In Response #2

You know that you have a small child in your life when the first thing that pops into your head when you receive email is the song from Blue's Clues.  I came very close to doing a little dance around the living room while singing "We just got a letter, we just got a letter..." 

Note that I said close, not that I actually did it.  Even I have some limits.

So here we are on yet another fine day when the CS gets some email that needs a response.  So as not to seem ungrateful for all the email I do receive, I should note that I do get a good amount of feedback on most entries and I really do appreciate the fact that a number of you are actually involved enough and/or care enough to comment.

And for those of you who may be cringing at the thought of another of my replies to an email, I promise you that this one will be nowhere near as blatantly vulgar as the last reply was.

Oh who am I kidding?

Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck. (If you don't get the joke, check out the original reply entry in January.  That's okay, we'll wait.  No seriously, go ahead.  Yes you with the glasses.  Please hurry up so you can be moderately chuckling with the other ten people currently reading this and we can move along...)

Now, I will give this individual their due.  This message was actually literate, well spoken, obviously thought out, and not really all that rude.  Obviously I've taken a bit of an issue with it, otherwise I wouldn't bring it as an entry, but in the sense of fairness I think it should be noted that this individual appears to be sincere in her comments.  Here is the text of the email for your perusal:

On March 13, 2012 at 10:32 a.m. Paula wrote:  Dear Brian,  I am taking a moment to write to you because after having read your blog in its entirety I feel I must take issue with you.  I hope you are the type of author that can accept constructive criticism.  I have been in the literary profession for many years and I hope you will take my words to heart.

You sir appear to be a talented heathen.  Your writing is mostly devoid of style and individualized voice other than the spewtum of your own opinions and ideas in response to the world around you.  I am given to understand that you are an educated man as indicated by your acquaintance that I have the pleasure of working with at this time.  I find it appalling that an educated man must resort to profanity and other low ideas as avenues of self expression.  I am also told that you have developed a moderate readership as well, although I deign to give them more account than a common neanderthal.  I feel it is necessary to remind you that as an author you have a responsibility to uplift your readers and expose them to new ideas.  Your unrefined approach to the uplifting of the mundane in no way satisfies that responsibility.

Please take my comments to heart as your online work does have its redeeming side as well.  You obviously have a gift for the comedic, although it does tend to focus on the baser side of existence.  I feel that if you were to elevate your technique and mode of expression you would find that your writing will appeal to an even wider audience.

If I also understand correctly you are also a novelist of some measurable talent and are in the process of publishing several novels over the coming months.  I have read selected portions of your work and find it distasteful, devoid of basic morality, and misogynistic to such a degree that offensive barely seems an appropriate adjective. I implore you sir to closely monitor what you put forth into the literary world.  The modern market is full of mountebanks and charlatans who push drivel in front of the masses.  Please do not allow yourself to become one of their ilk.

Please consider my words carefully as they are brought from a place of experience.  I might also remind you that as an advertised fiction writer you have no works of fiction present in your online work.  You may also consider that as you revisit your chosen mode of self expression.  Please remember that you have a responsibility to your audience to inspire and challenge, not  enteratin with mindless vulagrity.

Yours, Paula [name withheld]

Well, where do I begin? (insert the sound of cracking knuckles here)

First of all Ms. Paula, thank you for your submission.  I am actually the kind of writer who will listen to any and all criticism, constructive or otherwise.  I know at this point several of my readers are expecting me to make short work of your letter.  I'll be honest.  The raging immature twelve year old inside me wants to pick you apart faster than a fat kid on a growth spurt can decimate a bucket of KFC.  However, as you are obviously a professional in our shared field to some degree, I'll refrain from shivving you with the literary equivalent of Michael the Archangel's flaming sword and try to respond with a modicum of intelligence.

I'm glad you took the time to read the entire blog, line for line and post for post.  In my opinion this makes you at least qualified to voice an opinion.  Personally I think that's a rarity in this world and you should be congratulated for not being an overopinionated douche canoe who speaks without clue one about what you're discussing.  I also appreciate you taking the time to read the selections of my work as a novelist that you were provided with by our mutual friend.  I'll never throw vehement chunks of congealed hate on anyone who actually reads my work without just and due cause.  

Now for the tough part.  Ms. Paula, I hope you are the kind of woman who can also take a little return criticism.  I'd like to start by asking you where directly the fuck do you get off insulting my readers?  I am the FIRST person to say, as I have over and over again, that my writing for this blog is simply what comes out of my overaddled brain ladled thickly over an overwrought opinion or three.  That's a given.  But to relegate anyone who reads me regularly to an extinct species of knuckledragger is just comical.  Honey, I hate to be one the tell you (particularly as it is purely spewtum from the recesses of my slightly stained gray matter) but using twelve dollar vocabulary words to demean anyone is just about as country-airs-ignorant as it gets!  

