Posted by NL on September 28, 2004 at 12:01:26:
--even though I had qualms about submitting another one, but, since others have done it, I don't see why I shouldn't.
The Prairie Schooner
One thing a writer needs, and that is a co-dependent girl friend to believe in him and support him and nurture him through the years of starvation and constant sorrow and delerium tremens and stints in rehab, while all the while the writer's personal demons are at play, those nagging doubts expressed in my case by voices, voices sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering in my ear, "You wuthless! Wuthless! Go play in the street!" Play in the street indeed! How about floating down the gutter with a bottle of wine? I'm honest enough to tell you that I've always hated the idea of work, of working for a living. I figured writing could be an easy way to get rich easy, and it wasn't long after I began to style myself as an artist, just before I flunked out of college, that I found Diarrhea, who took on the job of being my long-suffering co-dependent pussy. How female writers make it, I don't know. I may be a total fuckup in many areas but I'm not so fucked up that I would even for a minute think of supporting some bitch, no way, for no reason, no how. But that's not my problem.
So my gal, Darrhea, works in a Qwik-O!-Mart, doing the late shift, while I booze and write. But don't get me wrong-- I believe in myself, deep down, and the only thing that has so far prevented me from getting rich is that I'm just too good for the current market. One thing I'm not gonna do is compromise. I am no whore, thank you, and I don't write for the mass market. That's why I have spent so much time submitting stories to The Prairie Schooner-- a mag I have settled upon as one of the few on the planet worthy of my endeavors. I don't mind getting paid in copies because I've got Darrhea supporting me-- although it would be nice to strike it rich someday and give Diarrhea the boot, even though she's got nice tits, a really nice butt, and a pretty face. But she's not what you would call an intellectual, and she's certainly going to be out of place and a drag on me in the upper crust literary world. I figure, when Praire Schooner-- when, not if-- publishes a few of my stories, it's just a matter of time before I hear from the big studios, wanting to option a story for, oh, a cool hundred grand or so, and that would be my start. I think I could do a screen play, if it was my own work. I mean, who better to do it, right?
Another thing a writer needs is to know his market, his audience. So, for Prairie Schooner, I am writing the kinds of things I really like best to do, and it is perfect for them-- all my cowboy and indian stories with wagon trains. I am working assiduously at a theme that is not politcally correct, I know, but that's the kind of guy I am. I am concentrating my imagination on the kinds of things indians would do to pretty gals on the wagon trains, after they kill all the menfolk. Mostly I like to dwell on the rapes and the parts where the naked pioneer ladies are tied up and shot with arrows, mostly in their boobs and bellies. In my last story I submitted to Prairie Schooner I had a bunch of women in various stages of pregnancy and the indians shot arrows into these gal's bellybuttons and they squeezed their milk-swollen tits (not the indian's tits-- one thing I do have problems with is pronoun references, and I guess also split infinitives and dangling participles... and spelling. So, really I guess I have problems with four things. No, five things: pronoun references, split infinitives, and dangling participles, and spelling, and grammer.) and (Well, I guess I have problems with five things: pronoun references, split infinitives, dangling participles,spelling, grammer, and whatever it is when you don't know how to put things in parentheses, in the middle of sentences-- like, do you capitalize, or do you use periods inside the parenthesis? Wait a minute. Wait. That's six things. But having problems with six things isn't too bad, I think.) their milk squirts (Ok, look, I have problems with seven things: pronoun references, split infinitives, dangling participles, spelling, grammer, whatever it is you're doing when you put parentheses in the middle of sentences, and counting.) out while they are bleeding to death.
So I am not too discouraged when I keep getting rejection slips. That story I sent with the pregnant pioneer ladies, Prairie Schooner sent me back a rejection with a personal touch. The form letter had some brown stains on it from what must obviously have been a fresh piece of hot fudge brownie that must have gotten on somebody's fingers. I liked that. It humanized those people, whoever they are, and I could just see them drinking coffe and eating hot fudge brownies and reading my story. I felt encouraged enough to send them one about cowgirls ambushed on a ranch where they were the daughters of a lady whose husband got killed by an outlaw band, but the widow and her three beautiful daughters kept working bravely away, wearing tight jeans and white shirts that they wore not buttoned but knotted in front to show off bare middles and bellybuttons. And then the outlaw band comes back and shoots them one by one in front of their mother, who is not too bad looking herself and after that lady sees her daughters stripped naked and shot in their bellybuttons and breasts, and is further forced to watch the girl's bodies fucked, she in turn is gang raped and stabbed in her lower belly and left to bleed to death in the dirt, with her legs spread. I have not heard from Prairie Schooner yet on that one, though it has been months and months.
But meanwhile I've run into a little snag. Diarrhea didn't make it home this morning and I have only recently learned that somebody robbed the Qwik-O!-Mart in the early morning hours. Before they left they took my girl into the back and made her strip to her panties and bra, and made her lie down on her belly and they shot her four times in the small of her back, and once in her head, with a small caliber pistol-- they think it was .22. I guess they'll know for sure when they do the autopsy. I'm going to write this up for Prairie Schooner, except I'm gong to change the date to 1893 and it'll be an old time General Store instead of a Quik-O!-Mart, and it'll be a girl named Bess and she'll get shot with a Colt .45 and she'll be naked. But after that I won't be writing again until I find a new girl friend.