I Should Be Writing...: So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it.... -
So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it. (Query letter is fine. Synopsis is fucked up. Writing sample is fine.)
IMHO? Unless the lack of line breaks literally makes that whole section unreadable and that section itself is terribly important, that doesn’t seem like it should be a dealbreaker. Unless someone is being extra obsessive, of course, but if that’s the case, any random old thing could be a dealbreaker. I mean, I know they say first impressions matter, and formatting is terribly important, and there’s validity to those ideas, but humans are humans, and they make mistakes. A reasonable editor or agent should be able to judge the worth of a submitted work for itself, not for a formatting issue that isn’t uniformly present. After all, technical difficulties happen.
Personally, if I were reading through submissions and came across one with, say, a page that had no line breaks, I would just add some line breaks and keep reading … unless I had already decided not to read the rest for reasons unrelated to formatting. By which I mean the lack of line breaks in an isolated section of a submission wouldn’t keep me from reading it if I was enjoying it, and it wouldn’t keep me from accepting the work if I thought it was worth publishing (or, imagining that I’m an agent, it wouldn’t keep me from choosing to represent an author whose work seemed worth representing). And if I had the feeling the work was worth publishing, but the line-break-less section did render my reading experience painful, I would outright e-mail the author asking for a re-submission so I could finish reviewing properly. That’s just me, but I can’t be the only person on the planet to think like this. (I’m weird, but not THAT weird. ;) )
Also, if I’d done something like that and I’d sent the submission through e-mail, and if guidelines didn’t expressly forbid this for some reason, I would seriously consider sending a follow-up e-mail with everything corrected, prefaced by an introduction written with as much honest, heartfelt apology as I could muster.
Anyone who’s not human enough to understand that kind of thing is probably not the kind of person I would enjoy working with even at a distance, I think. That’s just my two cents … and now I’ll shut my blabbering trap before it digs my grave. ;)
I’ve started writing something new, and I appear to actually be writing something for once that isn’t about a guy and a girl who will end up in a romantic relationship with each other. What what what???
I have no idea when I reached the universe in which this is possible, but here I am.
i-should-be-writing: I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy... -
I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy in the stores because
1) coffee is more expensive than it should be,
2) it goes bad in like a day,
3) #2 again.
I mean, I can’t add liquor to my coffee every time it tastes bad.
Well I can.
But liquor is expensive…
I would so roast beans on my own if I could. I live in a really strange area though, where grocery stores are dinky and lack variety, so I’d have to buy them off the internet, which I generally refuse to do when it comes to food because of “oh god why did I take a training course on food safety” reasons.
But a $10 grinder and maybe being able to buy beans in smaller quantities so I don’t have to worry about the oils going rancid so fast? Hmmmm… I always forget about thrift stores when it comes to things that aren’t clothes. Thank you! :)
(Also, I second that notion that coffee is totally relevant to writing.)
-L
I, too, would have to buy green coffee beans off the Internet … unless I could wrangle some from a local company that roasts them, I guess. I also don’t live in some mystical area of the country where unicorns roam free and the normal grocery stores actually stock green coffee beans. I only wish I did. ;)
Here’s hoping your thrift store hunts turn up a grinder at some point, anyway! Crappy coffee is just not cool. Especially for the variety of writer that needs coffee like air or water. Maybe more than non-coffee-adulterated water. ;D
I really hate drinking ground coffee that you buy in the stores because
1) coffee is more expensive than it should be,
2) it goes bad in like a day,
3) #2 again.
I mean, I can’t add liquor to my coffee every time it tastes bad.
Well I can.
But liquor is expensive too.
So is a new coffee machine that accepts beans and grinds them up.
So is a grinder on its own.
So is a cup from Starbucks or any other café that claims to do coffee the correct way.
Can’t I just grow the berries in my basement?
I got a decent coffee grinder for $10 at a yard sale once … Maybe you could find one at a thrift store?
Alternately, you could buy the beans green and roast them in a pan or in your oven? Of course, I haven’t priced that out recently and I dunno what store coffee you buy, so it might not be cheaper, and roasting your own with DIY equipment tends to be smoky, but … It’s another option? ;) And at least the smoke will smell like coffee, I assume.
(I declare this conversation on-topic for this blog because writers need coffee. Yeah. That’s it.)
“What you read when you don’t have to determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” — Oscar Wilde
“One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.” — Paulo Coelho
“O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.” — William Shakespeare
I was all hyped up to write, and then I got distracted by a Facebook meme, and now I’m derailed.
Thought I was going to start March with a bang, but looks like it might be a slow start after all. Whoopsie.
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.” — Ernest Hemingway
“Writers live twice.” — Natalie Goldberg