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Showing posts from December, 2014

Out with the Old

I'm not really sure I have anything relevant to say, but this is the last chance I will have to do this in 2014, so I thought I might just list a few goals and lay out a tentative plan for the coming year. 1.  Find a home for Antiartists.  I'm still not sure what this means.  Whether I find an agent to represent it, or if I find an indie publisher that accepts unrepresented manuscripts, or decide to pull the trigger and e-publish, I think it needs an audience, needs to get out there, so I can move on and let it go. 2. Finish the new novel (working title: Flagg).  I've got 25,000 words so far, and I would like to finish it sometime before the end of 2015.  If I can work with any semblance of discipline, this seems to be a pretty modest goal. 3. Develop some kind of network of readers and writers that I can feel comfortable sharing with.  This is important, I know.  Ugh.  Other people.  Gross. 4.  Stay positive, and keep moving forward.  Obviously.   2014 has sucked on a mass

Out with the Old

I'm not really sure I have anything relevant to say, but this is the last chance I will have to do this in 2014, so I thought I might just list a few goals and lay out a tentative plan for the coming year. 1.  Find a home for Antiartists.  I'm still not sure what this means.  Whether I find an agent to represent it, or if I find an indie publisher that accepts unrepresented manuscripts, or decide to pull the trigger and e-publish, I think it needs an audience, needs to get out there, so I can move on and let it go. 2. Finish the new novel (working title: Flagg).  I've got 25,000 words so far, and I would like to finish it sometime before the end of 2015.  If I can work with any semblance of discipline, this seems to be a pretty modest goal. 3. Develop some kind of network of readers and writers that I can feel comfortable sharing with.  This is important, I know.  Ugh.  Other people.  Gross. 4.  Stay positive, and keep moving forward.  Obviously.   2014 has sucked

Coming Out of Hiding

We can not grow alone. I realized fairly recently that a major theme of Antiartists deals with the strange impulse we have to connect with one another, to have people around, even if they are clearly bad for us, even if they are poison, even if we hate the world around us, we can't stand feeling alone. If we want to grow, we need others around to challenge our ideas, to tell us when we are being obtuse or unreasonable, to give us new information, to give us a different perspective. Like it or not, we need each other.  This is a problem of mine.  I don't trust people with anything I care about.  And I have found myself having to reach out to strangers, having to expose myself to criticism, leaving myself open to rejection and disappointment.  Even this, writing these strange little public journal entries makes me feel nervous and exposed, and I have to struggle with my honesty. Because someone may read this, may judge me harshly, might reach a mistaken conclusion about who I am.

Coming Out of Hiding

We can not grow alone. I realized fairly recently that a major theme of Antiartists deals with the strange impulse we have to connect with one another, to have people around, even if they are clearly bad for us, even if they are poison, even if we hate the world around us, we can't stand feeling alone. If we want to grow, we need others around to challenge our ideas, to tell us when we are being obtuse or unreasonable, to give us new information, to give us a different perspective. Like it or not, we need each other.  This is a problem of mine.  I don't trust people with anything I care about.  And I have found myself having to reach out to strangers, having to expose myself to criticism, leaving myself open to rejection and disappointment.  Even this, writing these strange little public journal entries makes me feel nervous and exposed, and I have to struggle with my honesty. Because someone may read this, may judge me harshly, might reach a mistaken conclusion about

Worshiping the Data Gods

Can we just throw out the phrase "aspiring writer" please? If you write stuff, congratulations.  You're a writer.  There's no paperwork to fill out, no license application.  If you write things down, you're a writer, end of story.  If you want people to read your stuff, you need to make it available to them in some form.  Fantastic.  You now have a readership.  If it's good, your audience will grow. While researching agents and publishing houses, I have read a lot of interviews and what to do and what to not do and what makes your query stand out and 'what are you looking for' articles, and all this talk of market and platform and online presence gives me the fucking creeps.   I read the work marketable and I want to throw up in my lap.  I read the word platform and I seriously want to punch myself in the balls.  I wrote this book because I thought I had something to say about art and life and addiction and masculinity and the strange, frustrating impu

Worshiping the Data Gods

Can we just throw out the phrase "aspiring writer" please? If you write stuff, congratulations.  You're a writer.  There's no paperwork to fill out, no license application.  If you write things down, you're a writer, end of story.  If you want people to read your stuff, you need to make it available to them in some form.  Fantastic.  You now have a readership.  If it's good, your audience will grow. While researching agents and publishing houses, I have read a lot of interviews and what to do and what to not do and what makes your query stand out and 'what are you looking for' articles, and all this talk of market and platform and online presence gives me the fucking creeps.   I read the work marketable and I want to throw up in my lap.  I read the word platform and I seriously want to punch myself in the balls.  I wrote this book because I thought I had something to say about art and life and addiction and masculinity and the strange, frustrat

Here we go again...

So the bad news is, I got rejected again. The good news is, it didn't seem too terrible this time. I don't really know what to think about this, maybe I'm just getting used to it.  When I was submitting poems to lit magazines, I got rejected all the time, a ton, two or three a day in the mail.  I'd get a little slip in an envelope that I had written myself, usually a nothing little sentence: "Thank you for your submission, but it does not meet our editorial needs at this time."  When I finally had a poem accepted, I was ecstatic, but also somehow disappointed, because they took the wrong one .  They took a poem that I wrote as a one-off idea, that I didn't care about too much.  It was great, excellent, perfect, but my first published work was a poem that I was only mildly proud of.  It was also liberating in a way because I could then stop writing and submitting poetry.  I had won. The only short story I have ever submitted anywhere was accepted for public

Here we go again...

So the bad news is, I got rejected again. The good news is, it didn't seem too terrible this time. I don't really know what to think about this, maybe I'm just getting used to it.  When I was submitting poems to lit magazines, I got rejected all the time, a ton, two or three a day in the mail.  I'd get a little slip in an envelope that I had written myself, usually a nothing little sentence: "Thank you for your submission, but it does not meet our editorial needs at this time."  When I finally had a poem accepted, I was ecstatic, but also somehow disappointed, because they took the wrong one .  They took a poem that I wrote as a one-off idea, that I didn't care about too much.  It was great, excellent, perfect, but my first published work was a poem that I was only mildly proud of.  It was also liberating in a way because I could then stop writing and submitting poetry.  I had won. The only short story I have ever submitted anywhere was accepted for