The Toast of New York

Last night, I got to meet Christina's good friend, Hillery - whose blog I read occasionally - and hear the hilarious and often mortifying stories from her time as an editor at a well-regarded New York publishing house. She told the story of one man, perhaps the self-proclaimed toast of the unpublished online literati, who has posted the rejection letter that she wrote him regarding his novel. The rejection letter without context makes her look like a nasty bitch who enjoys eating aspiring writers for snacks, but remember, that's because it's out of context. She's not the sort of person who tells every writer that they should go work at McDonald's because their book sucks and will never get published. She's the sort of person who tells a writer that after he's written her and said that perhaps, he may work at McDonald's in order to fund his writing aspirations. So, Mr. Online Feisty, let's not fault publishers with responding personally and in step with the original query letter.

All I had to do was google Hillery's name and this guy's name magically appeared. Apparently, he's partially responsible for the slowly changing rules about sending manuscripts to publishers via email because of his loud, loud online voice constantly raising in protest. His website is one of those places that's probably a haven for writers who have just gotten their first or fifth or twenty-seventh rejection letter and feel the much-earned need to express a little bitterness and/or rage at the publishing machine. He's like an online bread-and-roses who writes non-publishable fiction.

Later on, Christina, Emilio, Hillery and I played Beyond Balderdash, a game I've owned for almost five years and never played. It was not one of my shining moments in game history. In fact, I downright got my ass kicked. All three of my fellow players - especially Christina - kept making up these amazing, Websterian definitions that I was duped by again and again. In fact, all three of them were fairly close as far as their position on the Balderdash ladder goes. I think in the first game, I moved maybe four spaces. I had a few things going against me, most important being that if someone has made up a really funny but clearly false definition, I'm always tempted to go with it just to show my aprpeciation. So for instance, who designed the original flag? The answer was Johann someone. But the answer I remember was Emilio's "Betty Croc." I didn't vote for it - I was by that time attempting to close the staggering gap and maintain some of my respectability - but it's not an answer I'll soon forget. Likewise, I was tempted to vote for one of my own answers, even though I knew it was clearly wrong -- but when the question is "Who invented the paper clip" and you write, "Al Gore," it's almost too hard to resist.