Super Teddy Award Series For Agents, Editors & Publishers Awarded To The Entire Blog Called:
for Worthless Posts & being the Mother Of All Wannabes
Our very first "Super Teddy Award Series For Agents, Editors & Publishers" is awarded to an agent's blog known as "A Gent's Outlook". I first came across this "gem" in a link supplied on Absolute Write. If this blog were only useless I would ignore it. There are many blogs out there in blogosphere land that were started by agents, editors and publishers that were never updated after the first month. Either the agent just did not have time or they realized it is not so simple to get people to read what you write! (Must be a humbling experience for an agent to realize that the "plebeians" just don't want to read their musings.)However, "A Gent's Outlook" takes the term "useless" and goes one step or many a great deal more. So first let us look at the nature of this blog. Here we have yet another, self-pronounced Literary agent, who divulges his real or fictitious name as SammyK. And just to make sure that you have no doubt he calls himself or considers himself an agent, the URL he chose for his blog, is: agentsoutlook.blogspot.com. To make that even clearer this blog runs with the subtitle, "A Literary Agent Divulges the TRUTH about Publishing".
Now though we now know we are looking at the blog of an "agent" or at least that is what Sammy calls himself, upon further investigation we also discover that we truly know nothing about this person. "Ahh," you say to yourself, "Another Miss Snark. Another Rejecter. Another Evil Editor."
Yes another anonymous voice in the Internet Blog deluge of information to entertain the hapless writers out there. But this anonymous voice is particularly inane, insulting and puerile. What makes the whole thing truly laughable is after plowing through a couple of Sammy's posts is that you discover this Blog is being used by someone to abstract revenge on people who are just leagues ahead of him in knowledge, humor and understanding of the publishing field. It is simply a vituperative effort in ill-concealed jealousy and ranting.
Sammy's favorite words seem to be "wannabe" and the ole' F*** word. Now having grown up in Manhattan, my ears are not virgin, and I guess given a good reason I could curse with the best of them. But when the word appears in what you write more times than a New York taxi cab driver stuck in the middle of midtown traffic on a Friday afternoon would utter it - something is a bit off. Sammy likes the "F" word. He thinks it is cute and funny. Two posts even have it in their heading. (The stars are mine, Sammy spells it out for you). "He Who Laughs Last, Laughs at the Rest of You F****** Morons", and "Why You Should Never F*** on a Computer Desk".
But let us put down the pet peeves and themes of this "professional agent" in his blog. They are fairly simple.
- Miss Snark is a hateful fool and a wannabe
- Writers are all whiners and clueless and all wannabes
- Anyone taken by a scam deserves it
- Why doesn't anyone pay attention to Sammy
Make no mistake. Miss Snark also curses. Sometimes a bit too much. Sometimes she is over the top in her cynical attitude. And sometimes Miss Snark is just wrong. But I have yet to see a concentrated and continuous attack on anything in Miss Snark besides scammers (whom Sammy seems to think are the just curse for wannabe writers.)
In the end there is a whole world of difference between the two. All it takes is just a cursory reading of the posts made in November to see this incredible jealousy rear its truly ugly head.
Now, if it was just an attack on Miss Snark in every post, I would say, "You know what. The guy may have a point here and there." But it is not just an attack on what she says. It is a combination of "why do people listen to Miss Snark and they don't listen to me?" routine.
Here is one fine example from an agent who we are supposed to learn things from:
"As I see it, people across Cyberville are finally cluing in to the fact that Snark is mouthpiecing the core values propagated by the watchpuppies and their related industry outsiders. Other publishing people, LIKE ME, couldn’t give a shit less what anybody thinks except talented writers and the publishers who seek to exploit them. I have seen lots of comments, finally, from editors and other agents who are basically saying that Snark is on a very wrong tangent. She always has been, but nobody important said anything because SNARK JUST DOESN”T MATTER. Except to the minions she has created through her Dr. Phil Does Publishing persona. When she dipped into an area she really doesn't know anything about, she fell flat on her pretty little snout."And here is another one from another post entitled "If You Knew Judy Like I Knew Judy (or The Greatest Wannabe of All)":
"I know Snark’s fans are too wannabe to understand the profundity of this little scandal in the ranks up here where the air is rarified, but us REAL agents are giddy. Kind of like watching someone get caught with her underwear stuck in her pretty little crack."Oh dear reader, it goes on and on endlessly. It is tiring; it is imbecilic; it is foolish; and it is damn stupid and not even funny. Sammy too, is an anonymous agent. But Sammy does not even pretend to give us "wannabes" any information. His whole being is concentrated on one thing. Snark is an idiot, almost all authors are wannabes, and Sammy is King.
