It's the End of This Blog as we Know it (But I feel fine)

Well, Crewd Philosophy's just a little over a year old. So it's about time I shut the thing down. Originally, I only planned to do it for a couple months as an experiment to familiarize myself with the technology and the mindset. Last September it went public and I stuck with it. For greater research, really. And then it just sort of became a real blog. That people would actually read. So it would stare me in the face and command me to care about it.

The problem is that I don't. I haven't had fun with this thing in months. The problem is also that I don't know if anybody else does either. If it were the first time I felt this way, I'd stick it out for the VOTERS...err, readers! It is not the first time I've felt this way. If it were the tenth time, I might've just taken a break. It's closer to the hundredth. And last month's turn out was only 755 hits, half my best month and the worst since going public with this blog. I never intended or desired to be an internet celebrity, but those numbers are still disheartening.

I don't know precisely what the reasons were, possibly too much time being clever, or my hatred of Twitter, or the fact that I only troll your own blogs and make no attempt to actively expand readership, but I've clearly failed to engage you, my gentle readers. And if I fail to engage you, then I have failed you in general. It hardly matters what I say if no one's around to hear it. So class is canceled. Insufficient interest. Too few students. Interested parties are reccomended to transfer to Professor Epstein's class.

For those few of you who have been reading for a long time, know that I appreciate your interest and support. I'm also sorry that there were things I never got to do on this blog. I had plenty more to say about the book business, and media in general. Heck, maybe I'd even do a few more reviews. Bones of the Hills = Good. American Ceaser = Long. Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille = Disorienting. You know, like that. I never got to expand The Fatman Weighs In into a regular segment, or tell any of my China and Japan stories. That might be a good thing, though since China is my very own "band camp."

Regardless, this is what it is: indefinite hiatus. More than likely, this blog will be abandoned forever. Until Blogger pulls it down due to disuse, my permanent, personal e-mail is off on the side there. If any of you, new readers or old ever have a question, want some feedback on a query or a writing sample, or just want to drop me a line, I'll be around. After all, I live to serve.



In my best Nixon voice: I am not a cookbook.

And so for now my friends, it's the end of this blog as we know it (but I feel fine).

How Not to Write Your Query

"Dear Hello:" My name is not hello. It is No. Dr. No to you. And I don't know why you say hello, I say goodbye.

"Picture this" Everyone's always asking me to picture this, picture that. Now imagine this other. Can't you just see this other thing here? Stop telling me to picture it. That's part of the reading process. Might be a more effective way to pitch if we were talking face to face, but we're not. Meanwhile, everybody is always saying that so you're making your query look all that much more generic. Besides, it's always like "picture you're a fourteen year old girl and inheritor of a mysterious (but almost entirely useless) power, which is why everyone wants to kill you." or "Picture that your mother, who tried to murder you, and who you thought was dead shows up on your doorstep with mind bending truths." Yeesh. Melodrama much? Couldn't you ask me to picture something I'd like? "Picture you're an eccentric billionaire who has retired at the age of 32 to your secret hermitage in (insert scenic remote location of your choice. Scotland, Mongolia, tiny mediteranean island, whatever)." See, now that I'd like to picture.

"You know me" Sometimes people will be like "We met at XYZ convention and you were interested in an earlier draft of this story, so now that I've cleaned it up a bit..." that's fine, even a good idea when you know who you're adressing. But I assure you that you have NOT met me at a convention because the few I get to go to I hide a sulk and stick to the shadows because in life, like on the internet, I'm a troll. Maybe you meant the boss? Except he wasn't there either.

"Fantastic and Innovative" One of the most annoying things that aspiring authors will frequently do is to hype up their own writing using words like the above as well as hypnotic, fresh, new, unique, extraordinary, sharp, keen, and you know what? Fuck this. Just go through the list of words you know that are complimentary. I've seen most of them used in this context even though they don't make sense. "Dear sirs, my writing smells nice. Please represent it."

"Bullshit McGee says" Fake or meaningless review quotes. If you're already published or you know real authors, or real literary critics etc. and you want to throw in one of two quotes they've given you just to prove you're serious, that's good. Here are some things which are not good- A) Making up your quotes B) Getting them from people no one would know or care about. Sorry, your mother does not count as a review quote, "dearie" C) Getting real quotes and sending page after page of them. Man, show that to the publisher. The Editor will circle their favorites, hand it to marketing, who will make their picks and tell production what to stick on the cover. Handing the agent all that stuff on an unsolicited query is just... it makes you look self important and pushy. On a related topic, a reader sent me this article, which I thought was pretty interesting. Consider it homework. I might discuss it more fully next week. Then again, maybe not. Half the purpose of homework is to seperate the workaholics (who do it all) from the neurotic (who do half of it because they know only half will be collected and then bite their nails and hope they did the right half).

"Crewd Inc." I know I've mentioned this one before, but probably not as often as many of the classic query blunders, so it's worth repeating here. Don't make up a company. Seriously. Just don't. It's the same as pages of review quotes, except even worse. Because at least the review quotes are real. Fake companies mean nothing.