Sunday, 24 June 2007

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My Critique Company My name and email address somehow made it onto one of those lists of gullible publishers desperate writers buy from despicable opportunists. Many of the emails I receive are tragically misguided, like the men unsuccessfully shopping his book on how to get published. Others are plain tragic, like the women who write "I have been writing this novel of my autobiographical experiences with ovarian, breast, brain and left-leg cancer, and I have two daughters who will need its proceeds when I die, &c." I only mock because the two times I've Googled the names and/or email addresses of these folk I found them happy and hale in many a online forum. Today I received a pitch from someone who took the trouble to prescreen his manuscript through a "Critique Company." I appreciate the effort, as it saves me the trouble of having to submit his manuscript to my own Critique Company before I publish this sure-fire best-seller. How could I distrust this incisive, erudite critique: This is an amazing manuscript! Many, many readers will benefit from this material! Thank you for writing this manuscript! This will be a huge success! I do wish you luck with this endeavor! However, you will not need luck! You have an awesome manuscript, and a special gift with words! What with seriousness of thought being directly proportional to the ratio of exclamation points per sentence, only a fool would balk at the opportunity to publish an awesome manuscript written by someone with a special gift with words! They learned to appreciate this ratio sometime since 16 May! (Not that is seems to have helped matters much!) I have contacted the sender of this email and asked him for information about his Critique Company! Mine always scowls! (And without exclamation points! How stupendously unserious!)

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