Monday, August 13, 2012

Stymied by the weather.


We had a heat wave here last week-- no surprise, since it's August and I live in the Northern Hemisphere-- but where I live, in Southern California, the weather is so mild 99% of the time that I have a rule that I don't complain about the weather. (I grew up here, and felt very strongly for my first eighteen years that there was nothing more boring to talk about than weather. What weather??)  But the flip side of that super-mild climate-- and I promise I'm not complaining!-- is that I've lost all immunity to shifts in temperature. I spent much of last week trying to get through the lowest-common-denominator version of my to-do list: the emails that couldn't wait, the phonecalls I'd scheduled.

If I'm sitting on a full manuscript of yours, and there are a lot of you in this category right now, I'm sorry! I'll get back to you about it soon!

I spent a long time last week pondering a thoughtful post from Agent Kristin about whether there might be better "seasons" for querying agents. If you're in the midst of the agent query process, I urge you to give her post a look.

I can't say for sure whether I have quite as strong a "season" for queries as Kristin does (see above re: my hometown's relative lack of weather!), but I have always felt that the best queries seem to arrive in waves. I go a few weeks sometimes where nothing catches my eye, and then all of a sudden I'll get three or four or five great projects within a 36-hour period. I've always thought there was just something in the air at certain moments, that all the best projects are magically sent out at the same time, but maybe it's not you, it's me.

How about you? Do you find you're more productive at certain times of year, or times of day? Can you put your finger on why? Any tips for making August feel more like October? Literal or metaphorical, I don't care. Go nuts.

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