I said Viddie Well!
After my post about Writer's Block, I received a large amount of commentary and e-mails (well, large for my meager blog at any rate) telling me to buck up and all that.
Well, phooey!
To put it quite plainly, I really really really want to be a writer. I really really also would like to be a professor of literature. Notice the difference of one "really." Now for those of you who were around when I was attempting to enter a Ph.D. program, try to imagine what "really really" means. I studied, what?, ten or twelve hours a week for the GRE single subject, plus twenty to thirty hours during the final three weeks before the test. I invested every penny I could scrape together into sending out of applications. I wrote a twenty five page paper on Tasso. I drove to Sacramento to get transcripts together. I spent at least two to three hours a week just looking at the web pages of the schools I was applying to. I had to fly to Vegas to take my GRE general. This is all above and beyond my scholarship, and all the hoops I had to go through to get that, my G.P.A. which I had to keep to a level I never thought myself possible of attaining, my thesis which got me a graduation with distinction, and the graduate conference I helped plan (where Lynn and I met). I went through hell, man. I'm thankful I had Lynn around for the final steps of this process, or else I think they'd have locked me up by now. One of my friends, going through the same thing I was going through, very nearly had a nervous breakdown during the process. I still haven't quite recovered.
And I didn't get in. Twenty schools--twenty rejection letters.
So, the next year, I worked in a woodshop sanding funeral urns with fellow workers who were ex-cons for dealing coke and crank. In between that, I taught classes at Butte community college, and oh yeah, prepared my application materials for 18 more colleges while planning a wedding. Tasso out, I wrote another paper of Gravity's Rainbow, and pretty much went through the soft side of the graduation process yet again (no GRE). Trying to become a professor of literature is hellish. Poor Avram is doing it for the third time this year, and all good things to him. Avram, I'll help you out any way I can.
I mean just imagine. You've got a phenomenal GPA, you're in the top 10% on the GRE. Your general GRE scores aren't too shabby either. You've got scholarships, teaching experience (4 T.A.ships, 5 by myself first round, 9 by myself second round), six conferences, and three lines of publication, and they still don't think your Ph.D. material. Talk books with Avram some time. He will blow you out of the water with how much he's read, and I'm not talking cursory reads--you don't come up with Hawthorne as comic book writer because you weren't paying attention. And Avram is on his third round. The system is pathetic.
And in my desire, my "really really," I have embraced said system with the full understanding that when all is said and done and I am on the tenure track, I can look back and know that I proved myself the intellectual that they hoped me to be, and then shocked the hell out of them by being even more than that--more than their stupid admissions system could account for.
Now, all that translates into that level of desire, that "really really want." Imagine, if you will, what "really really really want" must be like. Unfortunately, I am enamored with unfair and often ludicrous systems. I am drawn to them. Publishing makes Ph.D. admission look like Swiss clockwork. There is no order to publishing. At least with a Ph.D. program they give you an address to send your stuff. No such information exists for writers. Not even successful writers have that kind of information. That's why there's so many great books about how to write, and no great books about how to get published. Writer's Market is gigantic, monolithic, and impossible to use.
So, here's what I've got so far. You write your book. You contact an agent. He/she either takes you on, or tells you what you need to do in order for your work to be attractive to an agent. If he/she takes you on, then they figure out where to send your stuff. If they don't take you on, well, we'll see.
This process has created in me a stifling anxiety that, if you read my previous post you'll know, has affected my work. This is one of the hardships that I must overcome for something that I "really really really" want.
The e-mails and condolences, and all that, that were sent to me were in the nature of "don't you worry Monstro, you'll get your day." No. I'm going to be honest with everyone. No one "gets their day." Your day is made--by you. If you want your day, I suggest you begin preparing for it. And that is what I am doing.
The other subject brought up in commentary and e-mail is that Jason is Jason, and Monstro is Monstro...and that is true. I wish the best for Jason, and hope that he gets published. I hope that this woman acts as his publisher. And I hope that the world falls in love with his writing, because I have been privy to some of his stuff and it is great. I almost wrote genius, and didn't only because it seems a word thrown around too often, but if I were the type of person to say that a writer has genius while they are still in their larval stage, then I am sure I would say this about Jason's writing. It is for this reason that I consider Jason to be a worthy nemesis.
