Mailing Your Manuscript
I’m reluctant to share a lot of what’s happening in my life as a writer because much of it is boring. There’s the typing part which has evolved into keyboarding and that sounds worse than typing. Every once in a while there’s a trip to the post office to get in line behind the woman mailing forty boxes of stuff to various nation states and postal codes hither and yon. What always amazes me is when the post office dude asks “how do you want to pay for this?” the lady’s reaction unfolds in a series of rummaging for coins, dark glances, and repetitive asides to her six year old who doesn’t have a major credit card handy or enough pennies to cover shipping and handling sufficient to fling those forty boxes into the system. We’ve already been through the fragile prologue. High explosives? Any drawings of Che Guevara or Joe Stalin? Insurance? Stamps? Live hogs at auction? ( I just want to beg the post office dude: please do not offer any more options to this person. She’s not even listening, man.)
I’m holding up my end of the bargain, I think, standing there with my manuscript box. I’m ready for the questions: go ahead and shake the box, pal, yeah, turn it on end. It takes more time to mail a novel than to write one, or so it seems, because one thing about the post office is this: they ask the same questions every time, culminating with the method of payment, which, for reasons the PO feel make it more human and accessible they’ve trained their workers to offer an array of options, credit card, debit card, cash, low down payment pay as you go no interest for seventeen years, and what I suppose was a well intended customer service thing has turned into a showstopper where the undecided form an effective commercial blockade and the entire nation grinds to a halt while you start hoping that Vesuvius will erupt, anything, just pay the man. Your carefully addressed box is bleeding from every orifice and by the time Our Lady of the Boxes dredges through the contents of her purse some sort of New Ice Age will devour the city and no one will be able to read your book or anyone else’s due to the extreme cold. Or, the recipient of your manuscript will think it was mailed from the trunk of a Pontiac by the guy from Goodfellas who wasn’t as dead as everyone supposed: DeNiro and company didn’t need to shoot him, they could’ve asked him to mail something, you know, run to the post office, and he would’ve shot himself.
Tomorrow we’ll discuss the SASE.
July 16th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Looking forward to the SASE post.
You description of this is why I have started using Automated Postal Machines. Sure, it lacks human contact and the opportunity for a good laugh. But it also stops me from grinding the enamel from my molars.
I’m convinced that this “no articles over 16 ounces bearing stamps” rule has nothing to do with terrorism (I’ve always been unclear on how it possibly could anyhow), but everything to do with making me use those Automated Postal Machines (the technicality here being that the mailing stickers it dispenses aren’t “stamps” and thereby allow you to drop anything up to a washer-dryer combination directly into the mail.
Of course, every so often, a real meathead stands in front of you at the APM. But after screwing up a few times answering the onscreen questions, they usually go stand in line.
If you’re into keeping you options open, grab a number for the real post office line, and then go to the APM. If the APM is slow and the post office is fast, you can always go back to the human interface. Of course, this has never yet happened to me…
July 19th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Loved reading your blog on waiting in line at the post office. I can relate! I wish you luck with your MS, now that it’s finally been mailed!