![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
As part of my overly complex, megalomaniacal plan to dominate (and eventually monetize) the under-exploited demographic of masochistic writers, I recently asked about the type of content you’d like me to spend my precious, rare-as-slushpile-talent free time to create for your ongoing amusement, like some animatronic talking monkey with the switch jammed on benign sarcasm.
Respondents were permitted to choose more than one option, but the poll service counted each choice as a separate vote, making the results statistically meaningless. At least you couldn’t vote more than once (unless you’re cookiephobic), so we can be reasonably sure that 50+ people voted.
The Question: What do you want to see on 101 Reasons?
The Results:
25% (45 votes) More Reasons! I’m this close to quitting, I just need a push. 
6% (10 votes) More Interviews, preferably with people I’ve heard of.
12% (21 votes) Weekend Updates! I need more stuff to procrastinate and obsess over.
30% (53 votes) Anything, just make it funny. I find your transparent sarcasm reassuring.
13% (24 votes) Anything, just make it cruel. My ego is overtaking my self-loathing.
2% (3 votes) More Polls! I like to know I’m not the only one here.
4% (8 votes) More personal stuff. I’m stalking you, but I’m lazy.
1% (1 votes) Generic blogosphere memes, punditry and other navel-gazing fluff. Got a cat?
2% (3 votes) Give up already. You haven’t saved one tortured adverb.
6% (10 votes) Would you review my manuscript?
Total votes: 178
Oh, you three people who voted for ‘Give up already’, you have cut me to the quick. You are the ointment in my fly.
Although the methodology is deeply flawed, we can make up some interesting conclusions from these data.
Obviously, most of you want more Reasons, your writerly phantasies having survived #1-14 more or less intact. But can it be true that less than half the people who want funny also want cruel? (Reminds of an old Dave Allen joke, which I will humourlessly paraphrase thus: ‘Hurt me,’ said the masochist to the sadist, and the sadist said ‘No.’)
To the folks who voted for Weekend Updates, you may get your wish soon enough. To those who voted for more personal stuff, I say: pick up the damn phone. If you don’t know the number, it’s none of your damn business.
Manuscript review? If you think your ego can handle a serve of fresh, steaming reality from me, you may as well just keep submitting. The result is the same.
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Well, I would call, but I don’t have your number, either. Personally, I can’t blame you: I wouldn’t want some goofy, slobbery American with too prominent a Canadian accent for comfort screaming at me at strange hours, either.
I know of a great way to boost your readership.
Solicit samples. And promise to post the most mock-worthy online as new reasons not to write. People FLOCK to that shit. Look at Miss Snark! She was downright nasty to people, and she had so many submissions she didn’t know what to do with ‘em all.
And you’re lucky. You have a ready-made group of helpers who’d help you sift through the crap. And then you can have a new reason:
“If you write like THIS guy, quit writing.”
Heather, the only reason why this won’t work is that reading slush, as with working for weekly newspapers or becoming a movie critic, is a perfect example of the power of Proverbs 26:11. You have enough shit flying through the aether from desperate wannabe writers that this would just give them a bit more attention. You don’t WANT to give them attention, because then they’ll never quit.
(A quick example. Back in the early days of the Web, I was a regular at a now-sadly-defunct site called “The Dysfunctional Family Circus”, which took Bil Keane’s “Family Circus” comic strips and let people make up new captions. Many of those captions were brilliant, but some were so dopy that the Webmaster set up the “Red Zone” and listed those as an example of what not to submit. By the time the feature syndicate that distributed “The Family Circus” issued its cease-and-desist letter to the DFC Webmaster, he was already noting that you had morons who were deliberately submitting particularly obnoxious and dumb captions, because they had more of a chance of being listed than the ones they thought were funny.)
My biggest concern would be some Cat Piss Man sending me a sample from The Eye of Argon or Atlanta Nights, and then mocking me from some imagined high ground because I didn’t immediately recognise it.
I think the only way to do this right will be to choose writing samples at random from the Interweb — some poor sap who’s actually hoping for constructive criticism.