a plain but ambitious girl

trying to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things. she/her

[harrypooper]

one thing about being a suburban kid is you’re always going to crave a suburban chain restaurant despite the fact that you live in one of the foremost culinary hotspots in the US. restaurant culture be damned, my kingdom for a cheesecake factory

[harrypooper]

hate being 33 and still actively paralyzed by the all-consuming feeling of wanting my (dead) mommy

[stars-bean]

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) dir. Blake Edwards

[lemonwithsoysauce]

I want this mug

[harrypooper]

TW parental death

Does it get easier? My mom passed six months ago and it’s like I don’t know how to live. People tell me it gets easier but it’s all older people who lost their 80 year old parents or something.

not in my experience, but your life grows around it, and it stops feeling new—like, grief still hits me like a ton of bricks quite often, but i know what that feels like, and i know how to comfort myself in its wake. it won’t be as eternally all-consuming as it is right now—i felt exactly the same, like i didn’t know how to live. it doesn’t get easier, but you get used to it.

i’m so sorry you’re in this club, and i’m sorry if this sounds blunt—it was all i wanted someone to tell me six months in, when it feels isolating and lonely and you’re walking around in a daze.

sending you all the love i can—be kind to yourself in your grief ♥️

[harrypooper]

one thing everyone should take away from the sopranos is that men hugging and kissing their male friends isn’t gay and is actually a normal thing we should all be doing all the time

[harrypooper]

today marks nine (!!!) years since my mom died, and in so many ways (despite my myriad flaws), i'm proud of the ways i've grown since then and the life i've built. but i do wonder if i will ever get past the desperate, suffocating sadness of my mom never getting to see me become the adult i am now--when she got sick, i was 23, fresh out of college, flailing, and shell-shocked.

i was a baby, and i'm glad i can now look back at that version of myself with a degree of empathy, but there is something very uniquely painful about realizing that she doesn't (didn't? wouldn't? can't?) know me in the context of like, A Life I Chose.

i moved to new york, i landed in publishing, i scored a Forever Job that i start in two weeks, i have new friends and a new life in an apartment she's never seen that is filled with her furniture, her photos, and her echoes; i have loved and lost and failed and grown into a very different person than i was nine years ago, and she wasn't here to see it, and that will always ache. the horrific irony is also that if she were alive, i almost certainly wouldn't have the life i do now, but there is a deep wound that comes from desperately wanting your mom to know you and knowing that she can't.

[harrypooper]

to my core i believe that thing you do! is the platonic ideal of a perfect movie

[harrypooper]

literally love eavesdropping on middle aged lady friends more than i love anything else

[harrypooper]

unreal levels of shvitzing happening in this godforsaken city right now

[harrypooper]

nothing makes me feel more middle-aged addled career woman than my new habit of putting lotion on my entire body before bed

[harrypooper]

one nice thing about my 30s is that i am entirely at peace with reaching the conclusion that i am not and will never be a nature person who suddenly finds it exhilarating to go for a sunrise hike. i am entirely content to be a city mouse

[obsob]

:3

[harrypooper]

widow’s bay is so goddamn fun like…..girls it’s like if parks and rec had a baby with a stephen king novel, blessed by the masterful matthew rhys, who continues to delight and astound me in every role.

boy oh boy did i miss a good ol’ fashioned monster-of-the-week format, the episodic television renaissance is upon us, i can feel it in my bones

[harrypooper]

one thing about me is that i will use a smiley face in a professional email with no fear and i feel it actually brings a touch of whimsy :)

[harrypooper]

just accepted a dream job offer for a pay increase 😭🥳🍾🎉🥰

i’ve been in the TRENCHES and landed with a fantastic agency, who are supportive, smart, close-knit, and seem fantastic and i am so relieved. oh my god. i just popped a bottle of champagne, current job be damned because i’m OUT bitches

[harrypooper]

As someone who works in publishing, what is your favorite part of the ~getting a book ready to be published ~ process? 💜

the process is so much less glamorous and more admin-heavy than a lot of people think, but my favorite part is the editorial process at the very beginning. i’m an agent, so I’m the first stop for hopeful authors, not least because i read the slush pile and the unsolicited manuscripts people send. thus, i read a lot of shit—not to be crass or dismissive, because i know people pour their whole lives into writing something they think is brilliant, but a lot of people struggle to separate the story in their head from the story on the page, and most of the time, something that’s promising in the first 10 pages falls apart by the end of the first 50. nothing, and i mean NOTHING, beats the rush of finding something that’s great all the way through on the first pass, or where you can see the potential for something great. being able to see potential and writing chops even if the story isn’t 100% there is a skill i’ve had to develop, but you do develop an instinct for it, and i know a good storyteller when i see one, and i know how to separate that from someone who has a great concept but spotty writing.

it’s immensely rewarding when you find something that doesn’t make editing feel like a chore. i thought i’d get jaded about that, but i haven’t—there’s so much joy and excitement in finding something you love. i find so much satisfaction in going back and forth with the authors on edits, and i love getting to figure out how to make something work editorially—it’s like a math problem, or maybe more aptly a geography problem, in the best sense. playing with manuscripts is so much fun, and i never anticipated loving the mechanics of it as much as i do. it’s the most fun part of my job, though you’ve got to shovel a lot of shit to find it.

i find the submission process super nerve-wracking, because it’s out of my hands then and subject to corporate approval and editorial board reviews. a big part of selling a book is knowing what editors want, and i’ll be so real, i love the networking and relationships you build. a lot of agenting is getting lunch with editors, networking with editors, awkward happy hours with editors, all that jazz, in service of making the submission process less-nerve-wracking. it’s tedious sometimes, but it’s also a lot of fun. people in publishing are unbelievably smart—they’re necessarily incredibly well-read and great conversationalists, in the way professors or lawyers or doctors are (and in a different world, a lot of us would be in those fields). everyone in the industry isn’t in it for the money, because it’s genuinely horrifically underpaid, but that also means everyone who works in publishing is deeply passionate about their job and their books.

i love that agenting means i don’t have the restraints and constrains of corporate culture (although i do sometimes wish i did), and that i can kind of pick and choose what i want to work with. the freedom of it is both daunting and exhilarating, not least because the work you put into a manuscript isn’t something you see a return on until years later, if ever—my first few projects died on submission, and that’s so hard to cope with. every editor and agent has The One (or twelve) That Got Away, and it’s so devastating.

that said, i love the relationship i get to build with authors, because we handle them over the long-term and the length of their career, whereas editors handle their book. there are a lot of characters in your client pool and a lot of writers will like, call to chat and ask one question about when they can expect their next royalty check and then talk my ear off about their lives for the next hour. i know a lot of people hate that, but i completely adore it. authors can be sensitive and temperamental—like, one time i had an author yell at me over the phone and threaten to sue me because i couldn’t personally fix that google listed his co-authors name first on their book—but they’re most often personable and grateful and thoughtful and smart, and it’s really been a joy to know so many of them.

there are a lot of things i don’t love, and i often fantasize about having any other job, but i really do think i’ve landed in the right field professionally! it’s a lot of work (no one could’ve prepared me for how much of my job would be managing royalties or learning legalese to negotiate tedious contracts), and i can’t understate the immense pressure you’re under to churn out bestsellers (agents make their money on royalties—we get 15% of what the author earns, so on a $40k advance, the agency would get $2k when they sign, $2k when they deliver six months later, and $2k when the book publishes two years later, of which i’d personally net a little over ~$3.6k), but it’s really a dream job for me. i’m incredibly lucky to have stumbled into it the way that i did, and it’s often been awful, but the highs are high and keep me doing what i do 🫶