2005-01-08 - 1:28 p.m.

>A Brief History of Rufus-Words

You may refer to him as "Frosty"

Wow, snow is such an alien creature around here. If I didn't have this nasty cold, I would have looked forward to it much more. Also, if I didn't live 15 kilometers from work and have bald tires and no buses that leave early enough in the morning. As it was, I had to taxi to work (I know you people in the prairies and out east will be shaking your heads - but remember, our roads don't get instantly plowed and salted, and the terrain is not flat anywhere, we must constantly go up and down steep hills), and then when trying to bus home, I ended up standing out in the blowing snow for an hour and a half - and the bus never came! I had to take a taxi home. The viruses in my body were overjoyed at the extended period of freezingness. Not me, though.

When I came home, I was looking at the message board run by an old friend of mine, and lo and behold, several old friends had been leaving message after message directed at me. They had dug out old pieces of writing that I given them in my teenage years and posted them, asking me why I wasn't a famous writer yet. I didn't have the heart to miss the point of their encouragement and explain that there are millions of writers who are far more talented and ambitious than I am who never have even the small amount of publishing success that I have had. (For "small amount," read "very small amount.")

Rufus porte son nouveau chapeau dans la salle de bains.

Okay, here is my very minute amount of success. Hopefully this won't appear to be a resume of braggadocio, because, well, it really shouldn't, because most of these things happened years ago, before I became the hunchback of Notre Lame.
Let's count this off:

1) I had an unpaid weekly newspaper column in high school, meant for the reporting of high school events, that I co-opted for my own half-ass teenage philosophical meanderings. The editors at the newspaper were often quite upset with how "unjournalistic" I was and would frequently chop out large portions of the text. I also received inexplicably angry letters. An example of one of my column openers:
"To my loving peers,
Welcome to the Age of Pop Culture and Mass Media. Are you assaulted? Or merely insulted? Do you ever get the feeling that self expression has become a function of the mold impression? Are you lonely, confused? Lost in a world of conflicting desires? Well, you've come to the right place... It's the Left place! (if you don't get this the first time, move into a room with slightly more Marxist lighting.)" (November 1992 or 1993)

I honestly shudder a little bit when I think of some of my naive public tirades against conformity. But it was pretty cool at the time.

2) I won three or four writing contests and had my stories and essays published in a couple of newspapers. I was actually paid for these, probably 50 dollars or something. (50 dollars that I am sure turned into illicit puffs of smoke in my lungs). There was one called "The Brick Jungle." I still have never seen the movie "The Concrete Jungle" and I am sure the plots are nothing alike, but I obviously stole the title.

3) I was in a couple of xeroxed 'zines. I loved these because they were happy to put in anything you submitted. So, in a single issue, I had something like 10 poems and a 10 page long story (which featured a disturbing moment of necrophilia in it, so you know, that was pretty much the only place it would ever get published).

4) I also had a story in the literary magazine of a college that I once went to. It is so embarrassing that I refuse to tell you the name of it, because they put it on the web and it has remained available for the last nine years. I can't believe they haven't gotten rid of it! It is one of those stories that is kind of pointless and confusing, but it SOUNDS really cool, if only you knew what the hell I was talking about. Actually, I performed it as a monologue once and that makes it a lot more enjoyable, I think. (Egads! The shuddering continues as I remember the various "readings" I have done.)

But I just haven't really ever tried to get anything published that didn't just fall in my lap without regard to my limited talents. I was a good writer for my age when I was less than 20. But I am no longer in that small pond. I still dream about it, I still write piles of fictional material, but I am very unmotivated and unimpressed with my own ability. This blogging is a double-edged sword, you see. It lets me write for people to read, but it also lets me read the writings of people far more talented than I, who don't even imagine that they could be writers.

But things do still fall in my lap. I have an open invitation from an old friend who has a radio show to have her read my poetry or short fiction on air. I still haven't given her anything. I am not sure why.

(A little final note: This subject reminds me of something... I can't imagine any of the few people who read this being taken in by the many scams out there perpetrated on hopeful writers, but if you know someone being taken in, there are some good websites to direct them to (Here is one writing scam website but you can find many others just by googling "writing scam"). Thankfully, I have a somewhat suspicious nature and have always avoided pyramid schemes and other scams. It is especially sad when young artists get taken in by such things as "The Library of Poetry" or "Poetry.com" contests and submissions. They only print you if you pay them, they print anyone who pays them even if the poem is literally gibberish, and they don't sell the book to anybody but you and other victims of the scam. That is not how it works in the real world. Any real publisher will pay you, never the other way around. If they ask you for money, run, don't walk. If you are really determined to be separated from your money, then self-publish with a small print-house - don't support the scam artists. There are thousands of them out there. A Public Service Announcement from Rufus Inc.)