SPLITTING MYSELF IN TWO

DeviatedDavid · Dec 28, 2017

The Issue: Pleasing different audiences when one's ideas are incongruent.

I have written several hundred pages of non fiction essays on a broad variety of topics including, but not limited to, politics, psychology and contemporary sexual mores. The essays vary in size from aphoristic things that are merely half a page to pieces that are 20 pages long. This might sound really pretentious or grandiose, but I think my essays articulate new ideas.

I want to write a query letter enticing an agent to survey my collection of essays and put them into a book.

I have a distinct tendency to formulate ideas that do not go together. Some of my ideas are left wing. Some of my ideas are right wing. My ideas do not contradict one another, but they are incongruent, e.g., being against gun control and opposing Trump’s economic policies do not contradict each other, but the kind of people who are against gun control generally like Trump.

I don’t want to sound unduly sarcastic, but I don’t think people read things to be edified; I think they read to find their biases and prejudices confirmed or affirmed. Since sometimes I might be termed a liberal, and at other times I might be termed a conservative, I fear that everyone will hate me. (Actually, the terms liberal and conservative are too vague and plebian for my viewpoints; I am using these terms as a sort of short-hand.)

My questions:

1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?

2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?

3) What do you think I should do

Finally, although I think I usually write fluidly and gracefully, somehow I get very klutzy when I write to people in the literary community. I feel like the country bumpkins in the Beverley Hillbillies (Do you remember that sit com) eating possum stew among people who have only dined on the French delights of Escoffier. So pardon me if this post is dreadfully awkward.

cornflake · Dec 28, 2017

DeviatedDavid said:
The Issue: Pleasing different audiences when one's ideas are incongruent.

I have written several hundred pages of non fiction essays on a broad variety of topics including, but not limited to, politics, psychology and contemporary sexual mores. The essays vary in size from aphoristic things that are merely half a page to pieces that are 20 pages long. This might sound really pretentious or grandiose, but I think my essays articulate new ideas.

I want to write a query letter enticing an agent to survey my collection of essays and put them into a book.

I have a distinct tendency to formulate ideas that do not go together. Some of my ideas are left wing. Some of my ideas are right wing. My ideas do not contradict one another, but they are incongruent, e.g., being against gun control and opposing Trump’s economic policies do not contradict each other, but the kind of people who are against gun control generally like Trump.

I don’t want to sound unduly sarcastic, but I don’t think people read things to be edified; I think they read to find their biases and prejudices confirmed or affirmed. Since sometimes I might be termed a liberal, and at other times I might be termed a conservative, I fear that everyone will hate me. (Actually, the terms liberal and conservative are too vague and plebian for my viewpoints; I am using these terms as a sort of short-hand.)

My questions:

1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?

2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?

3) What do you think I should do

Finally, although I think I usually write fluidly and gracefully, somehow I get very klutzy when I write to people in the literary community. I feel like the country bumpkins in the Beverley Hillbillies (Do you remember that sit com) eating possum stew among people who have only dined on the French delights of Escoffier. So pardon me if this post is dreadfully awkward.

I don't think the essays having disparate viewpoints is your problem. I think the essays, apparently, from what I gather from the post, relating to a wide variety of topics, all of which you can't have specific expertise in, and which would likely appeal to different audiences by their nature, is your problem.

Unless you've got credentials in, say, psychology, you're going to have a hard time finding a publisher willing to publish your writings about psychological topics.

If they're just opinion pieces in a very general sense, you'd need some kind of credential for that -- which would probably be more of a 'following' type deal than real credentials.

What books or writers are similar to what you want to do here?

Old Hack · Dec 29, 2017

If any of these pieces have been published then you must first check you have the rights to reuse them.

If you've not got a publication history then you're going to struggle, because essay collections are very difficult to place.

You'll need to have some sort of expertise to attract publishers: are you an academic of some repute? Do you have a regular column in a newspaper with a good circulation? That sort of thing. If you can't think of any sort of reputation you have which would make people take notice of you, then you have a huge struggle ahead of you.

I don't think you have a problem with the wide variety of subject matter and viewpoints, by the way. If done well, that can make for very interesting reading. But a lack of coherence to the collection could cause problems.

