F Society*

*Traditional publishing and its shills, gatekeepers and toadies—and also any online writer who makes other writers feel like they have to meet some bs criteria to consider themselves writers.

It’s not an accident that all the images in my last post were from Mr. Robot—yes, I was doing a bit—and yes, I deeply adore that show—but I also think Eliot is a useful figure to talk about why I’ve decided I’m ready to call out other writers.

Structurally, Mr. Robot is kind of a superhero narrative—a lone figure working to right the wrongs wrought by the modern digital age, bucking the system to defeat people who have used the same system to exploit others. I will not claim such purity of motive, but…well, yes, I would kind of like to do that within the world of writing. But I don’t want to do that for the pure gratification of having righted a wrong; I’m concerned with the real people—real writers—who are negatively impacted by the corruptions of the writing and publishing industries.¹

More than that, I care very deeply about people who are negatively impacted by bad criticism.

Bad Criticism

Negative criticism has become almost a genre of entertainment in the Internet age—not least because the algorithm thrives on negative engagement, more than positive engagement. I would like to eventually write a post about that from a theoretical perspective (the theoretical purpose of criticism), but right now I would like to focus on how that ethos operates within writing communities.

If you are ever invited to critique the writing (or any kind of art) of another writer, at least 10-20% of your feedback should be positive. Full stop. What if you can find nothing positive to say about the work? Well, then perhaps you should advise the person to get out of writing altogether—but if you do that, you had better be correct about what is broken and why it can’t be fixed, or I will wish I had the skills to go full Mr. Robot on your ass.

This is not a balancing exercise—positive feedback serves a purpose. It tells the writer what they are doing well, so that when they change their approach, they know what to keep (and maybe even to do more of). It’s like an experiment: positive feedback is the constant, the thing to keep consistent, and negative feedback is the variables, the things to change. If you, in a position of critique, give no constant, the writer has no scale against which to weigh proposed improvements.

One of the things that makes me angriest, in the whole online writing ecosystem, is seeing a novice writer receive overwhelmingly negative—or, worse, bad—criticism, with no guidance on what to change or justification by which they could verify the validity of the criticism. When I say “bad criticism”, I’m referring—not just to negative criticism, but—to criticism that lacks foundation or shows a misunderstanding of the writing. I’m referring to vagaries and personal attacks. I’m referring to personal opinions that are not distinguished from objective assessment. If your critiques consist mostly of these things, please, for the love of all things holy, stop critiquing other writers until you can educate yourself and grow a bit and gain some perspective.

None of these examples are hypothetical; I have seen all of these things. I have talked other writers through the formal stylistic underpinnings of these kinds of critiques (the ones that weren’t personal attacks)—tried to reassure those writers that they are free to ignore responses that are unfounded or incorrect. But there is still a negative impact: most writers are extremely sensitive to criticism, and readers who give feedback of this kind will still erode the confidence of a novice writer, even if all of their feedback is stupid and/or wrong.

It required tremendous restraint, in my post, not to fully credential myself as someone who wishes to comment on others’ writing. After all, my degree is in Film. Well…my degree may be in Film, but most of what I studied in my Film courses was criticism. I learned how to critique film. Moreover, I took courses that were cross-listed with other visual arts, in which I learned how to critique other media. I also pursued an English degree (and ended up two papers shy of a double major), where I learned how to read and interpret English literature. Since college, I have been a professional writer and editor in many contexts, from writing alt text for college textbooks, to editing books for a small local tutoring company, to tutoring students writing their college admissions essays and coaching aspiring creative writers. I know good writing from bad. More importantly, I know good criticism from bad.

There is A LOT of bad criticism out there—and my heart breaks for the writers who have been affected by it, especially those who have been intimidated out of pursuing their craft by feedback that was given in bad faith. So a huge part of this project, for me, is to discredit those bad actors and undermine their dubious recommendations, while boosting the confidence of writers who have been discouraged by charlatans. But that was not what I addressed in my post—in my post, I talked specifically about the dissonance between the writing establishment and the experiences of writers trying to break into it.

