101 Reasons to Stop Writing

This post is now part of the About This Blog page.

An update to FAQ #1. With real questions.

(This time FAQ stands for Frequently Abusive Quacks.)

• Is this a parody?

Of what? Just because I sweeten my vitriol with the nectar of comedy, does not mean I don’t want to format your hard drive and have you banned from the Post Office.

• Are you just trying to eliminate your competition?

The idea that the 95% of writers who will never be published anyway are competition, for me or anyone else, is laughable. Really, I laughed.

• Your blog is mean-spirited and unnecessary.

And your point is? Your fscking manuscript is unnecessary, and submitting it to agents and editors is mean-spirited.

• But aren’t you, like, writing?

What I do is called blogging. That’s my emotional defense against this logical paradox, and so far, it’s working.

• What if you discourage some young writer who might have gone on to write great books?

I’m willing to take that chance. Anyone who is moved to quit writing by this blog never had the ‘nads for it anyway, and the reading world is the richer for their absence.

• But established authors, editors and agents always say “Keep writing, don’t give up.”

Imagine you’re in the business of selling handmade ashtrays produced by a bunch of whiny crybabies who need constant reinforcement that their misshapen, half-baked lumps of clay are wonderful and unique snowflakes. You need a steady supply of new crybabies to make new ashtrays for a fickle public who want ashtrays like, but not exactly like, the ashtrays they bought last year. Would you want to jeopardise your sales, and career, by saying publicly that most of the ashtrays you receive from prospective crybabies are broken, hideous, unsellable crap, and that many don’t even seem to understand that an ashtray is meant to be capable of holding ash?

Agents and editors know that if they speak the honest truth, the only people listening are those few talented writers, who will simply go somewhere else. The pondscum who clog the slushpiles don’t even read the submission guidelines.

Established authors just don’t want to sound like assholes.

I don’t have this problem.