Aggy B. · Dec 29, 2017

Yes, to what has already been said. Also, I think the issue I would be wary of is your own "These things don't have anything to do with each other!" approach. Books, especially non-fiction collections, tend to have a thematic thread to them. Pitching something as "There is no thread," is going to be difficult.

However, chances are there is a thread, you just have to analyze it more carefully. (I write a lot of seemingly disparate fiction, but there are thematic similarities to everything I write and specific topics I tackle over and over.) But, if you are lacking some sort of credential that would back up the validity of these essays, approaching an agent with the idea that "These pieces have nothing in common," is a pretty sure-fire way to get a nice string of rejections. (This in addition to issues of marketability of essay collections.)

Siri Kirpal · Dec 29, 2017

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

My understanding is that essay collections in general are a hard sell, unless you're already known, have a few books out with good sales or a popular blog.

Have you considered blogging as a tool?

BTW, I'm married to someone who likes guns and doesn't like the current occupant of the WH.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

DeviatedDavid · Dec 31, 2017

A FEW THINGS:

1) I fully understand the point, several people made, regarding credentials, i.e., if I do not have, for example, degrees in psychologry by what rights should my ideas regarding psychology be heard. I will address this in a moment.

2) The question I posed was NOT answered. Please, please, please answer the question I posed. I will repeat the question.

3) But first, let me address the issue of credentials:

A) In the 1960's, a longshoreman, named Eric Hoffer, was the toast of the town and a highly respected and widely read writer who brought in lots of bucks for his books. He wrote short, one page essays about whatever came into his mind. I was a child in the 1960's, but I remember one of his ideas as if I had read it yesterday. He said that the problems in Black America would be solved by the Vietnam War. He said that black American man had an unsteady and precarious sense of their manhood, that Vietnam would make black men real men, that these black men who had finally become confident, happy and assertive men would come home and be able to raise a family, bring home the bacon and surge into Middle Class Americana.

Eric Hoffer, needless to say, was no great edifying literary light. But he got himself marketed. And I suppose his ideas were very much in sync with the phony liberalism of the Mid Sixties which supported the Vietnam war and let itself be mauled and mutilated by the shenanigans of the War Lord in Chief, President Lyndon Johnson.

b. Experts are very often bad at judging phenomena in their field.

i. An expert, say, in Freudian analysis spent a ton of money learning Freudian viewpoints, spent a lot of time being trained to be a Freudian analyst and as a consequence he may shut his eyes to all phenomena critical of Freudian viewpoints, e.g., he may be homophobic because his profession trained him in homophobia.

ii. Another example: Pastuer was on the outskirts of the medical profession. He was a country bumpkin to the medical scientists of Paris. He said that surgeons should sterilize equipment because, he said, invisible microscopic organisms spread infections. The doctors of Paris did not want to listen to him because they never cleaned up between patients and did not want to go to the trouble of meticulous hand washing and sterilization. He was castigated as a crank. But he was right

iii. In "Breaking Ranks," Norman Podhoretz (Who I dislike most of the time) said that politicos were not able to recognize the strength of Eugene Mc Carthy in 68 and George Mc Govern in 72 because they were political experts. As political experts, they had tunnel vision and neglected how phenomena outside of their field influenced politics. Podhoretz said that the youth culture, the music of the Beatles and pervasive shifts in mood and attitude made many people receptive to the messages of uncommonly left of center candidates. In other words, he said that extra-political phenomena often determine politics.

Actually, one of my essays explains the weaknesses of expert thought.
-----------------------------------------------
Now, I will repeat the question that I beg of you to answer:

The Issue: Pleasing different audiences when one's ideas are incongruent.

I have written several hundred pages of non fiction essays on a broad variety of topics including, but not limited to, politics, psychology and contemporary sexual mores. The essays vary in size from aphoristic things that are merely half a page to pieces that are 20 pages long. This might sound really pretentious or grandiose, but I think my essays articulate new ideas.

I want to write a query letter enticing an agent to survey my collection of essays and put them into a book.

