Shocked. And stunned. Yeah. Very stunned.
After opening my email, hitting the roof, and then calming back down, I just commented to Quite Contrarian, "wow, for a writer who's never actually been published, I guess I'm doing pretty well."
What prompted this? Well, my pal Ned has done it again. (This is pretty much a repeat of the reaction I had when he told me that Amy Sohn was headlining my Barbes reading, only more flabbergasted, if that's possible.) He just sent me the finalized set for the reading I'm doing at Piano's as part of the Summer Shakes series on July 12th. (For more info, go here.) Take a gander at some of the other names on there, will you? Yeah, you read that right. Jonathan freakin' Ames. Will freakin' Leitch. Now, I'm well aware that they'll probably do their things and be out the door well before I go on, but the fact remains: I'm on a bill with Jonathan Ames. I have no clips to speak of and about 25% of a novel, and I'm on a bill with a critically-acclaimed novelist.
"Okay, so why aren't you publishing?" QC asked me.
And the answer is: I don't know. I mean, clearly I must be a competent writer if people haven't totally abandoned my blog after four years. And on a slightly more serious front, I doubt Ned would ask me to read at another one of his events if he thought I sucked (I mean, at the very least, he has faith that I'll fill chairs with asses, and on that count I hope he's right - the power's in your hands, folks). Since moving to New York, I've submitted articles to 7 or 8 publications of varying stature, and only McSweeneys.net has rejected me. (And I wasn't expecting an acceptance from them, actually. I sort of wanted to get a rejection out of the way so I could prove to myself that I would not dissolve, Last Crusade-style, if a publication rejected me. And even they suggested I should try again sometime.) But every time the prospect of going outside of my comfort zone comes up, I adopt the old George McFly posture and whine that "I just can't take that kind of rejection."
The easy way to not have to confront this, I'll confess, is to be writing a novel. I can prolong the rejection as long as possible by funnelling the bulk of my creative energy into one big project rather than a lot of little projects, and that way it will be months at the bare minimum before anybody will have the opportunity to tell me I don't have what it takes to play in the big leagues.
(Is it any surprise that I don't date very often, either? I acquire boyfriends about as often as I get published. My last breakup coincided with the release of my first Black Table blurb. The relationship before that was going on while my Digital Brooklyn columns ran and ended right before my first public reading. I wrote a piece for Winter Mittens, which I later scrapped before it ran, about the one before that.)
(Hm, perhaps there's a correlation here. The more I write, the more action my love life sees, or perhaps the more I date, the more I write. It's a chicken-egg conundrum. Further incentive to risk the rejection in either arena, at any rate.)
But the fact that on the strength of a few tiny little blurbs and the towering behemoth of That Blog On That Other Site, complete strangers know me by reputation...that astounds me. I feel sort of like Ben Kweller in his Radish days. He'd never played a single live show and major labels were courting him on the strength of a mighty viral-marketing buzz and a low-quality home demo.
I'm not saying I have a mighty buzz, or the Kwelleresque chops to back even my minibuzzlet up, but I do sort of feel like even the smallest effort I make brings about good things. (PS - I'll make the awful confession that I couldn't hum a Ben Kweller song right now if my life depended on it. I have no idea if he has chops or not.)
I hope that writing about it doesn't somehow jinx it.
Ironically, the piece I think I'm going to read is about the physical manifestation of my untapped potential waking me up and kicking my ass.
What prompted this? Well, my pal Ned has done it again. (This is pretty much a repeat of the reaction I had when he told me that Amy Sohn was headlining my Barbes reading, only more flabbergasted, if that's possible.) He just sent me the finalized set for the reading I'm doing at Piano's as part of the Summer Shakes series on July 12th. (For more info, go here.) Take a gander at some of the other names on there, will you? Yeah, you read that right. Jonathan freakin' Ames. Will freakin' Leitch. Now, I'm well aware that they'll probably do their things and be out the door well before I go on, but the fact remains: I'm on a bill with Jonathan Ames. I have no clips to speak of and about 25% of a novel, and I'm on a bill with a critically-acclaimed novelist.
"Okay, so why aren't you publishing?" QC asked me.
And the answer is: I don't know. I mean, clearly I must be a competent writer if people haven't totally abandoned my blog after four years. And on a slightly more serious front, I doubt Ned would ask me to read at another one of his events if he thought I sucked (I mean, at the very least, he has faith that I'll fill chairs with asses, and on that count I hope he's right - the power's in your hands, folks). Since moving to New York, I've submitted articles to 7 or 8 publications of varying stature, and only McSweeneys.net has rejected me. (And I wasn't expecting an acceptance from them, actually. I sort of wanted to get a rejection out of the way so I could prove to myself that I would not dissolve, Last Crusade-style, if a publication rejected me. And even they suggested I should try again sometime.) But every time the prospect of going outside of my comfort zone comes up, I adopt the old George McFly posture and whine that "I just can't take that kind of rejection."
The easy way to not have to confront this, I'll confess, is to be writing a novel. I can prolong the rejection as long as possible by funnelling the bulk of my creative energy into one big project rather than a lot of little projects, and that way it will be months at the bare minimum before anybody will have the opportunity to tell me I don't have what it takes to play in the big leagues.
(Is it any surprise that I don't date very often, either? I acquire boyfriends about as often as I get published. My last breakup coincided with the release of my first Black Table blurb. The relationship before that was going on while my Digital Brooklyn columns ran and ended right before my first public reading. I wrote a piece for Winter Mittens, which I later scrapped before it ran, about the one before that.)
(Hm, perhaps there's a correlation here. The more I write, the more action my love life sees, or perhaps the more I date, the more I write. It's a chicken-egg conundrum. Further incentive to risk the rejection in either arena, at any rate.)
But the fact that on the strength of a few tiny little blurbs and the towering behemoth of That Blog On That Other Site, complete strangers know me by reputation...that astounds me. I feel sort of like Ben Kweller in his Radish days. He'd never played a single live show and major labels were courting him on the strength of a mighty viral-marketing buzz and a low-quality home demo.
I'm not saying I have a mighty buzz, or the Kwelleresque chops to back even my minibuzzlet up, but I do sort of feel like even the smallest effort I make brings about good things. (PS - I'll make the awful confession that I couldn't hum a Ben Kweller song right now if my life depended on it. I have no idea if he has chops or not.)
I hope that writing about it doesn't somehow jinx it.
Ironically, the piece I think I'm going to read is about the physical manifestation of my untapped potential waking me up and kicking my ass.
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