![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
One of the many marvels of the Internet is the sharing of anecdotes about the actions of persons so clueless, so utterly bereft of the commodity we call common sense, that you begin to wonder if Rod Serling (before or perhaps by his death) somehow distorted the basic principles of television signal distribution and turned the world itself into one unending Twilight Zone episode; one in which you are both audience and main character, slowly realizing that the world you thought you knew has so thoroughly ceased to exist that you suspect your life up to that point has been a dream.
In the midst of your Serlingian journey, comes a man for whom the normal rules of writing, submission and physics seem not to apply. A man so confident in his principles that the rules can, nay should, be broken, that he shakes you to the core of your beliefs. Is he a prophet of the end times, heralding the last days of the tyranny of qualitative judgement, or a messiah come to teach us the New Path to Publication, or is he, in fact, a nutbag?
Such a man is the author of Space Ark.
With a few exceptions, I have avoided specific criticism of individual writers on 101 Reasons. If I say that so-and-so’s writing sucks so much it seems like he originally wrote in German and translated to English via German-Spanish, Spanish-French and French-English phrasebooks, that’s just subjective opinion; but if I say that he will almost certainly never see a document printed on Random House letterhead with the word “yes” on it, that’s statistics. It’s also because I fear if I take the time to actually read more than a couple of paragraphs, my critical faculties may be permanently damaged, like a colour timer in a film lab who must frequently look at pure red, green and blue lights to avoid developing colour blindness from processing raw footage of American Pie: The Revenge (I’m told that agents must keep a reference copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and Fowler’s Modern English Usage for the same reason). Not to mention that time spent reading crappy fiction, for review or personal displeasure, is time not spent dissuading writers of crappy fiction.
Please allow me a brief exception for Space Ark, just to say this: In a four-paragraph excerpt, just over 550 words (no dialogue, just backstory), there are nine exclamation points. Nine. After that, do I need to mention the telepathic dolphins?
Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother with this, because there’s only so much you can achieve by shouting into the Grand Canyon. But this guy isn’t content with spending fifteen years writing one bad novel, then years marketing it via a terrible website. He’s found a remarkable, if not entirely new, way to submit his book for representation.
Miss Snark, bless her, reprints his query email in full. (I suspect that Lit Agent X received the same query.)
Unlike Space Ark, his query may have lasting value — as an educational tool for prospective writers (who refuse to take all my other advice). If and when a Master’s Degree in Publishing Science is presented by a major university, one student is going to write a thesis just on this query. With the exception of managing to write in mostly coherent English, everything he does in this query is so spectacularly bad that if you divided the blunders individually over a hundred otherwise pitch-perfect queries, they would all be rejected without reaching the Maybe pile. From the opening address “To whom it may concern” to the gargantuan stupidity of insisting agents pay for a self-published copy of the book, this is a handbook on how not to get considered.
This is required reading if you’re stuck in the query loop. If you don’t see the problems, or find that you’re employing one of these techniques, you might as well just stop writing. If you can’t understand how your query comes across to an agent, what makes you think you can write character?
(Thanks Heather for the link.)
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Oh, this guy is priceless. He reacts to criticism with all the fortitude of a four year old, and degenerates to rewriting emails you send him so that they’re supposed to be the opposite of what you’re actually saying. It’s very… third grade.
I reproduce these emails here for kicks… and it’s worth the read:
Dear Heather,
What a beautiful name for such an ugly girl; oops, I meant ghoul!