I have a distinct tendency to formulate ideas that do not go together. Some of my ideas are left wing. Some of my ideas are right wing. My ideas do not contradict one another, but they are incongruent, e.g., being against gun control and opposing Trump’s economic policies do not contradict each other, but the kind of people who are against gun control generally like Trump.

I don’t want to sound unduly sarcastic, but I don’t think people read things to be edified; I think they read to find their biases and prejudices confirmed or affirmed. Since sometimes I might be termed a liberal, and at other times I might be termed a conservative, I fear that everyone will hate me. (Actually, the terms liberal and conservative are too vague and plebian for my viewpoints; I am using these terms as a sort of short-hand.)

My questions:

1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?

2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?

3) What do you think I should do

Finally, although I think I usually write fluidly and gracefully, somehow I get very klutzy when I write to people in the literary community. I feel like the country bumpkins in the Beverley Hillbillies (Do you remember that sit com) eating possum stew among people who have only dined on the French delights of Escoffier. So pardon me if this post is dreadfully awkward.

The Otter · Dec 31, 2017

If I understand your question correctly, you're asking whether the fact that you have both "left wing" and "right wing" views would be a barrier in and of itself. No, I don't think it would, and I also wouldn't be inclined to divide the book into two parts based on that. If the ideas you're presenting aren't contradictory and for you are all part of a coherent philosophy, then present them that way to your audience. No one is going to buy a book and just read half of it. Will there be some people who don't buy your book because they don't agree with it? Sure. But that's true for any book. There are plenty of people who don't fit neatly into the left wing/right wing paradigm and who would be open to other views.

That said, yes, a collection of nonfiction essays on a bunch of disparate topics is going to be a very tough sell. If you already had a platform or a readership (like, say, if you were the author of a famous blog) it might be a little easier, but otherwise I don't think it's the sort of thing most agents would rep.

Aggy B. · Dec 31, 2017

I am pretty sure I said the trick is to find the common thread. (This is true of any collection of essays.) It does not matter particularly if some are written from a "right" or "left" perspective. Regardless, you have to find a linkage between anything you are proposing to put together in a book. (Even if you were to try and split them between your supposed political perspectives.) If that link is strong enough it won't matter to an agent if you are coming at issues from different sides, so to speak.

However, if you remain convinced that these two general groups of essays *don't* really belong together because they appeal so strongly to one end of the political spectrum or the other, then you will have a hard time convincing an agent that it should be one book. Now, you might think you find the perfect angle to put all these essays together, and then an agent might disagree. But agents are individuals so there's no single answer to your question (especially as we have not read the essays in question). I thought I had written a humdinger of a novel, but there were a lot of agents who disagreed (and then one who agreed). Trying to find out ahead of time if folks would be more or less approving of my book was pointless without letting folks actually read it because it all depends on who is reading it, what they're looking for, and who they know who might be looking for that same thing.

You are asking a "How long is a piece of string?" question. The advice offered is what folks *can* tell you based on what they know about the non-fiction/essay collection market. The words of caution don't mean you shouldn't try and query your project, only that you need to understand what you are getting into and temper your expectations accordingly. The lack of a direct answer to your question regarding separating what you seem to think are disparate political views is because we can't inform that decision. (I, too, know a number of folks who like and own guns but dislike Trump and the Republican party. Those two particular things - which you may have used merely as an example - are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps your other subjects are not as disparate as you think either.)

Helix · Dec 31, 2017

DeviatedDavid said:
My questions:

1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?

That would depend on the agent. Agent think-bubble*: Is the manuscript well-written? Does it have something to say? Is it likely to bring in money? Is there a way in which the agent could package it to a potential publisher? Has the author succumbed to the non-expert's fallacy of cherry-picking ideas to fit their arguments?

DeviatedDavid said:
2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?

That's up to you.

DeviatedDavid said:
3) What do you think I should do [?]

I think you should, at the very least, look for a common thread in the essays and use that as a selling point.

*IANAAgent

Putputt · Dec 31, 2017

DeviatedDavid said:
A FEW THINGS:

1) I fully understand the point, several people made, regarding credentials, i.e., if I do not have, for example, degrees in psychologry by what rights should my ideas regarding psychology be heard. I will address this in a moment.

2) The question I posed was NOT answered. Please, please, please answer the question I posed. I will repeat the question.