You know what, fuck it.  I said I was going to be polite and professional about this but lady you have legitimately pissed me off.  Let's get a couple of things straight right now sweetheart.  I AM NOT NOW NOR WILL I EVER ASPIRE TO BE PART OF THE UPPER CRUST OF SOCIETY.  I could become filthy rich tomorrow afternoon and there will STILL be a Ford F150 parked in my driveway.  You're very right, I am educated.  I am also one of the crankiest Johnston County North Carolina rednecks you will ever have the displeasure of pissing off. 

So to hell with the polite response.  Here's my resposne lady and I hope you strap it to a dildo and choke on it!  Of course my work doesn't have an individualized voice.  It's a goddamn blog you elitist snob!  The only voice involved is my voice.  It's all my opinions, good bad and in-fucking-different.  And just in case you haven't noticed yet sugarbritches, we live in a low and base world.  It's quite literally all around us at any given time.  I hope for your sake that a bum tries to wash the windshield on your Jag on the way home from work tonight and does a really shitty job.  A little imperfection is a good thing.  It's just like the majority of the people who read my work regularly.  They are normal people with normal lives.  Deriding anyone for just living day to day and finding normal life entertaining should be liegally punishable by a very deep and public wedgie, although from the sound of things the stick that is currently lodged so far up your ass as to make your soul look like it took friendly fire on a spear fishing expedition would probably prevent any good fabric lodging from occurring, even if we ran your prim and proper ass up a flag pole by your bloomers!

I only hope to God Almighty that one day someone has the good sense to soil a doily covered tabletop in your home with one of my books.  Honey, no real harm intended but if you think what I write is offensive I've got a really good friend who writes necrophelia in such a way that you find yourself choked up with tears and vomit at the same time.  I challenge you to open your mind enough to appreciate that level of art sister.  I'm a dick and fart joke artist by comparison.  And just so we're clear Princess Precious Panties, I find basic morality just about as boring and not worth my time as a fifty four year old virgin whose idea of a blow job involves politely holding a penis by two fingers, lifting her pinky, and delicately streaming air across the tip from no less than six inches away while wearing white gloves and her best Sunday hat.

Now as far as your commentary on the modern literary market... Honey let me put it to you this way:  I pray on a nightly basis to become one of those wildly sucessful montebanks and charlatans that foist drivel on the masses.  I'd even sacrifice a goat if it would help.  So much for the heathen comment, huh?   And as far as misogynistic goes, just for the record, the piece you're reading is from my current book which is told from the first person perspective of a blatant misogynist.  Not to sound too much like my grandfather here or anything but "well duh you fucking dumbass."  I'd be surprised if that book doesn't get me at least one good and nasty feminazi letter along the way.  The main character uses women to mask his failings in life.  What did you expect, Gloria Steinem with a cock?  For chrissakes lady the main character wakes up in the college dorm room of a woman nearly twenty years his junior after an all night bender.  Why don't you use that razor keen intellect to dissect something other than someone's ability to swear in a grammatically appropriate context, you simple piece of simpering crotch offal. 

Okay, deep breath time.

Look Ms. Paula, I actually do appreciate criticism and you're very right about one thing out of all of it:  I do have a responsibility to my readers and you are now one of them (and I hope you point every last person you know to this blog and let them read just how mean and ignorant I really am, chuckle chuckle).  I have the responsibility to entertain.  I am not now nor will I ever probably be the next Hemingway.  If my work shows up one day in a college classroom it will probably be more of an example of what not to do but guess what, I am great with that.  I know full well who I am and who my readers / fans are as well.  While I am at least moderately educated and appreciate the classics probably more than the next guy, I have no delusions of becoming elevated to their ranks.  I'll take a minor mention next to Butcher, King, Rowlings, Meyer, and Sparks as a contemporary and be beyond thrilled. 

You're also right in that I don't feature my fiction on my blog.  There's a reason for that, trust me.  As we get closer to a release date I will publish a seperate web site for my fiction and we'll proceed under that heading there.  This is my blog and it is its own creature.  Trust me when I say you should place the emphasis on creature.  I can't even begin to explain the kind of life-of-its-own this project has taken on over the past few months.

I will conclude by saying that even after all I've said, I do still appreciate the fact that Ms. Paula felt that she needed to voice an opinion.  All are welcome to do so, just keep in mind that when you try to belittle or degrade I am probably going to target your holier-than-thou-ass for a prompt verbal sodomizing.  I also feel obligated to share the additional piece of information that I know exactly what this individual does for a living and feel that I should mention that she is not now nor has ever attempted to be a published writer in any field.  With that being said, I feel confident in closing this response as follows:

Before you choose to comment on anyone else's work, Ms. Paula, please make sure you have at least attempted to do something similar yourself.  Presenting yourself as qualified to speak on a subject in which you have little experience makes you less than ignorant.  It makes you common, random, and a sad example of what happens when someone feels a level of unjustified self importance.

To put it simply for those of us in the less cultured masses: 

Paula, eat a dick.