..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

"The day after graduating from college, I found fifty dollars in the foyer of my Chicago apartment building...it occurred to me that if i played my cards right, I migh never have to find a job, people lost things all the time...the day after that I found a peanut. It was then that I started to worry."
-David Sedaris, "Naked"

"These leads are gold, and you can't have them. Because giving them to you, would be like throwing them away."
-Glengarry Glen Ross

"Meet the new shit. Same as the old shit..."
-"Won't Get Fooled Again" -as sung by a drunk Who cover band


i don't want to sound bitter here but i've got a real problem with the feedback i'm getting on my fiction submissions. people keep saying, "don't get discouraged, you have to be confident and keep sending things out!" as if i'm going to lose faith in my own work and start to doubt my skills.

see, that's not the problem. i'm doubting the skills of the people that are skimming the first sentence of my stuff and rejecting it. clearly they cannot recognize quality. i look at what is published in the same rags that reject me and these fuckers won't take a chance on anything. even supposed experimental literary magazines keep publishing inspirational toilet reading. mind-numbing Readers Digest stories that say the same fucking thing over and over. it is obvious that the people that dig through the piles of submissions cannot recognize good writing. i mean, who the fuck are they? failed writers? prison work release? worse? okay, it's understandable that you'll be jaded and impatient with any job so you know they're just dropping shit in the trash. the people above them though, they have no excuse. they're the ones who chose this field because of a love for literature, because of excitement over making a new discovery, and they're content to have that line of defense screening the submissions? don't they badly want to see the new shit themselves? don't they get it? do i have to smack them in the fucking head with it myself? i am writing THE NEW SHIT. this is THE. NEW. SHIT. i have no interest in Raymond Carver knock-offs and Junot Diaz imitations. my shit is NEW. i am doing something that has never been done before. it is the dawn of the new shit. why would anyone fuck around with anything else?

this is my new query letter i'm going to start sending out: "listen. this is the new shit. grow some fuckin balls and publish it. Trains leaving."

why am i trying to convince someone to understand what i'm writing? let alone buy it? i can't do this query letters by the formula. i'm not a fucking salesman. who would ever want to read something written by someone who was a fucking saleman. who would ever want to read fiction, or see a movie, writting by someone who was good at writing letters to strangers to buy their shit. Glengarry Glen Ross is the exception that proves the rules. the only reason that is interesting is because the ass-licking and debasement of salesmen is fascinating JUST ONCE. seriously. why am i trying to talk someone into anything??? You don't do that with art. that's not my fucking job. for fuck's sake just read my fucking shit. that's my new T-shirt slogan right there. and how do i get published or sell a script? well, the best case scenario is i try to imitate what they've already published or produced that year so i can get in their magazine or get on the screen? fuck that. will not happen. i'm not a fucking salesman and i'm wasting time trying to anticipate what some stranger is thinking. i cannot and will not do it (until tommorrow, i'm out of stamps).

other things i can't do anymore:
waste time trying to explain that i'm not "weird" to stupid girlfriends. sound familiar to anyone? i see a girl, fall into the Darwin trap because she's cute (and what's that all about? i'm drawn to approach and spend time and effort to impress a stranger based on nothing but the position of her eyes and nose and mouth? why? because deep down inside the unevolved part wants good-looking kids? so then i try to make shit work in spite of the fact that she admits to "not really watching movies" and i let some of the more inexcusable things that come out of her mouth slide by trying to balance them out with the good things. and i waste more time. it can't work. intelligence and sense of humor are the only things i can be looking for anymore. i'm not going to spend another 6 months with some girl because she's attractive and constantly re-assure her that i'm not "weird" because she can't understand, or makes no effort to understand, half the things i fucking say. when a girl gets that glassy-eyed look and says "you're weird" because i spent 10 minutes explaining about how something on the TV makes me angry, i will get a pencil and paper and write down the day, hour, minute and second that the relationship will end. usually about 2 weeks after those two words.