3) But first, let me address the issue of credentials:

Unfortunately, we're not the ones deciding whether or not credentials matter when it comes to a collection of essays. Even if you were to convince people here, nothing's going to change for you. The reality is still that to many people, credentials do matter when it comes to NF.

As for your questions...

1. It probably depends on the individual agent whether this would be a turn-off. For me, personally, I don't find this a turn-off.

2. Meh, only if you want to.

3. Start a blog, start a Twitter account, basically, get on social media and get a platform. Since you don't have credentials, the next best thing would be a giant following. Get that, and then when you query agents, you can tell them, "My blog, which is about X and Y, has over 250,000 subscribers and 1 million unique page hits every month."

mccardey · Dec 31, 2017

DeviatedDavid said:
I have a distinct tendency to formulate ideas that do not go together. Some of my ideas are left wing. Some of my ideas are right wing.

Isn't that sort of true of most people? I'm having trouble finding the hook that would snare an agent. Man Has Thoughts, Tells People only works when the thoughts and the thinker are loaded up with originality or boldness or import, or something quite unique. To me, the fact that some of your ideas are leftish and some are rightish just means that for the most part you probably fit in the middle of things.

Perhaps you haven't yet been clear enough about what the intrinsic value of your thinking is - and why and to whom it's likely to be of special interest? I'm not getting a sense of that, so it's hard to parse your question.

Old Hack · Jan 1, 2018

DeviatedDavid said:
A FEW THINGS:

1) I fully understand the point, several people made, regarding credentials, i.e., if I do not have, for example, degrees in psychologry by what rights should my ideas regarding psychology be heard. I will address this in a moment.

2) The question I posed was NOT answered. Please, please, please answer the question I posed. I will repeat the question.

3) But first, let me address the issue of credentials:

A) In the 1960's, a longshoreman, named Eric Hoffer, was the toast of the town and a highly respected and widely read writer who brought in lots of bucks for his books. He wrote short, one page essays about whatever came into his mind. I was a child in the 1960's, but I remember one of his ideas as if I had read it yesterday. He said that the problems in Black America would be solved by the Vietnam War. He said that black American man had an unsteady and precarious sense of their manhood, that Vietnam would make black men real men, that these black men who had finally become confident, happy and assertive men would come home and be able to raise a family, bring home the bacon and surge into Middle Class Americana.

Eric Hoffer, needless to say, was no great edifying literary light. But he got himself marketed. And I suppose his ideas were very much in sync with the phony liberalism of the Mid Sixties which supported the Vietnam war and let itself be mauled and mutilated by the shenanigans of the War Lord in Chief, President Lyndon Johnson.

Mr Hoffer was writing in the 1960s. The world is a very different place now, and his successes are not a relevant example for someone trying to be published today.

b. Experts are very often bad at judging phenomena in their field.

i. An expert, say, in Freudian analysis spent a ton of money learning Freudian viewpoints, spent a lot of time being trained to be a Freudian analyst and as a consequence he may shut his eyes to all phenomena critical of Freudian viewpoints, e.g., he may be homophobic because his profession trained him in homophobia.

ii. Another example: Pastuer was on the outskirts of the medical profession. He was a country bumpkin to the medical scientists of Paris. He said that surgeons should sterilize equipment because, he said, invisible microscopic organisms spread infections. The doctors of Paris did not want to listen to him because they never cleaned up between patients and did not want to go to the trouble of meticulous hand washing and sterilization. He was castigated as a crank. But he was right

iii. In "Breaking Ranks," Norman Podhoretz (Who I dislike most of the time) said that politicos were not able to recognize the strength of Eugene Mc Carthy in 68 and George Mc Govern in 72 because they were political experts. As political experts, they had tunnel vision and neglected how phenomena outside of their field influenced politics. Podhoretz said that the youth culture, the music of the Beatles and pervasive shifts in mood and attitude made many people receptive to the messages of uncommonly left of center candidates. In other words, he said that extra-political phenomena often determine politics.

Actually, one of my essays explains the weaknesses of expert thought.

In my view, experts who can't judge how things work in their own field aren't very good experts.