Let us read this little gem from a post entitled "Answer: You are a wannabe and know nothing about the industry and you shouldn’t be in it".
"I am a publishing industry professional who has put a lot of time and effort into doing my job well enough that I can take pride in my work. And yet, as I look around the internet, I can’t help but wonder if I am completely crazy or what. Other so-called industry professionals are blogging their little hearts out, providing information to wannabes as if it is going to get them somewhere besides Looneyville. I just sit here and wonder if I am delusional. I look around. There’s the contract on my desk from a major, so that’s real. Or did I print it out on my computer? What are those scribbles on it—signatures? Am I hallucinating? Maybe. But the call I got from the Oscar-winning director’s assistant yesterday--that seemed so real! The option offer seemed a little too high--could I have been drunk? Maybe I’m in a coma somewhere and don’t know it. The things I read on the internet just don’t add up, so it must be me. Have I finally lost what little mind I had left before the wannabes started sucking on my brain?"The problem lies in that we are just subjected to these dumb rants from someone who claims to be an agent and want to give us the "TRUTH" about publishing. Try as hard as I could, I could not find one, not one, piece of advice to help me further my writing on a sane basis. I found out how great Sammy is (whoever he is, and to be perfectly frank - I don't give a damn), I found out how well Sammy is versed in normative street language, I found out how much Sammy thinks of himself, I found out how all writers are wannabes and stupid, I found out how much Sammy hates Miss Snark. All this I learned. Nothing else. Nada. Zilch.
Which of course leaves us with the overwhelming question as to what purpose this series of inane posts can possibly lead to besides self-gratification of an incredibly over-inflated ego.Though Sammy only posts intermittently, I have no clue why anyone with even some self-respect left would frequent this blog. It is just full of hatred, idiotic statements, rants and certainly a somewhat deranged mind overcome by "Internet popularity jealousy". Waste your time doing something else, like playing Monopoly. You will learn a great deal more and not come away questioning the overall sanity of this child. In the end, Sammy simply needs a good spanking and some time-out time in his bedroom. Being stuck alone with his lovely personality is the ultimate revenge for Sammy.
Sammy's blog persona is just a bitter, mean person ravaged by jealousy and pettiness. It seems this "Gent" is suffering from a real acute case of "page-rank envy". Some people raise their page rank in normative ways. Others try to be funny by poking fun of people, hoping that this kind of humor will garner a following. One of the great lessons in life is when you poke fun at others in a mean and bitter way you just end up making a fool of yourself.
The only thing I could hope for is a swift death for the blog, and Sammy relegated into the realm of mediocrity and wannabe-ville he so richly deserves.
For as Sammy proves over and over again, the only Wannabe in his blog - is Sammy himself.
(For more information on the "Super Teddy Award Series For Agents, Editors & Publishers" see, "Introducing The "Super Teddy Award Series For Agents, Editors & Publishers")
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4 comments:
So the take-away from this is that you wholly support "A Gent's Outlook"? ;]
kk
"The Gent" left me wondering if he were the Literary Agent behind Jose Canseco's book.
As with the blog, Jose's book was filled with whining,ranting and raving about the baseball industry.
Neither of them seem to have much to say that is interesting.
Both have used the pen to vent anger and both come off as children who do not play well with others.
Wow. I loves me a good crank, but this guy is so over-the-top that he's... boring. Could someone feed two or three more words into the random generator he uses to write his posts? He wore the old ones plumb out.
It's why I don't respond even when he disses me by name: I don't want to give his rantings that much validity.
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