Q: What does reading a trade magazine make you feel?
A: Excluded.
Q: The people in there have been accepted.
They have had books published. They have won fellowships and prizes. They are moving forward in their careers.
They fought the same battle you are fighting, It’s a long slog. They persisted.
Doesn’t that give you hope?
A: Many of them, I feel like they succumbed to the temptation. They were worn down.
It’s not a cause for celebration.
It’s a defeat.
It’s sad.
Q: You’re not bitter, you’re twisted.
You see things backwards.
Your values are warped.
You don’t see things the way other people do.
A: Yes. I’m not trying to do the things they are being rewarded for doing.
I have other goals. A different aspiration.
It may look twisted, to them.
Q: For you to succeed in publishing, on your terms, you’d need to find someone who thinks and feels the way you do, and there aren’t any such people. They are selected out. The industry selects against them.
A: They are flying beneath the radar. Like Peter Parker at The Daily Bugle.
They have a secret life. As I do. As a writer.
Nobody knows I’m a writer. Or knows what that means.
Except a few town creeps in distant towns.
Q: That’s lunacy. To believe you’ll find someone like you in publishing.
A: It’s a long shot. I’ll admit.
A dream.
I am writing about the American dream.