Re: how to get published
jason varsoke (jjv@caesun.msd.ray.com)
Thu, 30 Sep 1999 08:07:40 -0400 (EDT)
Scottie: (you can tell by the indenting, if nothing else)
> '... 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.
I often wonder what the corrispondences would look like if the writers had
email. I know my paper letters are a better read than my email.
> 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.
of course, 38 failures is often what is reported by great successes.
Though, those are rare.
-j