WikiLitter: Thinking outside the box can be messy
Getting paid to write fiction (and poetry) has always been always a crap shoot.
Some people get published with little more effort than a subtle samba hip-thrust. If they get published young, they may treat us to the same saucy move for decades to come. There is nothing wrong with this I suppose. Some people, after all, still by disco music, but it is hard for me to call this art or serious literature.
For me, writing has been more like a death-defying leap from my burning apartment building. After all these years, I am still stretched out in mid-air hoping that my fingers will find a three-inch bit of window sill in the building next door to hold on to. It is a leap of faith of mine to think there may be a like-minded person among the seven billion out there, who might want to read what I write, but ….
No joy again in 2010, however - my thirty-fifth year of submissions. I suppose I have learned something through the years, though. The Canadian Journal of Euthanasia, for instance, writes kind rejection e-mails: “Dear Sir, please be advised that we do not publish fiction or poetry. This is a non-reply e-mail address.”
I don’t know why I feel this urgency to render my experience of the world in words. It may be akin to the man who had, “See, I told you I was sick” written on his tombstone. Still, I know my experience is not an uncommon one. Many other writers spend their lives trying to learn the right samba moves and get published to no avail. In fact if I miss the ledge, I will only drop a few feet before I hit the topmost layer of bodies piled up from the alley seventeen floors below. Years ago, I suggested to my fallen comrades that we should have a magazine called The World’s Biggest Losers, but all I heard back was moaning. I attribute this to the fact that you don’t always land in decorous positions after defenestrating yourself.
There’s nothing wrong with losing, of course. When Bill Clinton headed the recent US bid for the World Cup games, he probably didn’t read Sepp Blatter's rule in the fine print that said the games had to go to a country that has never had them before. When Russia and Qatar were announced Bill looked stunned. For those of us who can lip read, he said over the top of his Ben Franklin Specs, “Beautiful game my ass!” So it goes.
As I’ve written before in My Doomsday Book, most fiction and poetry contests are probably either Ponzi schemes or illegal lotteries. They have their own agenda, and (if you could find the fine print) one might read: we exist for the publish-or-perish professors and students in MFA programs. If you can’t create turgid prose full of stale metaphors that only anemic academics with tenure could bare to read, go elsewhere. Another might say: we’re looking for the next smash TV series or movie. If you can give us the next Chuck or Snakes on a Plane, we want to see your work!
Of course there are small college magazines, some with pretty fair reputations, but they publish so infrequently they tend to recycle old issues without anyone seeming to notice. As a general rule they have suck-ass football teams, too. I have my web cam on. Can you read my lips?
The contest gatekeepers are smart people. I am sure they’d say, “Talent is cheap. What we’re looking for is a writer who exhibits craft.” I know writing talent is widespread, but craft sounds like a canard to me. When I think of craft I think of those wooden woodchoppers run by propellers that you stick on top of your mailbox. But craft is big business to writers and educators so they push this abstraction. In fact they’ve sold so much of this craft idea over the years that on a windy day a small US state stands a good chance of getting airborne. The word style, as in le style, c’est l’home, I understand, but craft as art escapes me. Drive down the street and you see chopper-choppers on this side and chopper-choppers on the other side, but if that’s what they mean by art I might as well be a Barbie Doll stuck in an extra roll of toilet paper wearing an antebellum knitted dress.
The Internet hasn’t helped, either. It’s a great leveler, but who wants to watch a football game from ground level? You can’t see anything and this is the problem with literature today. Thirty years ago, the people who ran fine arts and literature sat up in the owner’s box, but today they’re down at field level being jostled by drunks like the rest of us. The end result is nobody now has a clue what’s going on. When someone cheers, we all cheer.
When you think of it, the whole thrust in past years has been to level the field, to bring everyone down to ground level where myth, spirituality, and the human condition are reduced to a brown looking duck sauce. The Da Vinci Code tried to level Christianity; social media tries to bring down coherent conversation, and WikiLeaks tries to bring down western civilization all together.
Whether or not you believe our cultural decline simply mimics our decline as an economic power, there can be no doubt the process is a leveling one, not a rising one. In America today, a great book here or there is going to have no more impact than Brett Favre becoming a spokesperson for Midol.
So if you cant beat ‘em join ‘em. I’ve created a format called WikiLitter(ature). No rules here baby, common sense or otherwise. Here’s the first chapter of my new page-turner called: Don’t Think Twice, Especially If It hurt The First Time.
Chapter one through, oh I dunno, make up a number you’re tight with.
The boy wizard saw the cat scratchin’ in his Wikilitter box. What could it mean, Boywiz he wondered?
Moxie! Julian Assange drinks it (when he can get it for free of course)
Just then Harshbush the evil robotic flying dog barked: You must bowl a perfect game of 301 or I will publish pictures of your conception – and thinking meat comes form the Deli, you’re not going to believe it - OMG!
US study finds Neanderthals were not only obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave clean and reverent, but now also omnivorous! Who Knew?
This is the last thing Boywiz he remembered before he went AAK (asleep at Keyboard) with his nose hitting the touch-pad, accidently sending his prize winning submission to the Canadian Journal of Euthanasia and causing someone else to be the hero of my narrative. Thank God!
