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For All You Pretend Writers Out There

14:33 / 25.07.02

my sister - bless her - is always trying to be helpful (although she described a super scary monster in my new story as 'probably looking like zippy from rainbow') and sent me an ad for forward press as she genuinely thought it would be a place i could Send Stuff To. i will chide her later, but for now i thought i'd share an extract of their immense generosity with you fine people:

"there's more to you than meets the eye. we all need a way to express our creativity, something different from day-to-day routine...something in life about which we can say: 'this is my Thing'.... if you're ready to show the world there's more to you than meets the eye, show it off a little - send us a couple of poems or short stories and we'll send you some more information about our vibrant writing community. send your thing to: my thing, forward press, 110 patronising bastard street, peterborough.'

translation - send your pathetic effort to us, let us ridicule you, then take money from you in various subscriptions so you can find out how to be a proper writer. if you're lucky, we might give you a little pat on the head for trying so hard.

receiving this ad was nearly as mortifying as when i got a writers' mag through the post - unasked for - that had a bloke with a beard and pipe on the cover, looking dreamily past the camera, presumably thinking about his latest marvellous story. no one ever owned up to having that sent to me, but this time i have the culprit...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:35 / 25.07.02

Keelhaul the culprit, says I... that's just rude.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:47 / 25.07.02

You think that's bad? Check this out.

15:49 / 25.07.02

I don't even want to think about what happened last time I said "this is my Thing".

15:52 / 25.07.02

This exciting ad advises us that "There are millions of dollars to be made in poetry".

This would no doubt come as a surprise to the likes of Dylan Thomas...

18:13 / 25.07.02

> receiving this ad was nearly as mortifying as when i got a writers' mag through the post - unasked for - that had a bloke with a beard and pipe on the cover, looking dreamily past the camera, presumably thinking about his latest marvellous story.<

Hey, the photographer said that picture was just for his 'portfolio'! I never did get any money for that.

19:30 / 25.07.02

Rothkoid will now tell the saga of his internet poetry competition winning entry, 'Eldritch London' (sadly I can't remember enough of it to quote, but basically it sounds pretty much as you'd think it does) and subsequnet attempts to fleece him...

... but even respected agents are doing it these days; there have been a couple of stories in Private Eye recently about agents who have taken to charging a hefty fee (£100-£150) for 'advising' on a new writer's work - as the Eye said, no reputable agent should think of doing this. Not very shocking though, on the whole.

The Return Of Rothkoid

02:37 / 26.07.02

*knocks back absinthe, clears throat*

Eldritch London

Away, in tubes of ebon, dirt-shrouded night
A beast of might, compressed commuter meat
Rumbling away from your clothes of black
A deathly bird of palefaced hue
Your Sisters of Mercy and your Cure
Your pierced nose and your black nails
A cage to keep my heart suspended
The Tube! The Tube!
My love dies on the tube
And Camden Town is an eon away...

Ahem.

Written in about 40 seconds to satisfy TheSpark.com's request for crappy poetry, I submitted that about two years ago. I got an email last week saying that I was nominated for poet of the year. Again. And think, all I had to do was to turn up to their shindig in DC and give them a small rhino in fees. But a small cup was to be my reward, just for showing up!

Christ. Spam sucks. But spam purporting to be edifying is just evil.

07:12 / 26.07.02

*sniff*

that was..... that was beautiful. am tempted to quote dom jolly's 5 million in response, or an excerpt anyway:

one
two, three, four
five.
six, seven
eight
nine
ten....

etc. for a very long time.

Rollo Kim, on location

08:09 / 26.07.02

You could always try the nice people at Vinnie Web:

Are you a writer?