Look up the paper "Unskilled and Unaware" by Dunning and Kruger (I think). It might help clarify your thoughts here.

Now, I will repeat the question that I beg of you to answer:

The Issue: Pleasing different audiences when one's ideas are incongruent.

I have written several hundred pages of non fiction essays on a broad variety of topics including, but not limited to, politics, psychology and contemporary sexual mores. The essays vary in size from aphoristic things that are merely half a page to pieces that are 20 pages long. This might sound really pretentious or grandiose, but I think my essays articulate new ideas.

I want to write a query letter enticing an agent to survey my collection of essays and put them into a book.

I have a distinct tendency to formulate ideas that do not go together. Some of my ideas are left wing. Some of my ideas are right wing. My ideas do not contradict one another, but they are incongruent, e.g., being against gun control and opposing Trump’s economic policies do not contradict each other, but the kind of people who are against gun control generally like Trump.

I don’t want to sound unduly sarcastic, but I don’t think people read things to be edified; I think they read to find their biases and prejudices confirmed or affirmed. Since sometimes I might be termed a liberal, and at other times I might be termed a conservative, I fear that everyone will hate me. (Actually, the terms liberal and conservative are too vague and plebian for my viewpoints; I am using these terms as a sort of short-hand.)

My questions:

1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?

Agents look at every submission they receive. The question you should be asking is, "Would an agent consider representing an author with such viewpoints?" The answer to that is of course they would--if the author concerned wrote well, and had the appropriate expertise and platform.

Judging from your posts here, your writing is overly verbose and argumentative, with a tendency to make judgements which aren't necessarily supported by the facts. If I received a collection of essays which showed those traits I would reject, I'm afraid, no matter who submitted them. (I worked for a long time as a non-fiction editor, and did work on books of this kind.) I know forum posts are different to books, but those tendencies usually bleed over into all of an author's works. I suspect you're going to have to do a lot of pruning back, and a lot of focusing, to get these essays publishable; and without any sort of platform, you're going to face an uphill battle to get them published by a good trade publisher. You might find blogging a better outlet for your creativity, I suspect.

2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?

What sort of word-count are we looking at? It might be that you have more than enough for several books; it might be that you don't have enough for a single book. We don't know yet, because you haven't told us.

Any book is going to have to have some sort of overriding theme. I don't think having a left-leaning and a right-leaning one is an issue, but making sure your book is more than just a collection of random essays is essential.

3) What do you think I should do

Finally, although I think I usually write fluidly and gracefully, somehow I get very klutzy when I write to people in the literary community. I feel like the country bumpkins in the Beverley Hillbillies (Do you remember that sit com) eating possum stew among people who have only dined on the French delights of Escoffier. So pardon me if this post is dreadfully awkward.

Performance anxiety is a real thing.

Stop worrying about what others think of you. Stop giving us status we don't necessarily have. We're people, just like you are.

Also, I liked the Beverley Hillbillies when I was small.

Here's what I think you should do.

Tell us how many words of work you have. If you only have 30,000 words you don't have enough to make a book. If you have more than 400,000 you have more than enough for several books, so can edit them down into nice, coherent collections.

Agents and editors are interested in the work, first and foremost. So you have to make sure your work is the best that it can be. To do that you're going to need feedback, but you can't post your own work here for critique until you have at least fifty substantive posts. The best way to get to fifty posts is to critique the work of others. And giving critiques is the best way to learn how to improve your own work. I know that sounds odd, but it really is true. So get yourself to our Share Your Work rooms and critique as many current threads as you can. Tell the writers what you think works and what you think doesn't. Be thoughtful and positive. You'll soon get to fifty, and be able to then post a short extract of your own work for us to critique for you.

AW Admin · Jan 1, 2018

An agent isn't going to be interested in essays by someone who is a complete unknown.

It's less a matter of credentials in the academic sense and more one of finding readers.

Essay collections by people who are known to readers are a possible sale; see for instance the essay collections by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Essay collections that have a common theme like many of these also have a chance of catching an agent's eye.

Establish a record and a name by publishing some essays first, and you'll have a better chance of selling a collection.

That said, agents generally don't rep this kind of book unless you're already an established writer; writers respond to a call.