Getting paid to write fiction (and poetry) has always been always a crap shoot.
Some people get published with little more effort than a subtle samba hip-thrust. If they get published young, they may treat us to the same saucy move for decades to come. There is nothing wrong with this I suppose. Some people, after all, still by disco music, but it is hard for me to call this art or serious literature.
For me, writing has been more like a death-defying leap from my burning apartment building. After all these years, I am still stretched out in mid-air hoping that my fingers will find a three-inch bit of window sill in the building next door to hold on to. It is a leap of faith of mine to think there may be a like-minded person among the seven billion out there, who might want to read what I write, but ….
No joy again in 2010, however - my thirty-fifth year of submissions. I suppose I have learned something through the years, though. The Canadian Journal of Euthanasia, for instance, writes kind rejection e-mails: “Dear Sir, please be advised that we do not publish fiction or poetry. This is a non-reply e-mail address.”
I don’t know why I feel this urgency to render my experience of the world in words. It may be akin to the man who had, “See, I told you I was sick” written on his tombstone. Still, I know my experience is not an uncommon one. Many other writers spend their lives trying to learn the right samba moves and get published to no avail. In fact if I miss the ledge, I will only drop a few feet before I hit the topmost layer of bodies piled up from the alley seventeen floors below. Years ago, I suggested to my fallen comrades that we should have a magazine called The World’s Biggest Losers, but all I heard back was moaning. I attribute this to the fact that you don’t always land in decorous positions after defenestrating yourself.
There’s nothing wrong with losing, of course. When Bill Clinton headed the recent US bid for the World Cup games, he probably didn’t read Sepp Blatter's rule in the fine print that said the games had to go to a country that has never had them before. When Russia and Qatar were announced Bill looked stunned. For those of us who can lip read, he said over the top of his Ben Franklin Specs, “Beautiful game my ass!” So it goes.
As I’ve written before in My Doomsday Book, most fiction and poetry contests are probably either Ponzi schemes or illegal lotteries. They have their own agenda, and (if you could find the fine print) one might read: we exist for the publish-or-perish professors and students in MFA programs. If you can’t create turgid prose full of stale metaphors that only anemic academics with tenure could bare to read, go elsewhere. Another might say: we’re looking for the next smash TV series or movie. If you can give us the next Chuck or Snakes on a Plane, we want to see your work!
Of course there are small college magazines, some with pretty fair reputations, but they publish so infrequently they tend to recycle old issues without anyone seeming to notice. As a general rule they have suck-ass football teams, too. I have my web cam on. Can you read my lips?
The contest gatekeepers are smart people. I am sure they’d say, “Talent is cheap. What we’re looking for is a writer who exhibits craft.” I know writing talent is widespread, but craft sounds like a canard to me. When I think of craft I think of those wooden woodchoppers run by propellers that you stick on top of your mailbox. But craft is big business to writers and educators so they push this abstraction. In fact they’ve sold so much of this craft idea over the years that on a windy day a small US state stands a good chance of getting airborne. The word style, as in le style, c’est l’home, I understand, but craft as art escapes me. Drive down the street and you see chopper-choppers on this side and chopper-choppers on the other side, but if that’s what they mean by art I might as well be a Barbie Doll stuck in an extra roll of toilet paper wearing an antebellum knitted dress.
The Internet hasn’t helped, either. It’s a great leveler, but who wants to watch a football game from ground level? You can’t see anything and this is the problem with literature today. Thirty years ago, the people who ran fine arts and literature sat up in the owner’s box, but today they’re down at field level being jostled by drunks like the rest of us. The end result is nobody now has a clue what’s going on. When someone cheers, we all cheer.
When you think of it, the whole thrust in past years has been to level the field, to bring everyone down to ground level where myth, spirituality, and the human condition are reduced to a brown looking duck sauce. The Da Vinci Code tried to level Christianity; social media tries to bring down coherent conversation, and WikiLeaks tries to bring down western civilization all together.
Whether or not you believe our cultural decline simply mimics our decline as an economic power, there can be no doubt the process is a leveling one, not a rising one. In America today, a great book here or there is going to have no more impact than Brett Favre becoming a spokesperson for Midol.
So if you cant beat ‘em join ‘em. I’ve created a format called WikiLitter(ature). No rules here baby, common sense or otherwise. Here’s the first chapter of my new page-turner called: Don’t Think Twice, Especially If It hurt The First Time.
Chapter one through, oh I dunno, make up a number you’re tight with.
The boy wizard saw the cat scratchin’ in his Wikilitter box. What could it mean, Boywiz he wondered?
Moxie! Julian Assange drinks it (when he can get it for free of course)
Just then Harshbush the evil robotic flying dog barked: You must bowl a perfect game of 301 or I will publish pictures of your conception – and thinking meat comes form the Deli, you’re not going to believe it - OMG!
US study finds Neanderthals were not only obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave clean and reverent, but now also omnivorous! Who Knew?
This is the last thing Boywiz he remembered before he went AAK (asleep at Keyboard) with his nose hitting the touch-pad, accidently sending his prize winning submission to the Canadian Journal of Euthanasia and causing someone else to be the hero of my narrative. Thank God!
posted by Forrest at
10:11 PM
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