Back and Confused
I know I pretty much dropped off the earth for awhile there, but a) Let's face it, Ioan hasn't really been active, so there's not much for me to talk about, and b) National Novel Writing Month was a tough one this year, so I had to focus on that. I'm back, however, and although my posting here might be sporadic, I'm hoping to be a bit more active on following_sea, at least.
So let's kick things off with not so much an update as a musing.
So it has now been more than a year since I took a deep breath and nervously wrote/sent a letter to Ioan, suggesting that he and the internet band together to make a new Hornblower show a reality. I figured I wouldn't talk about it again until I got some results, even if that was a form letter. However, a year has passed and I haven't gotten any response whatsoever.
Now, a polite letter saying "Thank you, but there's no interest." would have been disappointing, but at least it meant someone actually read the letter. A form letter, while feeling impersonal, is at least an acknowledgement that the letter was received. But dead silence causes my mind to start wondering if there's something else at play. Nothing sinister, of course, but little things that could explain this.
Some examples:
1. Did I not label the letter properly? I wrote out the address exactly as it was written on the agent's website. However, it didn't include any variation of "The United Kingdom" that I saw. Did they just assume you add that on as a given? Does that mean my letter may have wound up in London, Canada, or is languishing in a dead letter office somewhere?
2. Is there such a massive pile of mail for Ioan/all the other guys Hamilton Hoddel manages that they still haven't gotten to mine yet? Will I finally get a response in like five years?
3. Did the guy who reads the letters to check for bad content think that, once Ringer was cancelled, this letter wouldn't apply anymore, and just ignore it?
4. Did my lack of a return envelope mean that I wouldn't get any response, period? I thought those only applied if I wanted a photo.
5. And the one paranoid one...for some reason, was every letter answered except mine? Did I somehow come across as too cold, and thus off-putting?
I know that Ioan himself doesn't read most of the fan mail he gets, so I try not to think of this in relation to him. And I'm planning to ask around on the various websites I solicited letters from to see if anyone else got a response. I just...expected to hear something by now, you know? I thought most fan-mail centers liked to send some form of acknowledgement to the writers.
Sorry, this is kind of heavy for a return post. But it's been on my mind a bit ever since I passed the year-long mark. I promise I'll return to my normal mode of enthusiasm in future posts.
So let's kick things off with not so much an update as a musing.
So it has now been more than a year since I took a deep breath and nervously wrote/sent a letter to Ioan, suggesting that he and the internet band together to make a new Hornblower show a reality. I figured I wouldn't talk about it again until I got some results, even if that was a form letter. However, a year has passed and I haven't gotten any response whatsoever.
Now, a polite letter saying "Thank you, but there's no interest." would have been disappointing, but at least it meant someone actually read the letter. A form letter, while feeling impersonal, is at least an acknowledgement that the letter was received. But dead silence causes my mind to start wondering if there's something else at play. Nothing sinister, of course, but little things that could explain this.
Some examples:
1. Did I not label the letter properly? I wrote out the address exactly as it was written on the agent's website. However, it didn't include any variation of "The United Kingdom" that I saw. Did they just assume you add that on as a given? Does that mean my letter may have wound up in London, Canada, or is languishing in a dead letter office somewhere?
2. Is there such a massive pile of mail for Ioan/all the other guys Hamilton Hoddel manages that they still haven't gotten to mine yet? Will I finally get a response in like five years?
3. Did the guy who reads the letters to check for bad content think that, once Ringer was cancelled, this letter wouldn't apply anymore, and just ignore it?
4. Did my lack of a return envelope mean that I wouldn't get any response, period? I thought those only applied if I wanted a photo.
5. And the one paranoid one...for some reason, was every letter answered except mine? Did I somehow come across as too cold, and thus off-putting?
I know that Ioan himself doesn't read most of the fan mail he gets, so I try not to think of this in relation to him. And I'm planning to ask around on the various websites I solicited letters from to see if anyone else got a response. I just...expected to hear something by now, you know? I thought most fan-mail centers liked to send some form of acknowledgement to the writers.
Sorry, this is kind of heavy for a return post. But it's been on my mind a bit ever since I passed the year-long mark. I promise I'll return to my normal mode of enthusiasm in future posts.