Aggy B. · Jan 1, 2018

Expertise in non-fiction boils down into two rough categories - folks who have studied the subject matter (biologists writing about biology, doctors writing about the medical field) or folks who have experienced the subject matter (cancer survivors writing about their experience or hiker who was lost in the woods talking about survival techniques). If you don't fall into one of those two categories, you will, almost certainly, need a platform. (I'm excluding the category that is humorous or creative non-fiction - i.e. Garrison Keillor or Dave Barry type stuff - because you don't seem to be describing your essays that way. And they still built a platform before they were having books published.)

Platforms are built by having work published in smaller markets (newspapers, magazines) or through blogging and social media, or a combination of the two.

As OldHack pointed out, without knowing how many words worth of work you have we can't even begin to suggest whether you should split up your content into smaller chunks. Without having read the work we can't tell you if it is or isn't thematically related. (Again, since you seem to think not, I'd say you would know best. We can't guess what an agent might think because they are individuals. And if you can't or won't think of a way to integrate your content into a thematic whole, there's not much we can do about that because we have no idea what the specifics of your essays are.)

Also, there is no need to send me another private message telling me I haven't answered your question. I have, even if you don't like the answer.

amergina · Jan 1, 2018

DeviatedDavid said:
My questions:

1) Would an agent tend to decline to look at an author with incongruent viewpoints?

No. But they are very very likely to decline to look at an unknown author with a pile of disconnected essays and no platform.

DeviatedDavid said:
2) Should I Solomon-like (sorry for my delusions of grandeur) divide the corpus of my essays into two books, one for the left and one for the right or would that seem deceptive, dishonest and cowardly?

If you want to. Don't if you do not.

DeviatedDavid said:
3) What do you think I should do

Stop and listen to the advice you've been given in this thread, because it's decent.

Cyia · Jan 1, 2018

You don't "entice an agent" to put essays into a non-fic book. You write the book and hope an agent believes it will sell.

If the ideas are so disconnected, then they probably won't make a book (which - unless you're already a well known essayist - are going to need a common theme to justify being bound together as a book). Why not try and sell them as individual essays to publications that publish essays? This could help you build a platform, which you're going to need in order to sell a non-fic book on any subject.

Do you have any sort of pertinent background in any of the subjects you write about?

AW Admin · Jan 1, 2018

Aggy B. said:
Also, there is no need to send me another private message telling me I haven't answered your question. I have, even if you don't like the answer.

Yeah, don't do this. PM Spam is not tolerated.

Siri Kirpal · Jan 1, 2018

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Most of us answer what we know and don't answer what we don't know. Kindly don't send PMs telling us we haven't answered your questions when we have answered the underlying roots of your questions.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Filigree · Jan 1, 2018

After reading this thread, I've come back to David's initial question: how to please different audiences.

That's a vague and almost useless worry. It's a trick your inner editor plays to sideline you with doubt and the wrong fears. Writers can't guarantee they'll please a majority of their target audience, much less anyone else.

Simply: write the best essays you're capable of. Make them speak to *you*, no matter their philosophy. Then do extremely thorough research on agents and publishers. Essays are a hard sell, but not impossible.

DeviatedDavid · Jan 1, 2018

You guys have given me a wealth of information. I appreciate that.

I don't want to seem unduly concerned about how I appear to others, but I just thought I should note that I am not thoroughly without expertise on the issues I write about:

I majored in political science, I went to law school, and I have litigated cases exemplifying corporate greed and arrogance, the ineptitude and cruelty of our medical and psychiatric etablshments (malpractice and more), and the indifference and neglect of bourgeosis liberalism. I have been all across the political spectrum: I participated in Socialist party politics (I once represented a Far Left Organization which hired me as their attorney and in this capacity I did depositions in Belgrade.) Also, I was a member of regular Democratic organizations and was once on the ballot in a Democartic Party Primary in New York. In addition, I was active in ACT UP and in this capacity I participated in many actions, including, but not limited to, dying the fountains of Houston Texas red, to symbolize the blood of AIDS patients, at the 1992 Republican convention. I had several conversations with Roger Hilsman, the Under Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs under John F. Kennedy (he reputedly bears much of the responsibility for the coup against Diem) and he gave me a grown-up, realistic sense of politics and foreign policy.

