The gmail cleanout continues.<\/p>\n
This made it onto the front page in 2004, I think.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember writing any of this\u2026
\n<\/p>\n
From December 2004:<\/p>\n
Adventures with Craig\u2019s List<\/p>\n
A buddy of mine bought a baby buggy from Craig\u2019s List.\u00a0 Say that ten times fast.\u00a0 I was about three bottles of wine, five beers and one scotch in and flirting with his very pregnant wife when he drunkenly lurched away from the dining room table and said he had to check his email.\u00a0 He returned five minutes later and shouted, \u201cI got the baby buggy!\u201d<\/p>\n
His wife squealed in delight and I turned, Johnny Walker in hand, and slurred something to which he replied, in a hushed whisper, \u201cCraig\u2019s List.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was ignorant of what my friend called America\u2019s greatest grassroots movement since All Your Base, so, when the booze wore off, I crawled from my bed to my Writer\u2019s Studio, which is a 1970\u2019s card table with a spider plant, a laptop and 17 empty beer bottles precariously balanced on it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My laptop was on, which is always suspicious, so I glanced at what I had been writing in my sleep — she is thinking of me I am thinking of her she is there blue letters following eyes darkfall night with tits and sex<\/em> — and then went to Craig\u2019s List.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve since learned that everybody in the world knows about Craig\u2019s List and, somehow, I\u2019ve been left out of the loop.\u00a0 There\u2019s everything from horny midgets looking for a hookup at the corner Starbucks to IT companies seeking reasonably intelligent tech heads.\u00a0 My first action immediately became clear \u2013 take out a personal ad.\u00a0 It\u2019s a sort of compulsion these days.\u00a0 Wherever I can, I take out personal ads, then I neglect to check my email because all women online are fat and hideous.<\/p>\n
Now, now, I don\u2019t mean to be rude.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing wrong with fat girls and it\u2019s a real challenge for them to blah blah blah.\u00a0 See?\u00a0 I\u2019m politically correct.\u00a0 The girls aren\u2019t fat, they\u2019re attractive-challenged.<\/p>\n
Actually, I do know one internet girl who isn\u2019t fat.\u00a0 She sent me pictures and she\u2019s pretty hot, as a matter of fact, and very pink, if you know what I mean and I think you do.<\/p>\n
No one responded to my personal, which is a shame.\u00a0 I thought it was one of my better attempts.\u00a0 It\u2019s odd, too, because there are a dozen lonely women posts at the DC Craig\u2019s List every day.\u00a0 If they\u2019re so desperate, why aren\u2019t they scanning the men looking for women personals?\u00a0 Women are selfish.<\/p>\n
Well, after striking out at love, again, I made Craig\u2019s List one of my daily stops so I could price competitive baby buggy\u2019s and show up my friend.\u00a0 Then, in my ongoing attempt to bring traffic to Great Society, I figured I\u2019d write up a random ad in the \u201cWriting Gigs\u201d spot.\u00a0 I was drunk, so I threw out the usual stuff \u2013 Great Society is owned by Random House and everyone who writes for us will get a contract for a million dollars and they\u2019ll have three years to finish their novel, of any length. All are accepted.<\/p>\n
In two days, I got about 120 replies.\u00a0 Only one of those folks showed any signs of intelligence.\u00a0 That gets me to my point.\u00a0 I\u2019m sort of writing this on the commuter train right now, so stick with me if I wander.\u00a0 There\u2019s a six foot girl in the seat facing me with long black hair and the most exotic face this side of a Fellini movie.\u00a0 She\u2019s been painting on her eyebrows for about 25 minutes now and I can\u2019t decide if she\u2019s frightening or insanely beautiful.<\/p>\n
Writing is about selling yourself.\u00a0 Whether you\u2019re responding to something from Houghton Mifflin or an obviously drunken ad on Craig\u2019s List for some back-country internet zine, you don\u2019t send one word emails that say \u201cinterested\u201d or \u201cPay?\u201d\u00a0 You don\u2019t send stuff like \u201cTell me what you pay and I\u2019ll write.\u201d Or \u201cYou need me, but you gotta hook me up with an agent.\u201d<\/p>\n
