Another publishing opportunity lost

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Finding an audience

An unusual query about whether George Harrison would have found an appreciative audience in the 18th century came across the C-18L list. I really rolled on the floor when I read the response:

......Certainly with the *original* Day-Tripper, Nowhere Man, Fool on the Hill, Walrus, Flat-top, and Plasticine Porter with Looking-Glass tie:

William Blake!
I wish I could say that I’ve found an appreciative audience in the 21st century.

I was notified that a piece I wrote a while back, Shut Up, was selected for a campus journal. There was only one catch, as I found out today. They thought the piece was too complicated, so they cut it in half by editing out all the themes of the piece except one: the question of art vs. pornography. This reduced the only four-page essay to two pages.

This really gives me something else to laugh about. This was the theme that my instructor told me I should cut out of the piece to make it less complex! Being a rather obstinate guy, I told them to just forget it. I’m a complicated guy. I don’t want some reader’s digest version of me floating around with my name on it. That theme was just one of many in the piece, and I thought they all were woven together fairly well at least.

Sorry, I’m complicated and damn proud of it. It took years to turn into this big of a mess, and I can’t see giving people the false impression that my writing is monolithic. To attempt that, is to completely miss the point of why I write. It’s to bring things together, not rip them apart.

1 Comments

shauny said:

goodness me.. i think you have to be some sort of sadistic type to be an editor.. i read something like your piece and think, well i wouldn't chop anything out... but then those others saw fit to yoink out some themes! hehe. and good on you for being complicated.

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This page contains a single entry by Jeff Ward published on December 4, 2001 3:12 PM.

Restating the Obvious was the previous entry in this blog.

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