I could give you the results of my IQ tests, but then I would sound like a complete pain in the ass.

The Otter · Jan 1, 2018

If your essays are political, then it sounds like all that experience would be relevant, and definitely something you should highlight while querying. I only write fiction so I don't know a lot about the process of querying nonfiction, but I think there tends to be more emphasis placed on the author's qualifications.

Helix · Jan 1, 2018

DeviatedDavid said:
You guys have given me a wealth of information. I appreciate that.

I don't want to seem unduly concerned about how I appear to others, but I just thought I should note that I am not thoroughly without expertise on the issues I write about:

I majored in political science, I went to law school, and I have litigated cases exemplifying corporate greed and arrogance, the ineptitude and cruelty of our medical and psychiatric etablshments (malpractice and more), and the indifference and neglect of bourgeosis liberalism. I have been all across the political spectrum: I participated in Socialist party politics (I once represented a Far Left Organization which hired me as their attorney and in this capacity I did depositions in Belgrade.) Also, I was a member of regular Democratic organizations and was once on the ballot in a Democartic Party Primary in New York. In addition, I was active in ACT UP and in this capacity I participated in many actions, including, but not limited to, dying the fountains of Houston Texas red, to symbolize the blood of AIDS patients, at the 1992 Republican convention. I had several conversations with Roger Hilsman, the Under Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs under John F. Kennedy (he reputedly bears much of the responsibility for the coup against Diem) and he gave me a grown-up, realistic sense of politics and foreign policy.

I could give you the results of my IQ tests, but then I would sound like a complete pain in the ass.

I dunno, mate. Maybe you should've mentioned all that up front, rather than focusing on the hypothetical prejudices of a hypothetical audience, because your background might make a difference to an agent.

You'll still need to write clearly and concisely, though, and you'll have to make sure you proofread before submitting.

No one wants to know your IQ, even in jest.

mccardey · Jan 1, 2018

DeviatedDavid said:
I don't want to seem unduly concerned about how I appear to others, but I just thought I should note that I am not thoroughly without expertise on the issues I write about:

<<snip>>

So you've got some political background, which is at least worth mentioning to an agent if your essays are largely political. You'd still need a theme of sorts, though, to take it further than Man Has Thoughts. Perhaps your journey from a youthful bright-eyed acceptance of all things left to a more mature understanding that things are rarely that simple? I know it sounds a bit simplistic, given that most people make that journey in some way, but if your writing is singularly good - I mean if you have a compelling voice, or a real way with humour or something - and if it tickles the agent's fancy, it might help to get you over the line.

Just be careful of how you come across - and yeah maybe don't mention the IQ thing. IQ tests don't carry the same sort of values that they once did.

DeviatedDavid · Jan 1, 2018

First, I just took my sleeping pills so this might not sound as clear as it should

I appreciate the variety and breadth of the responses. There's a lot of information here for me to think about and study.

1) First, before I go any further: I do not want to arouse anyone's ire. It has been suggested that my behavior has transgressed posting etiquette. I looked at your guide for Newbies. Perhaps I need to look at it more closely. Please give me your best definition of Spam.

2) I was joking about my IQ

3) Old Hack, I will try to read "Unskilled and Unaware" as soon as possible.

4) Old Hack, some of your criticisms I know are correct.

a) At times, I am verboise. I think this is because I_ possess the vestigial remains of an 8 year old's conception of prose. In those days, one was most impressed by that which was long. (So of course Hillary C submitted a 96 page book report in the 6th grade) Of course I am not like J.D. Salinger's Esme, in "For Esme with Love and Squalor," who precedes every thing she says with the words "Extremely and Exceedingly," but sometimes I do have a propensity to clutter my prose with a metastasis of unneeded adjectives and adverbs.

Actually, I think this problem often afflicts well-meaning, intelligent, unrecognized authors. For example, the New York Times posts thousands of on line comments about news articles and they have a plethora of earnest but somwhat leaden essays which suffer from too much verbiage and not enough pizazz. The authors think that fancy words, and ornate constructions, and parenthetical asides that go on for two lines will induce some fine and fastidious teacher to say, "Aha, a gem."