You certainly don\u2019t fucking send me four pages of rambling shit that basically asks \u201cDo U NoW How to Get ME Publisshed?~?!?\u201d<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m not at the Greatsociety office, here at the penthouse suite of the World Building, I work for an organization that deals with real writers all day.\u00a0 Now, I\u2019m laid back.\u00a0 I look for quality writing and I don\u2019t care about jumping hoops and well-worded cover letters and proper outlines or proposals or shit like that.\u00a0 I\u2019m not like other publishers. I work with writers I like.\u00a0 But there are rules.\u00a0 First of all, if you start out talking about money, you ruin my high.\u00a0 I don\u2019t respond to ultimatums.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to publish you if you\u2019re a retard \u2013 and you are!\u00a0 I don\u2019t need you.\u00a0 There are 300 million people in America and 450 million of them are wannabe writers.\u00a0 Why are you special?\u00a0 The burden\u2019s on you.<\/p>\n
Now, I don\u2019t mean to suggest that writers send some hoity-toity proposal every time they contact some jack off lit zine, but there are some important points to remember.\u00a0 The person taking your writing wants to know a little bit about you \u2013 are you a 14 year old runaway who can\u2019t string two sentences together or are you a 33 year old single mother who wants a sexual relationship with me, no strings attached?\u00a0 Do I like your writing?\u00a0 Maybe send some samples.\u00a0 You can link to a page, if you like, but don\u2019t send attachments.\u00a0 Nobody accepts attachments because all writers are dangerously unbalanced and are responsible for every virus in existence, which they send to publishers who reject them.\u00a0 I know how it works.<\/p>\n
Part of selling yourself as a writer is to be both confident and humble.\u00a0 It\u2019s the great test of your life, moving the stuff you write, because you begin on the bottom.\u00a0 The publisher is looking for someone capable of doing the work and who doesn\u2019t have to be mothered.\u00a0 Don\u2019t think there are any good graces there.\u00a0 Sure the publisher needs you, but you\u2019re easily replaced.\u00a0 I mean, you have been in a bookstore, right?\u00a0 There are more than nine writers on those shelves.\u00a0 In fact, one million titles are published each year.\u00a0 That\u2019s just books.\u00a0 How many magazines and journals and webzines are out there, do you think?\u00a0 Oh, and don\u2019t forget that only about 10% of submitted manuscripts are published each year.<\/p>\n
The one guy who wrote me and caught my eye did it right.\u00a0 He gave me a brief introduction, used a curse word or two, sounded crazy, and provided a couple of stunning samples pasted right in the email.\u00a0 I knew he was in before I read the samples.\u00a0 You get a feel for these things.\u00a0 The author Kate Horsley had a question she asked her creative writing students \u2013 \u201cAre you a writer, or do you write?\u201d\u00a0 A trained eye can tell the difference right out the gate.\u00a0 What I find disheartening is that I\u2019m sure some of the other folks who sent me a retarded email are capable, as well.\u00a0 But they don\u2019t know how to communicate, they don\u2019t understand the trade.\u00a0 90% of writers don\u2019t strike out because they\u2019re bad.\u00a0 They strike out because they can\u2019t cope with the business aspect of writing.\u00a0 They can do the work, but they can\u2019t deal with what happens next.<\/p>\n
So if you\u2019re interested in writing for someone, you should be able to write more than one word.\u00a0 If you want to know how much we pay, you might want to let us know what you can do.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to pussyfoot around with some fuckhead writer just to find out that they can\u2019t write shit.\u00a0\u00a0 If your response to that is, hey, payment details are part of the whole thing, well, you\u2019re right.\u00a0 Except you still want to tell me a bit more because an email that just says\u00a0 \u201cPay?\u201d\u00a0 is junk mail.\u00a0 Hell, I don\u2019t even know what you\u2019re talking about.\u00a0 What if we do pay and some intern is checking the emails and, like at my real writing job, we got 300 emails a day from people?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What\u2019s going to happen to your \u201cPay?\u201d and \u201cinterested\u201d and one line crap questions?\u00a0 They\u2019ll be erased, and that\u2019s one more shot you missed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The gmail cleanout continues. This made it onto the front page in 2004, I think.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember writing any of this\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sunday-archive","tag-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}