Motivational Spouter

Let me tell you all one thing I tell my writing group when they express a sentiment along the lines of "I'll never be a writer. Books always strike me as so perfect and finished and it's hard to reconcile the end product with actually trying to make it." The difference between a published author and an unpublished one is experience, an editor and some confidence. I don't remind them about the talent and luck portions of the equation because they're my friends and don't want to imply they haven't got talent, nor do I wish to remind them that luck is out of our hands.

Regardless, you would be amazed by how many second rate manuscripts are submitted. You'd also be surprised how many of them get picked up for representation by one agency or another. It's an odd thing being an assistant at a literary agency. Some of these new writers make me feel like crap. Other times, a small press, an indie book store, an editor or another agent will send something to us with a reccomendation and it will be hewn from the greatest garbage, finest flotsam, the most terrific trash imaginable.

If reading it wasn't so exhausting it'd be super motivating to think that my (admittedly bad) writing is still better than many people who've gone a lot farther. I suppose it's as the lovely Script Girl used to say about movies. Can't sell it if you don't write it.

On a related note, script girl has come back to us, her adoring audience. Sort of. It's a new girl, and she speaks really slowly. What the hell? I'm a New Yorker lady. We speak in order that things might be said. Things like "One side, tourist!" and "What the hell are you looking at?" New York, man. It's a hell of a town. Or sprawling metropolis as the case may be. Or more widely, the third most populous state in the US.