And as long as it keeps me writing, Jason will be my nemesis. I can just imagine him opening an acceptance letter and showing it to Ruthie. "Look at this honey, the New Yorkers going to publish my work. Oh...and 20% off at Bed, Bath, and Beyond." It's sort of like the Utah Jazz winning the championship. Yeah, they deserve it, but you know that their victory party will suck.
So, rest assured, I mean no animosity to Jason. I don't curse him the enterprise. I am not sulking, nor will I sulk if Jason is published before me. I am simply utilizing this angst the way I always do with my "art"--I'm using at as an impetus for action.
Because when all is said and done, "really really really" wanting something is useless if you waste all your energy on the wanting, and have nothing left to bring your desires to fruition. You might as well only sort of want something, and actually do the thing necessary to get it. I mean, yeah sure, you don't achieve the object of your most prized dreams or anything, but then again, you may be inspiring others to get off their ass and write their book.
Well, phooey!
To put it quite plainly, I really really really want to be a writer. I really really also would like to be a professor of literature. Notice the difference of one "really." Now for those of you who were around when I was attempting to enter a Ph.D. program, try to imagine what "really really" means. I studied, what?, ten or twelve hours a week for the GRE single subject, plus twenty to thirty hours during the final three weeks before the test. I invested every penny I could scrape together into sending out of applications. I wrote a twenty five page paper on Tasso. I drove to Sacramento to get transcripts together. I spent at least two to three hours a week just looking at the web pages of the schools I was applying to. I had to fly to Vegas to take my GRE general. This is all above and beyond my scholarship, and all the hoops I had to go through to get that, my G.P.A. which I had to keep to a level I never thought myself possible of attaining, my thesis which got me a graduation with distinction, and the graduate conference I helped plan (where Lynn and I met). I went through hell, man. I'm thankful I had Lynn around for the final steps of this process, or else I think they'd have locked me up by now. One of my friends, going through the same thing I was going through, very nearly had a nervous breakdown during the process. I still haven't quite recovered.
And I didn't get in. Twenty schools--twenty rejection letters.
So, the next year, I worked in a woodshop sanding funeral urns with fellow workers who were ex-cons for dealing coke and crank. In between that, I taught classes at Butte community college, and oh yeah, prepared my application materials for 18 more colleges while planning a wedding. Tasso out, I wrote another paper of Gravity's Rainbow, and pretty much went through the soft side of the graduation process yet again (no GRE). Trying to become a professor of literature is hellish. Poor Avram is doing it for the third time this year, and all good things to him. Avram, I'll help you out any way I can.
I mean just imagine. You've got a phenomenal GPA, you're in the top 10% on the GRE. Your general GRE scores aren't too shabby either. You've got scholarships, teaching experience (4 T.A.ships, 5 by myself first round, 9 by myself second round), six conferences, and three lines of publication, and they still don't think your Ph.D. material. Talk books with Avram some time. He will blow you out of the water with how much he's read, and I'm not talking cursory reads--you don't come up with Hawthorne as comic book writer because you weren't paying attention. And Avram is on his third round. The system is pathetic.
And in my desire, my "really really," I have embraced said system with the full understanding that when all is said and done and I am on the tenure track, I can look back and know that I proved myself the intellectual that they hoped me to be, and then shocked the hell out of them by being even more than that--more than their stupid admissions system could account for.
Now, all that translates into that level of desire, that "really really want." Imagine, if you will, what "really really really want" must be like. Unfortunately, I am enamored with unfair and often ludicrous systems. I am drawn to them. Publishing makes Ph.D. admission look like Swiss clockwork. There is no order to publishing. At least with a Ph.D. program they give you an address to send your stuff. No such information exists for writers. Not even successful writers have that kind of information. That's why there's so many great books about how to write, and no great books about how to get published. Writer's Market is gigantic, monolithic, and impossible to use.
So, here's what I've got so far. You write your book. You contact an agent. He/she either takes you on, or tells you what you need to do in order for your work to be attractive to an agent. If he/she takes you on, then they figure out where to send your stuff. If they don't take you on, well, we'll see.
This process has created in me a stifling anxiety that, if you read my previous post you'll know, has affected my work. This is one of the hardships that I must overcome for something that I "really really really" want.
The e-mails and condolences, and all that, that were sent to me were in the nature of "don't you worry Monstro, you'll get your day." No. I'm going to be honest with everyone. No one "gets their day." Your day is made--by you. If you want your day, I suggest you begin preparing for it. And that is what I am doing.
