit in one position, not moving our limbs for a half an hour or more, so our manicures and pedicures can dry without smearing.

This is a glamorising process (and I’ve only given you the abridged version of what we can and do do to ourselves) that can take anywhere from one-three hours out of our lives daily, depending on how thorough or speedy we want to be. But when it’s complete, we’re “nice and girly” - soft, smooth, polished, silky and ‘glowy.’

You like us that way. And you know it.

So my first suggestion on how to flirt with your wife/long-time lover is this: When she gets out of the bath, or the bedroom, or wherever she conducts this grooming process, handbag in hand, dressed and smiling, set for the evening, do not look at her distractedly, or worse, click your tongue impatiently and ask, “Are you ready to go?”

Instead, say, “Wow.” Or, “You look great.”

She did it for you, you dolt. She wants you to think she looks attractive. She wants to see that light in your eyes, the one you’d get when you’d first go out on dates together. And she was willing to spend one-three hours of her day to achieve this. An hour or three that she could have spent otherwise, doing perhaps what you were doing, while you were waiting for her to finish the tedious grooming process she conducts for you. Instead of pulling out hairs, or dabbing on zit cream, or separating clumps of mascara from out of her eyelashes, she could’ve have been reading the paper, catching up on the sports news, or playing computer games. She gave up all that fun so she could look pretty - for you. So indicate that you noticed this and that you appreciate it. Even if this ‘dolling up’ doesn’t matter to you, it matters to her.

Think of the different start, the different ambience there’ll be to the evening out, if you say, “Wow” (or whatever the equivalent is in your neck of the woods) to your wife, instead of, “Are you ready?”

Every time a woman’s efforts to be attractive to her man are ignored or go unobserved by him, a tiny bit of her femininity dies. She may not ever complain about it, or even act like she notices, but each time it happens, it chips away at her. Until the day comes she gives up caring to make you notice. Or worse, some other man notices what you had under your hands to touch, taste and enjoy all this time, which you took for granted.

 

2) You don’t like to talk about your deepest fears, worries or insecurities, but she can’t NOT talk about hers. Women’s whole operating system runs on different juice. Visualise the talking we do about our “feelings” as ‘hard drive de-fragmentation.’ When you are de-fragmenting the hard drive on your computer, there’s nothing you can do but sit there while it does its work. You don’t have to give it directions, it knows what it needs to do and it will get on with it. It just takes a while. We can ‘de-fragment’ on our own (or with a group of girlfriends over ‘peach bellinis’) but we want you. Girlfriends are great, but every once in a while when life gets really "shite" and we want to vent, we want our other half to listen. We trust you even more than we trust our girlfriends. You are the one we share our lives and bodies with, so we want to share our feelings with you, too. We don’t need advice, we’re not teenage girls, we’re strong women who just want - need - to talk to our man, so we can re-group and get on with what ever has to be done. All you have to do if you want to help us with this process is understand that we only need empathy. Not advice. If we want advice, we’ll actually ASK for it. If we just need to talk, that’s what we’ll do.

Your part is easier than you make it. Say, “Uh-huh, uh-huh - I see what you’re saying.” “She said, that, huh?” “What did you say?” “Boy, that’s too bad, hon. You must have felt terrible.”

If we cry, hold our hand. Give us a hug. Offer us tea or wine. (Or whatever works at your house.) Be prepared that you may need to do this more than once, until we resolve whatever it is. That’s all you need to do to be a prince in our eyes.

 

3) Approach sex the way you would building a house. One brick at a time until the whole thing is laid. (Hee hee)

For most women, foreplay starts with that, “You look great,” or sours with, “Are you finally ready?” If you spend a few moments during the day/evening when there is no possibility that you can have sex at that particular moment, looking at your woman as though there’s nothing else you want to do but look at her, she will feel desired, not devoured. When you are making love, talk to her. Not as in, “a funny thing happened to me today,” but as in, “I’ve always thought you have the most beautiful skin…” Yes, it’s strategy of a sorts, only it’s not a takeover you’re trying to stage, but a fulfilment… for both of you.

 

4) Do one thing that you really and truly do not want to do, but you know she would love. I’m not talking about disowning your irritating mother. (If in fact, you have an irritating mother. Your wife hasn’t said anything to me, I promise.) It should be something that won’t harm you, but just isn’t in your realm of desires. If you know she’d like you to cook for her and you’re a lousy cook and hate the idea, do it anyway. Just once. If it’s dancing, go. Make it clear that this is a gift, a one-off thing that will not be repeated just because you did it once. (Gosh- I hope you’re not married to someone like that, who’d turn a gesture of generosity into a point of argument, as in, “if you did it once, why can’t you do it again?”) If your spouse can be trusted to understand this thing that you are doing is like climbing a mountain for your love, think of one or two things that she’d love, but you’d ordinarily hate and do them. Just for her.

As I read over this list, I realise it’s really not about how to flirt, is it? It’s more about how to love. Have I covered everything? Probably not, but it’s good for a start, I hope.