Dear Agent

I want to share something I wrote when I was still querying—I want to share it, but I am also extremely hesitant to share it, because it is one of the angriest things I have ever written. I think others may feel vindicated by it, especially anyone who, like me, struggles far more with self-promotion than with the actual writing process. But I also recognize that the corruptions and distortions of the publishing industrial complex have a negative impact on everyone in that pipeline, even if some individuals have more power than others. As a compromise, I’m going to give about a million contextual details and caveats. Then I will share what I wrote.

Unlike in the period when I wrote my first book, during the time I was querying, I was also trying to earn a living. I was actually working several jobs—I don’t know if I was housecleaning again, but I was writing/editing alt text, writing for GameRant, and trying to make Dashcomma a stable source of self-employment, with my coaching and editing services. In my free time, I had to make a choice between continuing to work on my book series and trying to write query letters or do querying research. Given the choice, I would rather be writing fiction than just about any other activity—but writing a query letter (or a cover letter, or any kind of self-promotional material) is especially distasteful to me, ranking somewhere below laundry on my list of chores.

If you have never queried…book agents want you to do So. Much. Research. They want you to research their existing books and their new book wishlists. They want you to research comps for your story—but your comps should reflect a certain amount of humility: after all, you can’t possibly think you wrote the next Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings (even if you were explicitly inspired by those works and intentionally tried to emulate them). If you get a rejection, there is a 90% chance it will be a form letter—inherently the kind of bad criticism that I just described, as it contains no insights as to whether you’ve been rejected because your story is derivative or because it’s too similar to a book the agent already represents or because you as a human being are manifestly unworthy of being heard and how dare you even write a book in the first place. So then you need to do the research to figure out why your book isn’t being picked up.

Somewhere in this process (which, I MUST admit, I did not persist with for long, because I lack resilience), I was struck by a disconnect. Yes, I expected the book agents to give their time and attention to what I wrote—I should, at the very least, do them the courtesy of presenting my work in a manner that is polished and professional. But they would be reading my letters and my samples as part of their (often, salaried) job. I was researching agents and compiling query materials in what little time I had when not working multiple (contract)² jobs.

Perhaps you think this is fine. If writing is my passion, it’s acceptable for me to pursue it in my free time. I don’t disagree with that. What bothered me was how I did not hear one agent acknowledge the power difference between people who were querying and the agents they queried. I followed book agents on Twitter and browsed their Manuscript Wish List pages. I tried to listen to their podcasts. I attended writing panels. And all I heard was more work that I should be doing, and not that there was something broken in me needing to do so much work, when my only real skill as a writer was…writing.

So, one night, after I had been awake for far too many hours, I wrote this…

Dear Agent: [some thoughts on six months of querying]

Let me say, first of all, that I am deeply uncomfortable writing this. The writing part is not a problem—after all, I probably would not have reached this stage if I were uncomfortable writing—no, my discomfort lies in the execrable and accursed necessity of self-promotion. You see, I do not enjoy reaching out repeatedly to total strangers, asking them to care about the pretty thing I made; if I did, I probably would not need you, as I understand this task to be the main difference between getting published with your help and publishing my work on my own. Indeed, if I enjoyed this task, there is a good chance that I would not be a writer—if I could communicate my value with confidence—if I could, as they say, “stand up for myself,” or even, “ask for what I want,” I would not need to hide behind a thick varnish of metaphors and symbols (alas, if I were capable of even something so simple as “having an opinion,” I would not need quite so many adverbs to add layers of refinement to every word I painstakingly choose).

Next, I believe, I am supposed to tell you what my work is comparable to—but I think that my inability to compare myself to something you might actually have heard of is already pretty much covered [look at those finely-tuned adverbs, doing their illustrious job] by my previous paragraph, so I will go ahead and move along to the part where I show you that I have done my research. Yes, Agent, I have looked at your handles and your hashtags; I confirmed that your #MSWL lists literally the exact premise, plot, and prose style of my completely-finished, thrice-edited-and-theta-read manuscript [as you can see, I like hyphens almost as much as adverbs!]. After all, I became a writer to receive the validation that I am incapable of giving myself; it seems only natural that I should then spend some time stroking your ego—my ego [pronounced, ‘BAY-sick-CENTS-uhv-SELF-wurth’] has waited a lifetime to receive an ounce of justification for my continued existence, so it can surely wait a bit longer.

