In Joe Heller's Catch-22 a pilot thinks he is crazy and wants to go home but can't because you have to be crazy to go home and if you're crazy you wouldn't have the sanity to request going home, or want to, catch-22.
I'm beginning to feel like there is a writers catch-22, in effect, at least in America. You have to get an agent in order to get published; you have to get published in order to get an agent. This is an oversimplification of course, however --- personally, I have been writing for 30-plus years have been published in 3 dozen, or more, publications and also, for the past maybe 2-3 years, several Internet publications, but this all seems very minor and trivial when I consider I can't find an agent who will even read a manuscript ...? As far as (big---book) publishers go, refer to above catch-22. So, then the question becomes why and am I really a writer?
I began writing poetry, then short stories and have completed four novels.
Does this make me a writer? Is it because I had a short story published in The Maryland Review and not the New Yorker or AIM Magazine, etc. and not Esquire, etc. that agents and/or publishers (one would be enough) are not flocking to my door. I have had (small) publishers request more of my writing and have been published more than once in several of these (small) publications. I guess the word small could be interchanged with the word insignificant as far as many (big, or should it be just bigger) publishers are concerned and, as far as agents are concerned, you got it, catch-22.
Writing is a very lonely profession and you can go crazy, as many writers have, so maybe I'm just going crazy, ah, there it is, I am going crazy, this letter is a bad sign then too, I can feel it. It's starting to make me feel almost as bad as when I write a query letter, I hate writing query letters; who likes getting rejected?
Wait a second, my wife has just come into my study and told me that I should stop writing this letter and stop writing query letters also, get back to writing stories and editing those I have already written, ah, but she is so much smarter than I am and so I'd better listen to her ... ah, she has also just suggested to me a way out of my predicament she has suggested I get a literary agent to ... ah ... but she is not a writer, my wife, ... catch-22.
Keith
I'm beginning to feel like there is a writers catch-22, in effect, at least in America. You have to get an agent in order to get published; you have to get published in order to get an agent. This is an oversimplification of course, however --- personally, I have been writing for 30-plus years have been published in 3 dozen, or more, publications and also, for the past maybe 2-3 years, several Internet publications, but this all seems very minor and trivial when I consider I can't find an agent who will even read a manuscript ...? As far as (big---book) publishers go, refer to above catch-22. So, then the question becomes why and am I really a writer?
I began writing poetry, then short stories and have completed four novels.
Does this make me a writer? Is it because I had a short story published in The Maryland Review and not the New Yorker or AIM Magazine, etc. and not Esquire, etc. that agents and/or publishers (one would be enough) are not flocking to my door. I have had (small) publishers request more of my writing and have been published more than once in several of these (small) publications. I guess the word small could be interchanged with the word insignificant as far as many (big, or should it be just bigger) publishers are concerned and, as far as agents are concerned, you got it, catch-22.
Writing is a very lonely profession and you can go crazy, as many writers have, so maybe I'm just going crazy, ah, there it is, I am going crazy, this letter is a bad sign then too, I can feel it. It's starting to make me feel almost as bad as when I write a query letter, I hate writing query letters; who likes getting rejected?
Wait a second, my wife has just come into my study and told me that I should stop writing this letter and stop writing query letters also, get back to writing stories and editing those I have already written, ah, but she is so much smarter than I am and so I'd better listen to her ... ah, she has also just suggested to me a way out of my predicament she has suggested I get a literary agent to ... ah ... but she is not a writer, my wife, ... catch-22.
Keith
