Slushpile Hell
Friday, October 15, 2010
As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you're trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I'd like to work for you.
Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews.
If it makes you feel any better, even really famous writers sent out some obnoxious query letters.
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ha ha ha. that's hilarious.
LOLOL that was an extremely obnoxious query letter, and it was awesome!
It makes us unpublished authors feel normal when our query letters aren't exactly hot!
Happy Friday!
To be completely honest, if I were a newspaper publisher and I received a query like that, I'd at least send a trial story or something along. Here's one paid assignment; I'm too curious to resist.
This is, of course, almost certainly why I'm not a publisher.
Honestly, I would hire someone who wrote a query letter like that, on the basis of that sentence alone. Not only is it steeped in awesome, but Thompson's perspective on journalism is quite objective (accurate), which is something the American media desperately needs.
I probably have a different perspective than a lot of people, but that letter would probably have interested me if the enclosures were any good.
But then, I once tried an experiment of sending out a batch of resumes with cover letters of a similar sarcastic and cynical nature. (Probably unsurprisingly, no one schedule an appointment from that batch.)
Go to YouTube and search for Conan O'Brien Hunter Thompson Gun and watch the interview. Thompson would only oblige if:
- Conan met him at his farm, he wouldn't go to the studio
- They shot guns
- They drank hard liquor
They mat all three requirements. Classic moment in American TV.
WORD VERIFICATION: prehick. An embryonic redneck.
Marjorie, cow, and writtenwyrdd, you would be less inclined to give that person a shot if you saw some (admittedly less articulate) version of that letter AT LEAST SEVEN HUNDRED TIMES A FUCKING DAY. Hee hee.
I LOVE that guy.
And he sums up it so nicely with 'It's a long way from here to British Columbia, but I think I'd enjoy the trip.'
HIRED.lol
Ha! I needed the laugh that gave me.
-J
I generally would advise authors to try to avoid portraying themselves as belligerent, unpleasant, or unhinged in business correspondence with a stranger. In general, that's good advice.
However, that rule should be appended to note that, if you possesses extraordinary, world-historical genius, you can do whatever the hell he wants, up to and including tremendous amounts of psychoactive drugs.
Hell, Norman Mailer stabbed his wife, and he never understood why people always talked about that, instead of about his other eight wives that he didn't stab.
Knowing it's from Hunter Thompson tends to soften the shock value.
Getting a poor version of this from someone who isn't Hunter Thompson . . . yeah, I agree with our hostess.
I'd get some satisfaction from giving that query writer the finger from a distance and immolating his letter, famous or not.
Why do people think insulting their reader is the way to prove their excellence?
I'm putting in my ability to write warmongering propaganda in all my cover letters from now on.
It’s a great letter, and it’s actually respectful in its own way. Thompson saw Scott as a kindred spirit - someone looking to go beyond conventional journalism - and thought he’d found the one editor he could work for.
As it was, it was twelve years before Thompson walked into Rolling Stone with a six-pack and “declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected the next sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and wished to write about the Freak Power movement.”
And Rick - thanks for the video tip!
The Vancouver Sun is (unfortunately) my hometown rag. It's quite mind-boggling to discover it ever had "edgy" editors (even if only for a short time), never mind that it attracted the attention of HST from all the way over in New York.
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