Caption: Failed Writers’ Retreat, Summer 2009
**note**: the proceeding prose with is filled with copious usage of the word “hate.” In this context, “hate” is used in the, now co-opted, hip-hop definition of the word.
Sometimes, it pays to be magnanimous in success, particularly to those who hate your success, you as a person and, by the grace of hate’s reach, everything you stand for. At least try to understand the ignoble outliers, those laptop-toting barbarians staring seething hatred through the modem wires, because once upon a time, that was you. You hated, just like they hate you. You were, as they say, unsigned hype. You were the unknown, unpublished writer. And you hated. Don’t front.
In my travels over the years, online and off, I’ve come across a number of people whom, in their infinite (and published) wisdom, reminded the sore losers that all in art is fair and, in fairness, the successful may or may not be better that you but, remember your home-training, you are to remain strong in your self-defeat, wolfed down like molded daily bread. Such advice falls in line with most things in life. You don’t stab your co-worker in the back when they get your promotion; you shank them Oz style, in the stomach, with your hate, played out in your imagination.
Ah yes, the imagination. The playground of the writers and, for the haters, it’s littered with broken Olde English glass. That damn, lonely playground. You’re Milhouse.
You’re mad. Be mad, I say.
It is incumbent of the hater-writer to, among all things, cling to their hate via two guiding principles.
- It is to serve as inspiration. When writing, you must temper your hatred, but don’t let it go or tuck it away. Reduce the fire until it becomes a plasma cutter, ready to slice through barriers as you’re attempting to write. Because sometimes, the only goal worth fighting for is one where you get to wipe the smug smile off the published writer’s back cover photo (even more if the photo is in black and white).
- If you stop hating, for any reason, then there is no moral balance to the published writer; he who prognosticates the renewed interest in Proust (like…who the fuck reads Proust, you ask yourself). As a hateful person, it is your job to remind the published that he, back in the day, was you and, should he flop on novel # 2, he will be you again or, better yet, worse than you…a failed, known writer who had his chance and blew it. At least no one knows you, you’ll say to yourself. Say it with glee, dammit. There’s hope.
Much of this may be deemed politically incorrect. Or outright impoliteness. Cool. I am a champion of the unpublished hater, in part because that’s me, in part because we’re merely playing our parts. At home. Hunched over notebooks or keyboards. And in part because, success or fail, we all hate somebody at some point for attaining that which keeps up at night (the unpublished don’t sleep to dream, as Fiona once said). Plus, in the end, it’s all in good fun. So you wrote a smarmy little tome about a farm boy in Iowa who wants to own his own farm, which sends him to Kansas and…well, that’s the hate in me going again…congratulations on your success. I wish you well.
…bitch.
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