{"id":201,"date":"2010-06-27T16:18:19","date_gmt":"2010-06-27T23:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardpnixon.wordpress.com\/?p=201"},"modified":"2010-06-27T16:18:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-27T23:18:19","slug":"busy-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/27\/busy-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Busy work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I hate busy work. I&#8217;m trying to work on my current manuscript as well as future manuscripts, plus scripts, plus all kinds of other stuff. I&#8217;ve now read so much about &#8220;how the publishing world works&#8221; that my eyes are bleeding, and I have no more confidence now than when I started. Why? Because all the experts say different things. Do this, one says. No, do that, says another. This is what&#8217;s most important, says the first. No, that&#8217;s what&#8217;s most important. It&#8217;s like they have no clue, and I find that disturbing, especially since they get 20%. A big old &#8220;What for?&#8221; would seem to apply. Of course I just read the article in this month&#8217;s Writer&#8217;s Digest, and it&#8217;s frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>A big problem is that agents are one shots &#8211; you have one shot to hook them. Miss and you have to move on. While that makes common sense, it starts to make less sense when you&#8217;re supposed to tell the agent WHY you are contacting them specifically. &#8220;You were number 492 on my list of the 500 top agents?&#8221; Hmm, not a good idea.<\/p>\n<p>But what to do? I&#8217;ve read the information, I know what I need to do, I know what to expect, and I&#8217;m willing to learn anything I don&#8217;t already know.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe\u00a0 I&#8217;m just getting a case of nerves prior to pulling the trigger. Hmm&#8230;could be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I hate busy work. I&#8217;m trying to work on my current manuscript as well as future manuscripts, plus scripts, plus all kinds of other stuff. I&#8217;ve now read so much about &#8220;how the publishing world works&#8221; that my eyes are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/27\/busy-work\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-troubles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}