101 Reasons to Stop Writing

I’m sure that most of you have already booked your HAZMAT transport unit. You’re planning to spend the morning scraping out the dregs of your slushpiles, tossing the packages that are too heavy to be only a query, or too light to have an SASE, all the pink envelopes printed with quill clipart, everything with “Member, SFWA” written on it, or addressed to “The Editer”. You’ve made arrangement with the Random House guys to bring the marshmallows while you swing by 7-11 for the hot dogs and kabob sticks. You’ve checked the weather report so you won’t get covered in ashes when the staff writers from Dick Wolf Productions dump a metric ton of spec Law & Order scripts on the pyre. You love the smell of burning printer ink in the evening.

But if you’re new to the biz, or your office is too far from the nearest organised bonfire, or you’re hopelessly agoraphobic, fear not. You can still join the festivities:

• Sinks and metal bins make great locations for mini-bonfires, one disappointing partial at a time.
• At a pinch, you can torch a query letter in a coffee cup.
• If you’re in an area with other agents/editors (preferably from other houses), shred one of those one-act, one-character me-against-the-system diatribes, stuff it into a brown paper bag, leave it outside someone’s office and light it.
• Open your email client, select everything date more than three days ago and press Delete.
• Slip the postman five bucks to dump today’s mail in a dumpster across town, and hand him a book of matches.