I expect I'll write about this on both blogs tonight. I was going to try not to be too repetitious, but on second thought I think I'll just crosspost, mostly.

There is a Doctor Who episode, "The Girl in the Fireplace," in which the Doctor visits Madame de Pompadour at key moments throughout her short life.  For him it all happens in less than a day, but, as she remarks, she experiences the relationship from the perspective of "the slow path."  My contrasting experiences with my last two submissions of Heirs of Mâvarin has me thinking about the fast path and the slow path, and which one is better  in this particular context.

      A timeline of the slow path:

• February 20, 2006: mailed cover letter, three chapters and synopsis of Heirs of Mâvarin to Tor Books in NYC.
• February 23, 2006: the submission package arrived at Tor, according to the USPS, and was presumably consigned to the slush pile.
• February 28, 2006: eight days have passed, and the book hasn't been rejected yet, this time around.  The last time I mailed it out (an earlier draft back in the late 1990s), it was back in my mailbox exactly one week later. 
• June 23, 2006: the four month anniversary of the slush pile arrival marks the first date I can reasonably think that I might hear back on the submission, based on the "at least four to six months" mentioned in the Tor FAQ. Nothing happens.
• August 23, 2006: six months out, the "at least" part of that phrase kicks in.  Hey, it doesn't say "at most."  I consider whether it's time to query about the status of the submission, but decide to hold off.
• January 1, 2007: someone I admire but have never met offers to ask PNH of Tor about my submission. I say yes, and thank him in advance.
  
• January 4, 2007: I follow up by snail mail, politely asking the status of my submission.
• January 7, 2007 (date approximate): someone I admire but have never met actually does ask PNH about my submission.
• January 9, 2007: my contact reports back that PNH "did recall" the submission.
• February 23, 2007: I celebrate the one-year anniversary of the submission's arrival on the slush pile by designing a humorous anniversary card. I decide that the longer I wait, the more likely it is that it will not be rejected out of hand.  It occurs to me that I once sold a logic problem to Dell over two years after submitting it.
• March 20, 2007: I celebrate the 13-month anniversary of the package's initial mailing by emailing a query to an agent who prefers to operate by email.

     A timeline of the fast path:

• March 13, 2007: I read an article from Writer's Digest Online about agents seeking new clients.  I save the info to a file, narrowed down to the three that match my needs (i.e., they handle Fantasy, SF and YA)
• March 17, 2007: after working on it in my head for a few days, I write Version 1 of the query, and send to a few friends for feedback.
• March 20, 2007, 8:54 PM:  After good advice from my friends, careful study of the agent's guidelines and multiple revisions, I email the query. I spend the rest of the evening updating my mavarin.com entry page and my online bio, in case the agent peeks at either.
  
• March 21, 2007, 7:39 PM: I get an emailed "standard rejection letter," identical to the one the agent posted on her blog sometime in the past week. It's a nicely worded, encouraging letter, but it's still a form rejection, the same one I would have received had I sent a 20-page, misspelled horror of a query promoting a gerbil cookbook, a foundation document for a new religion, and fifty other unlikely projects.

So which is better, the fast path or the slow path?  It's kind of hard to be sure, because I'm still on the slow path. If it ends the same way as the fast path, with a form rejection and no feedback, then it will be a far greater disappointment than the one received in less than a day. But like that logic problem, my slush pile submission may be making its glacial way toward a good result.  Let's hope so, anyway.

As for the quick path, I'm thinking, as it begins to rain here, that it is possible to find at the end of it, not a pot of gold or even a rainbow, but a pewter lining in place of a silver one. At least I didn't have much time to get my hopes up.  At least I've now worked out a pretty good query to send out, even though it didn't do the job this time.  At least I have a few more places to try, and no more need to wait for this one to respond before trying the next.

And maybe it doesn't matter what I think, either of the fast path or the slow one.  It's not as if I get to choose which one to travel on. Some publishers and agents tend to respond quickly, others slowly.  Some individual examples may be highly variable in this respect, depending on the submission and the circumstances. Even if it is possible to find out which publishers and agents respond more quickly or more slowly than others, the info shouldn't be a deciding factor as one prepares to address the envelope or the email. I will gladly wait two years for a "yes" answer from a good agent or a mass market publisher, if that's what it takes. If it's a no, then sooner is better, but it's not something to aim for.  Better to get on with editing Mages and writing Revolutions, and try not to obsess about timelines. The reply will get here when it gets here. 

Dang, I'm depressed.

Sarah (applebonkers) posted an entry last week about a muy stressful incident in which a guy with a watch told her it was over an hour later than she thought it was, and she consequently believed (more or less) that she was terribly, disastrously, irredeemably late for curtain in the play she was in.  It turned out the Guy With A Watch was wrong by an hour, so Sarah was only slightly, no-big-deal late after all.  But meanwhile it had been an awful five minutes.

This reminded me of several little incidents in my own past, and since I hardly ever post on LJ these days, I may as well share them here.  I start by quoting my comment to Sarah:

One has to wonder...
...whether the guy was putting you on or misreading his watch. I remember meeting an actor friend in Burbank for an interview years ago, and he gave someone else the time and was wrong by an hour. I've always wondered whether he misread his watch or kept it on standard time or...just doesn't know what time it is outside his head.

Back in third or fourth grade, I woke up one morning and the alarm hadn't gone off. I got dressed and rushed to the bus stop, which that year was around the corner and down the street. There was nobody there. Convinced I'd missed the bus, I wasn't sure what to do. Somehow I ended up at the house of a childless couple near the bus stop, who liked me and other kids visiting them and their Weimeraner, Sonnyboy. Mr. Carlton explained to me about Daylight Savings Time, and showed me that it was an hour earlier than I thought it was. So yes, I made the bus after all.

***

Third anecdote, which I held back from the comment:

Now, what was it...?

Ah, yes.  When I was in high school, I tried out for Area All State choir and made it once, and All County Choir and made it I think twice.  The Area All State was the memorable one, because of the trauma of getting home afterward, but I've already told that story. But the second time in All County was memorable, too, and not in a good way.

I think somehow I had double-scheduled myself that Saturday.  In one part of my brain, I was going to some neighboring municipality for the mandatory All-County rehearsal, without which one isn't allowed to be in the concert itself a week or two later.  In another part of my brain, I think I was supposed to babysit the kids next door.  I think it was early that afternoon before I suddenly realized this was the day of the rehearsal.  I felt awful.  I called.  It was too late to go.  No All County for me that year.  It wasn't just the disappointment of not getting to be in the concert.  It was the fact that I'd messed up, badly.

But I did something similar a year or so later (she said, introducing the fourth anecdote).  Gene Roddenberry was coming to Syracuse, and he was going to hold a press conference in which he was going to talk about a new Star Trek series. (This was about 1975.  The new series with the old cast didn't happen.  The movies happened instead, a few years later.)  My mom made arrangements with someone at Syracuse University (where the speaking engagement was to be that night) to get me into the press conference.  I got out of school to do it, taped it and I think asked two questions.

Problem was, I had a job at Friendly Ice Cream in Fayetteville, and I'd forgotten to ask for the Thursday night off when Roddenberry would be speaking.  I checked the schedule, and sure enough, I was supposed to work that night.  Or so I thought. When I showed up for work on Thursday at 6 PM (or 5 PM, whenever it was), I was fired - for failing to show up for work on Wednesday night! Id been so hung up worrying about missing Roddenberry that I'd misread the schedule!  So: happy ending.  I got to see Roddenberry's appearance that night after all.  And I got rid of a job I was really starting to dislike anyway.

There are circumstances in which it's not so bad to be out of sync with time.

Karen