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I think everyone who lives in New York probably has a real estate horror story. I’ve rented three apartments in New York, including my current one. The first sort of fell into my lap. I posted a roommate ad on Craigslist and a woman contacted me and we clicked right away. (Although that would later go south.) My current apartment I got because a friend was looking for a roommate at the same time I was about to get priced out of Manhattan.

But here’s my broker horror story! This happened in 2004, for reference. Long story short, the aforementioned first roommate decided to get married and break the lease on our place, which gave me two weeks to find a new place and move out. I spent that first week going to open houses and combing through the no-fee ads on Craigslist. The best apartment I found that way was a huge one-bedroom that was probably the most disgusting apartment I have ever seen. It was dirty, the previous tenants had left a bunch of junk behind, and we won’t even talk about what I found in the bathroom. With a week to go, I relented and started contacting brokers.

I contacted three brokers. The first was with one of those big firms in midtown, and after he laughed at me when I told him how little I could afford, he pawned me off on his “showing agent,” a very nice lady who was clearly having a very rough day. She had never even been to two of the apartments and didn’t know anything about the neighborhoods. (It reminded me of something my mother once said. When I was in high school, she bought a new car. She’d been driving a Honda for ten years, and she intended to buy a new Honda, but she wound up buying a Nissan because “The people at the Honda dealership didn’t want to sell my a car.” This broker clearly did not want my money.) I met with two neighborhood brokers as well. The first only showed me apartments in the sketchier part of my neighborhood. The second showed me my dream apartment, and it was juuust out of my price range, but so gorgeous that I wanted it, so I put down a down-payment and met with the super/proxy for landlord (who reportedly adored me) but I found out three days later that the landlord had promised the place to someone else but hadn’t told anyone. I wound up with this consolation prize apartment owned by the same landlord. It was cheap, it was across the street from my old place, and the broker offered to “discount the fee, though it was still about 12% of the yearly rent. But I was in a bind, so I emptied my savings account and took it.

So what I have learned is that renting in New York City is an ORDEAL and I never want to move again.

I read a lot of book blogs, so I feel like I have a decent sense for what books people are really loving, and I have to say, I have this feeling a lot, that I’m the lone person who just could not get into a particular book. In the comments to that post, Outlander, Norah Roberts, Jennifer Crusie, Sookie Stackhouse, and a handful of romance classics don’t make out too well.

This is a thing that happens across the board for me. There are a bunch of things that are insanely popular that I just don’t like. I hate horror movies. I don’t eat tomatoes. I’ve seen a handful of episodes of Dr. Who and enjoyed them, but apparently this has not been enough to turn me into a frothing fangirl. I don’t find Jude Law attractive. Then there are things I should like but don’t. For example, on paper, I should like Ani DiFranco. My musical tastes veer toward lady singer-songwriters quite a bit, and a lot of my favorite bands have toured with her and have the same kind of flavor, but… her voice just grates on me. That, and I had a roommate when I first moved to New York who listened either to Ani DiFranco or Biggie pretty much all the time. (I know. I don’t get it either. I guess there was that month after she got the Depeche Mode’s greatest hits, so that was a change.)

So, I’m curious, tumblr people: What unpopular opinions do you hold?

queryquagmire:

Every time I read a title like this, I think to myself, “Only 30?”

Some authors go through hundreds of rejections. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the author’s eventual chances of getting published, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the quality of their book.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was rejected by 20 publishers. Stephen King’s Carrie was rejected dozens of times. J.K. Rowling was rejected a dozen times, even by houses like Penguin and HarperCollins, before Bloomsbury picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Think that’s bad? C.S. Lewis received over 800 rejections before selling a single piece of writing. Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was rejected 29 times. Gone With the Wind scored Margaret Mitchell 25 rejection letters. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected 121 times. Louis L’Amour received over 200 rejections before he sold a single piece of writing.

30 rejection letters might feel like a lot to some authors. It’s not. I sometimes get query letters from authors that say, “I’ve been rejected four times already, please publish my book!” and I almost want to laugh. Four rejections is nothing in publishing. That’s just you getting warmed up. It’s not impressive. If your book is truly great, and if you are truly passionate about publishing, you will soldier on, learn from your rejected queries, and keep hunting for the right agent or publisher.

Yes this, and also, Morganstern says very little from her first draft survived, which Galleycat points out: “Writers can learn two important lessons from this story. Your National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) manuscript is only a first draft and needs months or years of editing before publication. Most importantly, don’t give up–keep trying to find an agent who loves your kind of story.”

I mean… ask me about my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel, the 100,000 word beast currently taking up space on my hard drive.

missworded:

There is so much Asskars on my dash today, I feel like it’s my birthday instead of his.

Happy birthday to everyone! But most especially ASkars.