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Frustrating

Tuesday 11/1/22

It's very late--after one--and I'm still working as November takes over from October, with James Whale films on in the background for company. Putting together Watching Back. Everything feels absolutely pointless. Everything. I do it all thinking it won't be seen and I don't belong in this world. On top of that, I'm frustrated because I saw a piece of mine that ran, and it was amateur hour. A place I shouldn't be at, but I'm desperate for money, even if it's pennies on the dollar, by which I mean, for thousands of words. The site has a generic name. It's a disorganized site, a venue with no focus. It's all over the place, with these puff piece type articles for an older audience.


None of it is vital. It's like a soft-serve exercise in nostalgia. The design is chaos. It's just not well done. The pay is horrible. The people there aren't bad people, but it's this ineffective combo of rote and sloppy. The person who oversees a lot of it is straight-up old school journalism. There's no writing in their work, no ideas, no memorable language. They're by the very boring book. And in their opinions, too. They don't question anything. If something was put out by a famous person, it must be awesome. Later people will say things about me they could just say now. The quality of the work won't have changed.


I wrote this great piece that, admittedly, is out of step with everything else they do, for the reasons I just described. I write. I write well. It's at a totally different level. The people behind this mishmash of a site believe in embedding as many links and videos as possible. It's just glorified clickbait, more of a site comprised of ads than thoughtful writing. They're unofficial ads, but all they care about is clicks.


I wasn't happy when part of my piece was excised, because it was deemed too controversial. There was sexual content, but rooted in fact and truth. I don't do gratuity. The person involved asked me if I made this up, because they didn't know it, and they'd read a lot of books, etc. And it's like...come on. Do you think you and I are going to have the same amount of knowledge? I told them where they could find this themselves, and now knowing it was true, they back-peddled to try and give me a lesson on writing and what belongs and what doesn't. Again, come on. It's so frustrating. We're not on the same level. I'm sorry. We're just not. What happens is, people can't see beyond the parameters of themselves. With what they can and can't do. They then ascribe those parameters to me, all the more so if they know me and know I do everything, and if I write on such and such so well, it makes sense that I would write on such and such less well. Or, if I know everything about such and such, I must know less about such and such. Because people won't say, "this is the mega-genius for all-time," who knows everything about everything, and writes the best kind of everything, until lots of people are saying it. The problem isn't being the mega-genius of all-time. I locked that down long ago. It's everything else.


And the lock-step thinking where people say what they say not based upon the work--they often have no clue about anyone's work, good or bad--but the person's fame and reputation. I experienced this when I did the Sam Cooke book. People went on about Cooke. And I knew these were people who could walk past Cooke singing at the subway station--if he existed now--and they wouldn't think twice. If you just gave them that music. But give them that name, after it's established, and boy do they sing a different song.


My piece goes up, and the layout just looks like ass. It's all clutter and busy-ness, because of the endless links and embedded videos. It's confusing to read, because every three sentences, the piece is broken up by another huge embedded whatever. Errors have been inserted. And things I didn't write. Ridiculous exclamation points, like I just made the high school cheer leading squad. The primary illustration has nothing to do with the putative subject of the piece, and on top of that, it's not from the right time period. Again, not bad people. And I do need this money, a sad pittance though it is. But can just a single thing not suck?


Usually I try and make sure to put up some illustration for each of these entries. I don't feel like trying to figure one out for this entry right now.

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