Now, I know what you're thinking. You're probably saying to yourself, "Wow, that Jessica Faust person sure is reasonable and fair-minded, patient and kind. She probably rescues kittens out of trees and travels to foreign countries to help orphans in her free time."
Don't be fooled my fellow writers! I link to her post to show you just how devious these agents can be. Let the truth set you free! We have nothing to lose but our royalty checks! Don't let these agents, with their free advice, and taking time out of their busy schedules to answer questions they've already been asked over a hundred times, lure you into a false sense of security. Because I'm here to tell you right now: Agents feast on the tears of rejected writers. That and massive doses of caffeine.
They do.
We now take you to the agents' evil lair under the IHOP in Queens.
"What do we have here? The writer claims this
revolutionary literary fiction about a frustrated
writer who travels to Alaska to find himself, only
to get bitten by a vampire and become an undead
nature documentary filmmaker, will be the next
Twilight. And you know what, it surely would be!
Especially with all the basic spelling and grammar
errors, those really give the manuscript an authentic feel.
Hah! Who needs to earn a living? Let us crush this
writer's precious dreams underfoot."
"Ah, the distilled tears of a frustrated writer, mixed
with some pomegranate juice. I feel my power growing
already. Nom nom nom."
"So, now that we're done fostering mediocrity and
stifling the creativity of unappreciated literary
geniuses, who do you think is going to win America's
Next Top Model?"
Okay, I think I just woke up the rest of the house while laughing at this! This is great. :D
ReplyDelete*LULZ* I do love your perspective on this.
ReplyDeleteOh, everyone's gotten so snarky lately, I stopped reading the agent blogs and go look at pictures of pretty indie boys, instead.
If the agents aren't making some wisecracks about looney authors (and yes, writers are looney, it's part of the package), then they're whining about getting rude emails from looney people (as if they didn't expect it, c'mon - writers live constantly in alternate universes, you expect consistant sanity?). Ironically enough, I've also noted that it's the least experienced and qualified agents doing this.
Writers are either dripping green acid anonymously (or not so, in a very badly written blog piece with a lot of semi-colons (i.e. lots of semi-colons = "literary", you know)) or they're sucking up so hard, their entire heads have turned into black holes and can be used to navigate to distant galaxies.
I'm just a lit journal editor, we don't make any money, so nobody cares. I've decided that I'm just going to read for my 'zine and write my little brains out and when I'm finished with each piece, I might pay attention again.
PS - Is that Bill Nighy? :)