It will come as no news to those struggling to get books published these days that times are especially tough right now. An author friend who finally got an agent last year and is trying to sell what I don't doubt is a well-written novel has struggled through 26, that's right, 26, rejections from publishers since then. For starters, the market is saturated, as more and more people want to write books, even if they are neither readers nor experts nor experienced "writers," even in terms of understanding Grammar and style. AI and self-publishing both support these kinds of authors and they are creating challenges for those more practiced in the field who need to generate interest in and sell their work too. Another big problem is that marketability has taken the place of originality in terms of what publishers now seek. How likeable are you as a writer? How likeable is your style? These are questions that would have made most, if not all authors from the past with any ...
The Assistant on Netflix is a 2019 movie starring Julia Garner ( Ozark ) in a harrowing role as a young aspiring producer named Jane who is hugely overworked and underlooked in a male-driven company. The film, which runs about an hour and a half, takes the viewer through the complicated tedium of Jane's days and her struggles not to become overwhelmed by petty and gross injustices as she starts to uncover her boss's sexual secrets. I had to double and triple check the setting/date of the movie which so accurately depicted horrors I endured working as an admin assistant for various companies, including non-profits, in the late 80s and early 90s, when I was fresh out of a little ivy league college and only knew I wanted mostly to write, and primarily make money so I could do what I wanted artistically. To realize that this is a present-day story in which nothing, absolutely nothing has changed from what I knew working dead end jobs in the early 90s brought a double punch to...
Note to artists and writers: those elements in your work that bother people the most are probably the very ones you should cultivate. In my novel, Punk Disco Bohemian , I set out to rub people the wrong way w a transgressive approach to plot, for one. I wanted people to think differently about time, space and memory, and even alerted the reader about that at the start of my book. Sure enough, it was the very aspect two reviewers, one a transgressive writer herself, seized upon as the novel's weakness. In the long run the criticisms please me as contradiction is necessary to any conversation about art and, personally, I don't believe anything that is praised exclusively is likely to have a long life beyond the cultural moment in which it was conceived. I've found and continue to find that utter fearlessness and constant experimentation are the keys to growing artistically. Not everything is going to work, but if you don't go off the deep end from time to time, you won...
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