other things that make me angry today:
the anti-smoking "Truth" ads. i hate smoking but i hate these ads more. i just commented about that crap on my friend Holly's website. she's trying to get her name on the California ballot for governor, check it out, show her some online love. anyway, i'll cut that rant short. let's just say, you can't stop smoking by convincing smokers that the company is evil. that just shows how fucking stupid and melodramatic the kids are that are making those ads. like someone's going to start to light up, then stop because some corporate fuck sent an offensive memo? that's like saying a heroin addict is going to hesititate because he thinks his dealer might be corrupt. are they trying to make cigarrettes illegal? are these people that fucking idiotic? or do they just think their "edgy" commercials, where they mock a woman who checks on what seemed to be an abandoned baby, are dramatic? just sell T-shirts that say "smoking smells like ass" and you'll have more impact. i'm telling you, those commercials? it's Jackass without the jokes. just smug fucking cocksuckers who-forget it. i could go on about that forever.

how bout this though? you know one of these: what is up with the guy or girl who's cool and can hang and seems to have alot of interesting opinions and that awareness that's so rare, then suddenly he/she finds a boyfriend or girlfriend and magically turns onto every other nameless couple out there. i've said this before and i'll say it again:
people are infinitly more interesting on their own.

anyway, back to complaining about my rejection letters (i know this ain't that interesting to many people but please just quietly shut the door on your way out, i'm going to keep yapping). these publishers, or the staff that reads for these publishers, have a problem. their taste is in their ass. they should be forced to wear a shirt that lists their three favorite movies so that no one will be fooled by their lack of sense (can't be books on these shirts cause they don't read but eventually an idiot will wander lost into a movie and sit down). and the shirts will say "Days of Thunder/Joe Dirt/Dr. Detroit and you'll be able to save a lot of time. it's sad really. they just have no fucking vision and someday i might get hit by a truck and POW! no one gets to read the new shit. the literary and film world WON'T get turned upside down as they scramble to keep up. you got to have courage to greenlight my skills and they ain't got it. it's like that movie Wargames when the two guys at the beginning didn't have the nerve to push the buttons and launch the missiles. they were replaced with "electronic relays" (actually just these big red ominous LED numbers cycling like an evil slot machine) because they didn't have the guts to make a decision. that's what they need at these magazine offices and publishing houses. a giant pulsing 80's computer that sorts the mail. i'm talking huge, with the spinning tape-reels and christmas-tree lights and some guy who has to keep hosing it down because of the heat coming off of it. couple of those and boom, problem solved. they simply replace that spitefull, player-hating first line of defense with electronic relays. take the sensitive humans OUT OF THE LOOP. just a creepy computer voice that counts swear words or disturbing or thought provoking imagery (it can be a simple formula: any time the words "sphinct", "nosebleed" and "existential" are on the same page, the computer flags that motherfucker) then the Wargames computer makes some clicking and beeping noises and sends my shit on through! no time for some sulking grad student to get offended by what i write, or decide that their opinion, or whatever happened to them that day, is going to stand in the way of my right to be fucking read by as many people as possible.

hey, at least the rejection notices for my screenplay are funny. agents send the same bullshit form letter as book publishers ("we won't take new clients unless you're referred by someone we know" don't get me started on the logic in that. the only people they think might have skill would have to already know someone who's successful. lazy fuckheads. do some reading. of course, they don't read. they are like business major types with no love or interest in the area that they're working) HOWEVER, studios send out some classic rejection notices. it's hard to get as angry and self-righteous with those. their rejections are more personal and usually they have a hilarious alternate plan for you instead. like, "sorry, we don't have any producers interested in a prison movie, but what we really need is a sci-fi western porno for the foreign market" true story. i've never entertained the thought to pimp my skills by writing schlock like that, but when i get a letter like that i can't help but smile and i'm this close (fingers about an inch and a half apart) to typing out: "it was a dark and stormy night, the horses panicked when they saw the strange object in the sky. not the flying saucer, they'd seen those before. it was the man in the tree trying to suck his own dick..."

i think the moral of the story is this: something about rejection. something about salesmen. something about wasting time. something about publishers and girlfriends lacking the vision to embrace the new shit.

::: david - 7:13 PM [+] :::
...