fek:
Fuck Joe Clark and the Submission He Rode In On
Seriously.
Good writing gets around quickly. It gets people excited. And you don’t have to beg people to read it or try and out them to make some kind of point.
Anybody who’s worked in book publishing or at any kind of agency, house, or firm that handles literary properties knows what a pain in the ass unsolicited submissions are. Almost nothing ever comes of them.
- Most of them are by people who have been “working on their novel” for fifteen years.
- All of them are fucking awful.
- Almost always, as a matter of courtesy, even agencies and houses who absolutely don’t accept unsolicited submissions will write a form letter back. And by “agencies and houses” I mean “overworked assistants.”
Joe Clark should be the last straw. Agencies and publishing houses across the board should institute a draconian policy for this kind of assholery: nobody, anywhere will accept unsolicited submissions, and together, nobody, anywhere will ever respond to an unsolicited submission ever again.
Anybody so presumptuous as to think that any editor owes them anything for something sent to them without solicitation should be ceremoniously beaten unconscious with the manuscript they sent it, this motherfucker especially. You want a courtesy? Someone might publish your book and pay you for it. That’s a courtesy. Otherwise, the publishing industry doesn’t give a shit about you and your list, Joe Clark, other than as a shining example of the kind of person who will never get anything publishing, and also, for the amusement of seeing who sucks enough to dignify your cantankerous bullshit.
That guy’s dumbfuckery aside (and that is no small feat of dumbfuckery, I am aware), and nobody owing anybody shit aside, I disagree completely.
An editor is not publishing anybody’s book out of courtesy. Book publishing is a business, and a failing one at that. They aren’t doing anybody any favors by capitalizing on someone’s “novel they’ve been working on for 15 years.”
And for every million unsolicited completely bullshit horrible pieces of shit, there is one amazing and unsolicited work of art that doesn’t come through ‘networking’, social or otherwise. And, call me idealistic, call me sentimental, call me whatever you want and I’m sure you won’t hold back, but that is the whole point of the damn thing and the only real hope it has.
I’m not defending that guy’s bullshit but I am defending the idea that writers are the ones with something worthwhile to offer, they are the ones writing the books, and sending in your book, your child (however shitty), through the mail to some crumbling ivory tower in the sky, is, however archaic and however broken and however ineffectual, still something worthwhile.
Because not all good writing does get around quickly. That simply isn’t true. Real good writing you already know about gets around quickly.
And we have to believe, those of us that believe, that the next Great American Novel (as lame as it may be to refer to such a thing) could be somewhere out there written by some person whose Internet connection is shoddy and has never even heard of this lovely little blogging platform on which I practically spend my entire life— well, that is the dream of the thing, the real dream.
Because I do believe, or at least hope, that there is a beautiful book sitting in a desk drawer somewhere that we will all one day get to read, and be better for reading, that we will write lovely, insightful blog posts about, just may be sent unsolicited. It just may be be the bright spot in some assistant’s otherwise crap-filled day; and this is my sentimentality and my dreaminess but I haven’t lost it and I don’t want to— I imagine her knocking on her boss’s door with it hugged to her chest, bursting through filled with excitement before the writer, the un-linked in, unnetworked magician even knows it yet— well, any person, any reader, and especially any editor should be so lucky.
I think that is worth all of the slush piles, all of the shitty people like this, in the world.
