Re: how to get published

Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Fri, 24 Sep 1999 23:34:07 +0100 

    '... What people post to listserves and what they put 
    out when they're Really writing are two different 
    things ...'

    That's certainly what Tim asserted some time ago.  
    But I wonder.  I don't doubt we all take greater 
    care with our more serious stuff.  Yet it seems to me
    that in the gossipy, informal letters of Hemingway, 
    Fitzgerald, Woolf, Waugh, Greene, Rowse, Nicolson,
    of almost any good writer whose correspondence has 
    been put out to the public there remains the tell-tale 
    vitality, the attack, the imprint of style & attitude 
    that informs their more considered work.   I simply 
    find it difficult to believe that what you would 
    presumably call a REAL writer can easily put his name 
    to conscious crap.

    And I STILL think that if I'd been turned down by 
    38 - thirty eight - agents I'd be less than wholly confident 
    about the value - or at least the marketability - of my offerings.

    Scottie B.