Ouch, he wounds me to the quick
Anyway, thanks for hittin’ on my web site, Einstein! You’re so smart and I’m so dumb! Yet, it looks like dumb ‘ol me found an inexpensive way to raise my site’s rankings in search engines by luring in you dumber-than-dumb dumb-ass suckas to do web site promotion for me, you who sure got all bugeyed for my enticing bait which you lemmings swallowed hook, line and sinker, didn’t ya’, stinkers! But, what did y’all get after ya’ bit but a real sharp hook which fed no one but dumb ‘ol me while bloodying your bloody foul mouths! Keep them hits a comin’, ye shit-for-brains idiots. The despicable likes of you, Miss Snard et. al. and her evil mission in life merely confirms two regrettable facts. One, those who can’t write teach and those who can’t teach criticize. Two, agents do not facilitate freedom of expression but inhibit it by being stumbling blocks to it. And, like I responded to another of misssnipes obsequious, boorish followers: anyone who has anything to do with a web site that has anything to do with Google, or Yahoo! for that matter, which both aid and abet the Chinese authorities in jailing Chinese dissidents, are complicit with those awful tyrants. I recommend all such snides post what they think are clever witticisms, but which are in fact merely snidely drivel, on some other web site affiliated with a search engine such as Ask.com which does not obsequiously cooperate with fascists. That way, such mental pygmies can express themselves freely without helping the Chinese Gestapo to arrest those whom merely are trying to express themselves in a similarly unencumbered manner.
Email : hmdud@ghoulmail.crap
Yes, he really did rewrite my email address this way.
———- Aboriginal Massage ———————————-
From: spaceark@spaceark.net
Reply-To: spaceark@spaceark.net
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 11:41:16 -0800
>
>Name: Heather
>
>Email : hmdud@ghoulmail.crud
>
>Questions or Comments: Your website is so good, your writing better, and you’re expecting publishers and agents to actually PAY for the chance to even LOOK at a great book, completely overriding their usual policies? RIGHT ON! I APPLAUD YOUR MOXIE! But, I must admit, I’m kind’a jealous tho’ cuz I wished I had thought of that myself! But since I’m bereft of ideas, and any courage to manifest them, I’ll just continue to stay over here in the slow lane of life and observe innovative people like you speed happily by my sad, lonely self.
>
>Newflash (YOU FORGOT THE “S” IN NEWSFLASH, YA’ BLITHERING IDIOT!), brilliance: They want you. They need you. You aren’t the next Dan Brown, whoever that is, but you ARE the next George Lucas!, and even if you were Dan’s Brown, you have no chance of being illegitimately published by an illiterary agent and/or illegitimate publisher because telling an agent or publisher that (”that” is sludge, ghoul, in other words superfluous, which makes you the worst writer in the universe!) they have to pay for the privilege of working with you is a novel, and good, idea! I wished I had thought of that myself but I’m too fuckin’ stupid, cowardly and scared to try anything so bold and so courageous! Cheers for you, boss!
>
>Good luck with that, genius. And please, for the love of all that’s holy… CONTINUE WRITING ESPECIALLY YOUR RESPONSES TO ALL CRETINS LIKE ME AND OUR INANE MESSAGES TO YOU BECAUSE WE’RE MASOCHISTIC AND LUV VERBAL SLAP DOWNS! I MUST SAY: YOU’RE A BREATH OF FRESH AIR THAT FRESHENS THE STANK OF ME AND MY STINKY LIFE! And (YOU FORGOT A COMMA AFTER “AND,” DODO!) definitely continue web design, because you have one of the best web sites I’ve ever seen and so I just can’t stop hittin’ on it and you cuz I’m so lonely!
It’s opposite day, NYAH NYAH!
If only his novel was as well written as that.
Another loser who thinks linkbait is a precious commodity, worth burning every bridge to acquire. If he wants to be the top spot when someone searches for “Space Ark”, he can have it.
If he really has a problem with Chinese security policies (and fair enough), I can think of better ways of effecting change than lambasting people for using Google and writing a terrible novel.
Oh, I’m going to have to recommend this one to Vincent Flanders at Web Pages That Suck. What is it about really bad skiffy writers that makes them think that a Web site that looks like the Heaven’s Gate cult designed it is “cutting edge”? Good Elvis Almighty, even I stopped designing sites like this a decade ago.
Space Ark was listed as a Daily Sucker at Web Pages That Suck on April 10, 2007. Well done Paul, for fighting the good fight one bucket of humiliation at a time.
Whoa.
Oceana?
Androgynyns?
…Destiny and Dreamer?
amaranthine?
EMPYREAN?!
Back the truck UP, dude. HPL is dead and you, my friend, ain’t qualified to apply for the position.
I couldn’t make it past the FIRST paragraph.