Spent the past week or so following up on the advice offered me by my senior colleagues as a part of my 3rd year, pre-tenure review (which wrapped up departmentally at the end of last month or so). The advice? Get off your ass and get the first book manuscript circulating.
And so.
It's not a great deal different from putting together application packages for the job market: each press wants basically the same information, but often configured in subtly different (perhaps they'd say distinctive?) ways. Like the job search, the process itself is shrouded in mystery--other than a rough set of hunches based on the past few years of catalogs, I don't know who will be interested or who will dump my package in the old circular file. And then there's the gnawing suspicion that I don't have all the information I need to be successful.
Like many of my friends (you know who you are), I tend to err on the side of perfection, when I know that my work is at least as good as much of what I read; even then, I have a tough time letting it go. Every year, we go to CCCC and tell each other to stop being so tough on ourselves, to send more stuff out, to let journals take responsibility for editorial suggestions, etc. And every year I vow to get more of my work out there, only to fall back into the same patterns less than a month later. Ahhh, but not so this year. Inquiry packages go out no later than Monday...
So wish my little manuscript luck...
