Grist (sic) for the Mill

[ecosophia]

Rejection slips are among the enduring features of any writer's life. In fact, I fielded one yesterday. It was from Grist, a glossy pseudoenvironmental rag that caters to the overprivileged, and it was in response to the story I submitted to their "cli-fi" contest back in March. 

Mind you, this came as less than no surprise. I discussed the contest, among other signposts in the strange landscape of thought we've entered in the last few years, in a post over on my blog.  My comments on it were, ahem, far from sympathetic, and the story I submitted to the contest -- "A Modest Contribution" -- was of a piece with that:  I set out to follow the rules of their contest to the letter, while flatly contradicting the spirit thereof. I was a little sorry to get a bland generic rejection slip instead of a scream of outrage, but then one can't be too picky in this business. 

Over on the blog, however, I heard from another reader who'd submitted something in the same spirit and also got a rejection slip.  It occurs to me to wonder aloud just how many readers were as unimpressed by Grist's display of overinflated entitlement as I was, and reacted to it in the same way, by writing a story. If there are enough of us, you know, it might be possible to produce a short book -- or even a not so short book! -- and get it into publication. (And I might be convinced to invite new stories along the same lines, for that matter; you can read Grist's bellowing orgy of virtue signaling disguised as a call for submissions here if you happen to need inspiration.) 

What say you, fellow writers?  Do we have enough stories, in the jargon of a vanished age, to pub an ish? 

Comments

Grist indeed

[(Anonymous)]

I ponder these things as I edit a novel with a bit of Bruno in it. The protagonist is subtly critical of the current clime, and I note a pressure on my consciousness to make it more subtle than I otherwise might.

My last non-fiction book received some strange comments about its use of Harlem, which was in no way a comment on anything. That's just where the events took place.

As a nonstrologist with nondual and überatheistic leanings, it seems to me one has to simply step back and watch all of this unfold (assuming one has the free will to do so). Laws of evolution are almost certainly at work and no one ever said they had to work in the favor of humanity, much less authors of "authentic" literature.

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, albeit dated and not prescient enough, is still worth revisiting for some perspective.

And if one finds oneself writing tomes against this tide, good luck to them. Amazon robots are already ready, willing and able to pull every single last tome from your back catalog should one word "trigger" an algo. At least 4x a year I have to explain to them that the mnemonic examples and homophonic transliterations in my books are mispelled on purpose.

Meanwhile, I'm sure a "tag" is used to exclude bots from analyzing the typos in ye olde Stephen King, of which there are plenty... it's just us "self" published folk they want to enslave to their tyrannical fantasy of no-typo-texts.

LOL... "self" published. Even when I used to make 'zines using Xerox, I was aware of my collaboration with their great and might collaboration. No "one" publishes alone.

Re: Grist indeed

[ecosophia]

That's one of the reasons I avoid self-publishing and go with small to midsized publishers. Nobody pulls their fiction.

Re: Grist indeed

[(Anonymous)]

This is neither here nor there, but I've been wrestling with this lately, whether to go with a small/medium publisher or do it myself. I've always used publishers for shorter things (like magazine articles) because they have the reach. But after sifting through dozens of smaller book publishers... I had a hard time figuring out what they were going to do for me that I couldn't do myself. Most of the smaller ones seem to rely on print of demand services for the actual printing and there seems to be distribution services too if you want to get your book in stores. There is the time consideration I suppose, but it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to outsource at least some of it with drop shipping POD and selling through your own website.

Re: Grist indeed

[ecosophia]

If you're good at the various chores that go with running a small business, you can certainly do it yourself. I'm not, and I also don't have the time to spare, so I'm happy to let someone else do the work.