Rarely Likable

Rainy Day Linkbucket

-- New content at You Know Where today. Have something very short and spring-themed? Send it to northvillereview(at)gmail.com in the next few days.
-- Happy birthday to The Millions! Speaking of which, here's Garth Risk Hallberg on Lorrie Moore on the Donald Barthelme biography.
-- Why online fiction matters. Counterpoint? On not getting flash fiction.
-- 28 years of desktops. I think the most dramatic shift was in the last several years.
-- Brian Evenson is one of those writers people tell me to check out. I know I will eventually, and then be all "Why did I wait so long?" Here are podcast and print interviews with him.
-- I have to agree with Scott. This submissions policy is total clown shoes.
-- 50 free poetry chapbooks. (via)
-- Cool pictures of kids: Here, and here.
-- Sam Pink interviews Barry Graham.
-- Best view from a toilet seat.
-- Utterly gratuitous nerd cheesecake post: Neil Gaiman at 15.
-- I need to fix my video drivers so I can watch this tonight.
-- Lists of stories people like: Here, here.
-- LEGO business cards = best business cards ever.
-- What makes a good ending? When I read this, it occurred to me that no one ever really talks about songs this way. Sometimes -- a lot of the time -- they trail off. I've never heard Coldplay fans bitch about not getting closure or payoff.
-- And finally...I like the quote and the medium.

Maintenance

I'm going to be updating the blogroll here very soon. The new one will be lengthy. If you would like me to list your blog, or absolutely do not want me to list your blog, drop me a note.

Here I am on Twitter. Here I am on Facebook. I'm one of those people who is very shy about making the first move on adding. If I haven't added you, it's either because I'm absentminded, I don't know you're on Social_Networking_Site_01, or I'm afraid you'll say no because I'm too dorky. Possibly all of the above. Clearly, I need to get over myself.

But right now, I need coffee, a donut, and maybe to sit in my car with both of those and a notebook. More later.

Pimpage and underpants

I could have sworn that I sidebarred Hit and Run the other day. At any rate, it's a new venture that publishes photos of the raw materials of fiction and poetry. Notes, drafts, and the like. It's fascinating, and worth checking every day.

Now I can add: If you ever wanted to see a rough draft of a story I wrote about stealing (and therefore, confirming the existence of) Lindsay Lohan's underpants? It's your lucky day!

(Thanks to Finney, who inadvertently provided the boldest/largest title on the page.)

I can't bring myself to update Twitter 10,000 times a day.

-- I've been working on stuff, though I'm not entirely happy with the output. Thinking about returning to a project from late last year. I also have a more recent idea of which I'm getting very fond.
-- Dear Zazzle: Please to carry women's t-shirts that don't all run small. I have enough tailored-for-dudes t-shirts, and I'd like one from here.
-- I realized why I play World of Warcraft these days. For many goals in that game: If you put in the effort, you'll get the result. Other factors don't matter at all. At the risk of sounding emo, I need this.
-- If my kid gets a load of this, she'll want her dad to run for President (She's already given up on me.)
-- A Japanese Life of Bento.
-- I watched the final episode of Sober House twice last night. I think someone must have found Amber a sublet so that they weren't closing the show with her having no place to go. Also, Andy Dick is tiring for me to watch. I don't mean that in a nasty way. He just is.
-- Meg has great prompts.
-- I had so much to read even before I got it in my head to start chipping away at Infinite Jest. Damn RIGHT I can procrastinate for 12 years. Anyway, so far I'm liking it a lot. But I'm also concerned because it seems like many people think it turns into a slog eventually. Wondering if the key is moderation.
-- Scorch Atlas remix contest = very cool.
-- Really don't like the new Facebook homepage. That's what Twitter is for. Idiots.
-- Yeah. No.
-- I really enjoyed this novel, and will be writing that up here soon.
-- This didn't make my AWP wrapup...I wish I could turn back time simply to fix that.

On #queryfail, or: In which I blacklist myself from half a dozen client lists

I've been thinking about yesterday's #queryfail -- agents posting and sometimes snarking on choice lines from bad queries. (I caught on very late last night, and I use Twitter quite regularly. That's the kind of learning curve that's involved with Twitter, and one of the reasons it can be a real lightning rod sometimes.) Quite predictably, today there's been some backlash.

I thought #queryfail was hilarious.  But the anonymous post at 1:21 PM yesterday here makes an absolutely excellent point. A point that's even more relevant BECAUSE it's anonymous.

As with most humor, #queryfail doesn't represent a balanced transaction. 

No matter how informative #queryfail is, no matter how much some writers really DO need to do their research and use spellcheck? Acts of regular blogging and/or twittering don't affect the balance of power between those who submit, and those who accept. Whatever else has changed since we all got glued to the WWW in 1993, that basic transaction hasn't.

If a group of writers chose to have an #agentfail day, even if the guilty were depicted at the same level of anonymity? The consequences for the writers would be dramatically different. I've only been an editor for about three months, and already I've had some chances to see that for myself.

So as much as I did find it amusing and now am going to be a joykilling asshole? #queryfail was a little  like watching the cool kids in the cafeteria trip the kids who are going to still be living in their parents' basements when they're 40. Is there a point, besides that it's funny? Really?

State of the gnomeloaf

A while ago, I told someone that I started this blog because it held me accountable -- that I knew if I let it go too long I'd start thinking about it, and wanting to update it would turn into needing to update it.

That sentence sounded ominous, but it's just leading up to: I think Rarely Likable is going to drift back into a hodpodge of me yammering about fiction writing plus all the linkbuckety stuff, and not just the occasional linkbuckety stuff it's been lately. It's been quiet here because I've been productive elsewhere, but I think there's a way to make those compatible rather than at constant odds with each other.

About the fiction writing: I've been happy with it lately. I think that's the only reason I made it through this cold, perpetually snow-covered winter without taking hostages. The end results have all been very short -- a lot shorter than I'm used to. I keep getting tempted to come up for air and be like so, what the hell do I do with all this stuff? but I need to save that for waiting room mode.