I think the explanation was best explained by Erica Jong in her book "Fear of Flying." A large part of her racey novel deals with her grief and angst in getting published. When she wrote stories, the words came trippling off of her tongue onto her finger tips. Her writing was brisk, fluid and fun. However, whenever she wrote to agents or Publishers, this Jewish Girl felt that she was a rude Eastern European intruder into the glorious and gracious world of the literature of a language that brought the world to heel.
I experience EXACTLY what Jong said she experienced: Suddenly her nouns and verbs didn't agree; everything dissolved.

I wrote about this English anxiety in this segment of a memoir like piece about childhooed:

"In elementary school, English is taught along with handwriting and, as such, is taught with the same love of independence that pervades the teaching of the curly cues on capital letters. It was a discipline devoted to neatness, tidiness and prettiness.

It was the girlish discipline and the least Jewish of disciplines -- how could a language whose first major book was the "King James Bible," a title and a name which reeks of Christianity, reeks of it like glazed ham and mashed potatoes with Iced Tea, ever welcome a people so far from the Island Kingdom -- and it refused to let this Jewish boy enter its special world.

No, I was never neat enough and could never take to grammar, a subject that seemed to be the special skill of upper middle class Irish girls with frilly dresses and upturned noses. Their subjects and verbs always agreed like good little boys and girls at a Catholic nursery school; punctuation smartly sculpted their phrases like the ironing and starching which pressed their uniforms into shape; and they even knew what a semicolon -- that exotic piece of punctuation which seems to be a graphic of love and life and sex (The upper part of the semicolon seems to say stop, while the underside, the sexy underbelly, curves and says "come this way") -- was and knew how to use it (And since discovering its meaning, I could never stop using it.)

And one could not challenge the Irish Girls' claim that they were the pretty princesses of the English language. Who could know English better than an Irish woman, who, by virtue of being Irish, had to endure the English for centuries -- we Jews had only been in the English speaking world since we emigrated from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century -- and, by virtue of being women, had the requisite measure of conformity and attentiveness to detail to craft only the prettiest of phrases.

And so our fair-haired Irish girls glided around the classroom glibly singing out the answers to the questions in our "Easy English" grammar book -- a book with drawings of sleek smiling figures, who were always shown gracefully ice skating around some cumbersome monument while chirping about the parts of speech like happy little birdbrains and who always seemed to smirk at me, telling me that I was just too awkward and klutzy to speak English properly."

David Gottfried, Copywright, 1992 (Most of my stuff ain't so ancient)

b) Old Hack, I know I tend to be argumentative. Perhaps I am simply awol from another decade. I loved the way people lived, spoke and wrote in the 1960's.

They argued like all hell, and the more they shouted the more I wanted to say rock on. In 1968, Susan Sontag called the white race the cancer of human history. I love this sort of emotionally frenzied, incindiary writing (Yes, I know I can't spell). Abbie Hoffman, in December of 1967, said he would levitate the Pentagon. Norman Mailer wrote like a drunk in a seedy barroom, belting obscenities and swear words at anyone whom he happened to disagree with. (Mailer also said that the "stifling conformity" of America caused cancer. ( Maybe some of it was a bit cracked, but the US War effort in Vietnam was more cracked.)

mccardey · Jan 1, 2018

DeviatedDavid said:
a) At times, I am verboise. I think this is because I_ possess the vestigial remains of an 8 year old's conception of prose.

You'll want to work on that, then. Times and tastes change, and unless you're writing entirely for yourself (nothing wrong with that) you need to adapt. It doesn't mean that you lose your "voice" - just that you recognise that readers are an important part of the publishing equation.

SPLITTING MYSELF IN TWO

practical experience, FTW

Such a nasty woman

Not as sweet as you think

Swan in Process

Friendly Neighborhood Mustelid

Not as sweet as you think

socially distancing

permanently suctioned to Buz's leg

Such a nasty woman

Not as sweet as you think

Pittsburgh Strong

Rewriting My Destiny

Swan in Process

Mildly Disturbing

Friendly Neighborhood Mustelid

socially distancing