Let me go ahead and summarize for you: I understand that capitalistic pressures and the evolution of the Internet (which was invented more than two decades ago, yet which our creative industries have still not figured out how to evolve along with, besides the horrific choice to beggar our cognitive function for clicks) are falling upon both of us in our respective professions—I get it, I swear I do. I have no doubt that the consolidation of publishing, the decentralization of journalism, and the de-valuation of art have also squeezed you—you, representative of the artists being devalued, intercessor on our behalf against oligopolizing publishing houses. I am sure, like most workers in the modern, Western world, that you are expected these days to do more with less—that your workload bleeds well past the forty hours you would rather allot it, that your staff has been slashed by the prevailing sentiment that interns should be paid. In many ways, I believe that we are in the same boat.

But (and you may consider this my ‘About Me’ section—I have no accomplishments to list, of course, but I am happy nonetheless to tell you as much as I can otherwise, praying as I do that you might find me worthy) while we may be in the same boat, I very seriously doubt that we are in the same position. For one, being a book agent (which is a Real Job™), you probably get paid. Moreover, you might even be paid a salary; I, having worked only part-time jobs (so I could have enough time left over to cultivate a skill that I cannot put on resumes), have never experienced that pleasure. You may only have your spare time to look at new manuscripts, on top of hustling full-time to promote your current clients; I am working four part-time jobs that together will not pay my rent without roommates (it will pay rent with roommates—but not much more besides), and my ‘spare’ time (when I have it) must be split between writing, editing, and querying (and, of course, researching the individual agents I am looking to query, so I can personalize these letters accordingly). Do you see what I mean? Our positions are similar, but not the same: you are—well, wherever the first mate gets to sleep on a ship [I will do at least an hour of research so I can hone this simple metaphor to excruciating precision—one of many things I hope you will appreciate, or even notice, in my writing]—while I am in the brig, chained to a post, water splashing around my ankles as it rises rapidly through holes made by the cannonballs of unfettered capitalism.

We are both on a sinking ship, but I can assure you that I will die first.

In conclusion, dear Agent, I do not see you as an adversary. I am sympathetic to your position, and I trust that you are at least somewhat sympathetic to mine. I hope to be your partner, but (and this I mean with my whole, not-yet-embittered heart) I understand if you are not person that my story needs to shepherd it to publication. At the end of the day, what I truly care about is the book, and I appreciate that you have the expertise to discern whether you can give my story the debut it deserves. Because I lack such expertise, I will trust you entirely and unquestioningly in this matter, and I will search as long as I have to (well, as long as I have air, anyway) to find the person who is a “good fit” for Book.

I just have one tiny, passing favor to ask you, before I let go of the dream that you will be my agent. If you are rejecting my book for any other reason than that it is not a good fit, would you please, please (…PLEASE!) include that reason in your form letter? It would so help me to know whether I should spend my time (or what moments remain, between writing pop culture treatises for my employer to graffiti with misleading links and tutoring the neighbor’s cat) querying other agents or rewriting the book entirely (or getting the f*** out of writing altogether because I actually have undiagnosed, incurable dysphasia, and this letter is just strings of candy names that appear as coherent sentences to my eyes alone).

Fondly, fraughtly,

&c.

Author

1. Audiences are also negatively impacted—but I don’t have time for a rant about oligopolies (and apparently pointing out that America stopped enforcing its antitrust laws has become a political signifier even though I WAS TALKING ABOUT IT FIRST, FOR YEARS). [That link doesn’t validate my claim—it’s just one example of the ways I have to suffer in silence while the world catches up.]

2. Also anyone who uses community critique to sell their services. And people who broadly promote the extermination of adverbs. No.