The business of writers is writing, not necessarily
publishing. Yet, writing is much too difficult a thing to do as a
hobby. Gardening is a hobby, cooking, even painting, but not
writing. There is a definite sense of drudgery in dreaming,
designing and crafting a novel, a piece of poetry or an essay. If
you are a serious writer – bitten by the bug as they say – and see
the world through a writer's eyes the process of creating and
recreating reality in words and phrases is compulsive. Like the man
or woman who must touch the door knob three times at night before
going to sleep, you can't stop writing; you will never be able to
stop writing.
It is a special kind of hell one finds oneself in when they
are blessed or cursed with the need, the ability, the perspicacity,
even the talent to write and are unable to publish. The world of
agents and publishers abounds with scandals, scams and scoundrels.
Once a writer has waded through this mud puddle, they can begin to
deal with the chronically self important, egotistical and just plain
ignorant. Indeed, a prerequisite and profound self importance,
egotism and ignorance is required to assert that the agents and
publishers (salesmen and women) are more important to the English
Lexicon than the writers (craftsmen and women) doing the work.
As so often happens in others walks of life many agents and
publishers experience a sense of entitlement growing out of having
more money than courtesy, the privilege of hiding behind a kind of
anonymity, and reveling in an unfair distribution of power. Such
entitlement excuses, even promotes, bad behavior. For instance,
there are those agents and publishers who never answer queries, or
return manuscripts and proposals regardless of what they have
promised. Now, I am not sure that I would want to sign with an agent
or publisher who wasn't bright enough to use a SASE or find the reply
button on an email. Nonetheless, it never seems to occur to them
that they are handling someone's hard and cherished work, and that is
infuriating.
Of course, there are the adolescents who sets out an
incredibly rigid, idiotic and sometimes bizarre submission criteria.
The point of this exercise is to discourage aspiring writers from
bothering them and by extension entering the industry. This process
is known as obstructionism and was, if I am not mistaken, developed
and perfected by the United States federal government.
Any writer who has been on the agent/publisher treadmill
for a number of years has run into the "judge." The "judge" probably
knows nothing about the process of creation other than how to pimp
someone else's work; has never written anything more sophisticated
than a 7th grade caliber essay on how to write, attract an agent or
get published, which will be posted on their own website; very likely
has not taken the time to read the material submitted to them. Once
having access to a naïve supplicant they can't resist the impulse to
wound as well as reject. I suppose it is the same impulse that
accounts for animal torture, destroying flowerbeds and discriminating
against people outside a certain social class.
It is easy to become paranoid and feel stonewalled, shut
out and even invisible while jumping through the hoops and playing
the games to gain admission into a world that will allow me to do the
only thing I have ever wanted to do and make a living. It is getting
hard to keep the faith, hard to keep working, hard to keep dreaming.
I tell myself that if I can only hold on, the Law of Averages
dictates that sooner or later I will find a sane man or woman in the
vast sociopath wilderness of agents and publishers. I am not sure I
believe it anymore. There is a video that runs over and over in my
mind and keeps me working, submitting and hoping. I see my dad
sitting in his rose garden and saying, "Don't give up kid. Don't
give the bastards the satisfaction."
Blessings,
Barbara
__._,_.___A
publishing. Yet, writing is much too difficult a thing to do as a
hobby. Gardening is a hobby, cooking, even painting, but not
writing. There is a definite sense of drudgery in dreaming,
designing and crafting a novel, a piece of poetry or an essay. If
you are a serious writer – bitten by the bug as they say – and see
the world through a writer's eyes the process of creating and
recreating reality in words and phrases is compulsive. Like the man
or woman who must touch the door knob three times at night before
going to sleep, you can't stop writing; you will never be able to
stop writing.
It is a special kind of hell one finds oneself in when they
are blessed or cursed with the need, the ability, the perspicacity,
even the talent to write and are unable to publish. The world of
agents and publishers abounds with scandals, scams and scoundrels.
Once a writer has waded through this mud puddle, they can begin to
deal with the chronically self important, egotistical and just plain
ignorant. Indeed, a prerequisite and profound self importance,
egotism and ignorance is required to assert that the agents and
publishers (salesmen and women) are more important to the English
Lexicon than the writers (craftsmen and women) doing the work.
As so often happens in others walks of life many agents and
publishers experience a sense of entitlement growing out of having
more money than courtesy, the privilege of hiding behind a kind of
anonymity, and reveling in an unfair distribution of power. Such
entitlement excuses, even promotes, bad behavior. For instance,
there are those agents and publishers who never answer queries, or
return manuscripts and proposals regardless of what they have
promised. Now, I am not sure that I would want to sign with an agent
or publisher who wasn't bright enough to use a SASE or find the reply
button on an email. Nonetheless, it never seems to occur to them
that they are handling someone's hard and cherished work, and that is
infuriating.
Of course, there are the adolescents who sets out an
incredibly rigid, idiotic and sometimes bizarre submission criteria.
The point of this exercise is to discourage aspiring writers from
bothering them and by extension entering the industry. This process
is known as obstructionism and was, if I am not mistaken, developed
and perfected by the United States federal government.
Any writer who has been on the agent/publisher treadmill
for a number of years has run into the "judge." The "judge" probably
knows nothing about the process of creation other than how to pimp
someone else's work; has never written anything more sophisticated
than a 7th grade caliber essay on how to write, attract an agent or
get published, which will be posted on their own website; very likely
has not taken the time to read the material submitted to them. Once
having access to a naïve supplicant they can't resist the impulse to
wound as well as reject. I suppose it is the same impulse that
accounts for animal torture, destroying flowerbeds and discriminating
against people outside a certain social class.
It is easy to become paranoid and feel stonewalled, shut
out and even invisible while jumping through the hoops and playing
the games to gain admission into a world that will allow me to do the
only thing I have ever wanted to do and make a living. It is getting
hard to keep the faith, hard to keep working, hard to keep dreaming.
I tell myself that if I can only hold on, the Law of Averages
dictates that sooner or later I will find a sane man or woman in the
vast sociopath wilderness of agents and publishers. I am not sure I
believe it anymore. There is a video that runs over and over in my
mind and keeps me working, submitting and hoping. I see my dad
sitting in his rose garden and saying, "Don't give up kid. Don't
give the bastards the satisfaction."
Blessings,
Barbara
__._,_.___A