The other subject brought up in commentary and e-mail is that Jason is Jason, and Monstro is Monstro...and that is true. I wish the best for Jason, and hope that he gets published. I hope that this woman acts as his publisher. And I hope that the world falls in love with his writing, because I have been privy to some of his stuff and it is great. I almost wrote genius, and didn't only because it seems a word thrown around too often, but if I were the type of person to say that a writer has genius while they are still in their larval stage, then I am sure I would say this about Jason's writing. It is for this reason that I consider Jason to be a worthy nemesis.
And as long as it keeps me writing, Jason will be my nemesis. I can just imagine him opening an acceptance letter and showing it to Ruthie. "Look at this honey, the New Yorkers going to publish my work. Oh...and 20% off at Bed, Bath, and Beyond." It's sort of like the Utah Jazz winning the championship. Yeah, they deserve it, but you know that their victory party will suck.
So, rest assured, I mean no animosity to Jason. I don't curse him the enterprise. I am not sulking, nor will I sulk if Jason is published before me. I am simply utilizing this angst the way I always do with my "art"--I'm using at as an impetus for action.
Because when all is said and done, "really really really" wanting something is useless if you waste all your energy on the wanting, and have nothing left to bring your desires to fruition. You might as well only sort of want something, and actually do the thing necessary to get it. I mean, yeah sure, you don't achieve the object of your most prized dreams or anything, but then again, you may be inspiring others to get off their ass and write their book.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
10:40 AM
6 Comments:
"The friendship of students and of beauties is for the most part equally sincere, and equally durable: as both depend for happiness on the regard of others, on that which the value arises merely from comparison, they are both exposed to perpetual jealousies, and both incessantly employed in schemes to intercept the praises of each other."
--Samuel Johnson
Now, may I please receive some praise for culling such an appropriate quote?
Yes, Jason, I do believe that you are worthy of praise. It was for that reason that I essentially called your writing larval genius. But one other thing I suppose ought to be said, as your quote permits, rivalry and aid have always defined our friendship, and I hardly think that we are the worse for it.
If I could only quote one person for the rest of my life, it would definitely be Dr. Johnson. Well done, Jason. I may even soon have to stop punishing you for your outlandish social transgressions.
If I could only quote two people for the rest of my life, I would have to add Zizek to the list, because next to him, my writing always looks coherent, and his writing is sufficiently (I tried to find a more scholarly word here) bad that it can be stretched to mean just about anything one could want.
If I could only quote one person for the rest of my life, it would definitely be Dr. Johnson. Well done, Jason. I may even soon have to stop punishing you for your outlandish social transgressions.
If I could only quote two people for the rest of my life, I would have to add Zizek to the list, because next to him, my writing always looks coherent, and his writing is sufficiently (I tried to find a more scholarly word here) bad that it can be stretched to mean just about anything one could want.
But onto the subject at hand: Monstro, speaking as someone who also went through hell to get here, but who only had the sense to apply to and hence get rejected from nine graduate schools in the first round, all I can say is: Well done. Just think, you have now conquered your first absurd system. It is (according to the Chronicle of Higher Ed) more difficult to get into a Ph.D. program in Lit than medical school. The moral of the story is, that while feeling burning jealousy and unfettered competitive urges can be good and productive things, don't forget to allow yourself to occasionally feel validated by the monsters that you've already slain.
Brian said: “Yes, Jason, I do believe that you are worthy of praise.”
Amy said: “Well done, Jason.”
Dr. Johnson said: “both incessantly employed in schemes to intercept the praises of each other."
I said: “may I please receive some praise for culling such an appropriate quote?”
Scheme accomplished! Score is now: Jason 1, worthy adversary, 0.
No, jack ass. The quote is that you INTERCEPT the praise of others. You get praised instead of someone else who deserves it. You were praised for something you have actually done. I have received praise by poising myself as an alternative to praising you. Therefore, I win, but it's a shallow victory. I'd rather just get the praise that I deserve. I believe that's the point of my pathetic blog.
"Much the greater part of those who pretend to laugh at foppery and formality, secretly wish to have possessed those qualifications which they pretend to despise; and because they find it difficult to wash away the tincture which they have so deeply imbibed, endeavour to harden themselves in a sullen approbation of their own colour. Neutrality is a state, into which the busy passions of man cannot easily subside; and he who is in danger of the pangs of envy, is generally forced to recreate his imagination with an effort of comfort."
Johnson: Adventurer #131 (February 5, 1754)
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