Hi Sars,

The colour choice is important, but you’re right in that it isn’t so much the “light colours vs. dark” issue.

What Shoe needs to do is look for cold colours as opposed to warm. Cold colours “recede” from the eye and warm colours advance. Traditionally cold colours are the blue/green end of the spectrum, but where it gets complicated is that with all the colour mixes available now, you can have both cool and warm “cream,” for example. (Think the colour of eggshells — warm — as opposed to the colour of an oyster shell – cool.)

If Shoe’s picking paints she could ask for the help of a trained colour mixer, but the easiest thing is just to look at one of those paint charts with her eyes unfocused. Cooler shades will appear as smaller squares of colour.

K

Dear K,

Well, you learn something new every day.Thanks for the recommendation; other apartment-lightening strategies appear below.If I got a suggestion more than once, it’s asterisked.

full-spectrum lightbulbs*
keep all light fixtures and bulbs clean and dusted
Lamps with five different bulbs and different-colored shades (available at Target)
Lots of light/translucent textures in your furnishings, i.e. rice-paper blinds
The Ikea in College Park, MD
Shades of the same color along a spectrum (it’s contrast that can make a room feel smaller)
Slow-starting fluorescent bulbs
Paint the ceiling blue; add clouds; paint plants on the wall
Use big pieces to decorate (lots of smaller things gives a sense of clutter)
Use wall-hangings or wall art to draw the eye upwards; hang ’em high
Transparent (or partly transparent) furniture, a la Isamu Noguchi’s coffee table
Create the illusion of extra windows, like they did here

Hey Sars,

Since you’ve given advice related to the publishing world in previous Vines,
I thought I’d ask for your insight.

Back when I was younger and cockier, I sent some query letters out
concerning the book I was writing, figuring that at the rate I was going I
would have the manuscript ready in a year.Out of a dozen letters, I got
three requests for sample chapters: one of these ended in a rejection slip,
one didn’t want to look at chapters that were under consideration elsewhere,
and one actually asked for the complete ms.

Yeah.That was in 1999.

Life kind of took over, and while I picked at the project over the
intervening years, unable to put it down when it showed such promise, I
never did send that complete ms.I was pretty horrified at how badly I’d
dropped the ball, but, well, okay, lesson learned, do not try to sell
chickens when all you’ve got is eggs.Two degrees, a wedding, and a job
later, I finally dusted it off and got back to work in early 2005.And late
last night I actually finished the damn thing.

So now I’m back to sending queries.It seems to me that the logical place
to start is the people who were interested before.Obviously another query
letter is in order, but do I mention their previous interest?It seems like
the prudent thing on one hand to distinguish myself from the slush
pile…but I don’t so much want to call attention to the stupid delay in
finishing the ms, either.Also, what’s the statute of limitations on
rejection slips?If a publisher wasn’t interested in 1999, are they fair
game for a query again in 2006?Or do I cross them off the list forever?

Thanks for any advice you can throw at me…

Better Late Than Never, I Guess

Dear Late,

Congratulations on finishing!

I forwarded your letter to the venerable Miss Snark to see if she might want a crack at it first; her breadth of experience with questions like yours is broader than mine — and her archives are definitely worth a read, both for information and for fun.

But she hasn’t gotten back to me yet, so I’ll give you my sense of things, starting with the fact that you should probably be querying agents, not publishers directly.Authors’ experiences with getting unrepped work looked at can vary depending on the kind of ms., and you don’t say what kind of book it is, but it’s a lot easier to get it onto someone’s desk for a more serious read if you’ve got an agent behind it.

Opinions vary on how much you should say in query letters about where else the ms. is being looked at or what you’ve done with it prior; generally speaking, it’s best to keep that vague — but if you’re re-querying places you’ve queried before, you might mention that they’d shown an interest in the ms. before.There’s a lot of turnover in publishing, so the people you dealt with in ’99 are likely gone, and it’s true that you don’t want to draw attention to the fact that you didn’t get on the stick with finishing until now…but speaking for myself, if I asked for a writing sample and didn’t get it, and then I figured out on my own that it was the same person, that would count against you with me.Not enough that I definitely wouldn’t work with you, necessarily, but if you tried to slip that past me, I wouldn’t be impressed.

But…this is why you should try to get an agent, honestly.They know what to reveal and what to conceal, and they do this kind of thing in the phone pitch so that you don’t have to deal with it; it’s their area of expertise, whereas yours is writing (theoretically…heh), and you won’t necessarily know how and what to sell as well as a rep would.

Readers, if you have anything to add, please feel free.There’s a fairly large variance in everyone’s experiences depending on if it’s a novel or a how-to or a genre book or whatever, and not every agent is a great agent or a great fit…my experience is not universal, is the point, so do weigh in if you think there’s something important I missed.

I’m headed off to college. Will my cats forget me by the time I come back for winter break? (I’ve had them for almost two and a half years.) How long does it take a cat to forget someone?

Worried

Dear Worried,

Mine didn’t forget me, but…let’s distinguish between “actually remembering a particular human, the way other humans do” and “strongly associating a particular human with opening cans of cat food.”Cats are not actually all that smart, for the most part, and if they get out of the habit of curling up on your legs or running after you to the kitchen, it may take a day or two to re-acculturate them (don’t even know if that’s a word, but let’s just go with it).

It depends on the cat, too.I could go on walkabout for five years and Little Joe would still run right up to me when I got home, but Little Joe is needy and thinks he’s a Labrador.Hobey will slink under my hand when I’ve been gone for 36 hours, but Hobey is cranky and thinks he’s deposed royalty.

Short version: don’t worry about it.Cat memories are, sadly, pretty short a lot of the time, but since this works in your favor come pilling time, just come bearing treats and don’t overthink it.

[9/14/06]

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