Bullshit

I WISH the meeting room had been this nice.

I don’t know about y’all, but when I was a kid my parents were pretty insistent that my brother Yan and I were parasites on the household, barnacles who had somehow conspired to attach ourselves to their home, sucking them dry. And as a result we were cruelly expected to have jobs from a very young age.

Now, any writers who are reading this know that being a writer comes with a hellish problem: On the one hand, we tend to know from a young age what we’re destined to do—write. In a world where most people wind up doing stuff they hate because they have no idea what they want to do, that’s a superpower. On the other hand, finding a way to monetize writing remains the Holy Grail of the writing life. In other words, finding part-time work as a long-haired teenager who liked to write stories wasn’t easy.

Thus every year my family went through the Ritual of Dad’s Friends, where Dad would essentially doll Yan and I up into church clothes and go out seeking a job for us. Most years he lined something up before we even knew what was happening, and suddenly I was being driven to an underground fight club where I was paid $5 an hour to mop the sweat and blood from the ground. But sometimes Dad’s connections failed him, and the looming specter of a Somers household without the extra income generated by their exhausted children began to loom large, making our parents cranky. Sometimes this led us to be a bit creative when it came to the job hunt. And that led me to my Evening of MLM Madness.

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When you’re a writer in 2017, you spend approximately 109% of your time thinking up clever things to Tweet in the vague, vain hope that about forty million people will Retweet it and thus declare you Cool. I’m not 100% certain how being Cool = $$$, but I am assured by everyone it can happen, and so I keep doing it.

Recently, I sent out this Tweet:

WISDOM

It got some play, and I was contacted by writers who thought this was a pretty incredible suggestion. What happens, they wondered, if you sell the pitch but can’t actually write the piece? What if you can’t support your thesis?

Look, freelance writing can be exhausting in the modern age because we’re writing short, punchy Internet essays with a short shelf life. And our corporate masters are insatiable, always eager for more content with which to attract those sweet, sweet clicks. Pitching fast and furious is the only way to make a living; I probably wrote about 500 freelance pieces last year alone, each and every one of them (with perhaps a dozen exceptions) stemming from a pitch.

That kind of volume means you can’t dawdle about wondering if a pitch idea is good (your editors will do that for you) or possible. The best way to pitch is to pitch first and think about it later, and here are three reasons why:

1. The Doubt. If you think of a great idea for an article but pause to wonder about its feasibility, you will talk yourself out of it. You’ll convince yourself it isn’t that clever, that you’ll never find any supporting information or examples, that no one will return your phone call or email. And then a month later you’ll see a similar idea on another website and you’ll kick yourself. I’ve talked myself out of great ideas and I have always regretted it.
2. The Speed. You are not the only person furiously pondering things to write about, and great ideas for posts and articles have an odd way of popping into many heads simultaneously. In other words, while you’re researching whether you can even pitch this idea, someone is pitching this idea.
3. The Challenge. Don’t play it safe. Yes, freelance writing is for profit—but it should be for fun, too. Got a crazy idea you convinced an editor to buy? Have fun trying to make it work.

In Event of Emergency

All well and good, that sense of adventure and the swagger of pitching without fear, but in all seriousness—what do you do if you brazenly pitch a weird idea, get the green light, and then realize you can’t find much information to work with? WHAT THEN, SOMERS YOU ARROGANT ASS?

First off, that rarely happens. If you can conceive of a pitch idea, then it’s within the realm of the possible. And part of writing anything, on any subject, is creativity. If you’re having trouble digging up material for your pitch, get creative. If you can’t get creative in these situations, freelancing may not be your ideal career.

If that doesn’t work:

Widen your search. Don’t be afraid to get a little loose with your interpretation of your own pitch. Look back further in time, or allow for a bit of inconsistency in your examples.

If that doesn’t work, tweak. Contact your editor and see if you can twist the pitch a little to fit what the research is telling you, or just go ahead and tweak the premise. Usually small deviations aren’t a big deal.

Now, don’t get me wrong; a big caveat here is not to pitch wildly insane ideas—you should have some expectation that you can back up your pitch. “Pitch First, Think Later” simply means you don’t need to do all the research and legwork first.

Originally written in 2007. In honor of the World Series, I’m reprinting it here.

Mr. Morgan was a great second baseman. Not so much a great play-by-play man. I am not wearing pants.

After lo these many years some of you may know me a little. You may not know what’s in my secret heart (hint: Teddy Bears and Whisky Fountains) but you know certain things: I like The Drink; I have three cats; I am frequently pantsless; I like baseball and no other sports, including sports which are not actually sports, like golf. It’s like we’re old friends, walking hand in hand along a moonlit beach.

So, you know about the baseball. As I write this, it’s early October, and that means it’s postseason time, which in turn means I’m pretty much parked in front of the television night after night, just like I have been for the past 25 years or so. There’s a lot of beer involved, a bit of screaming at the screen, and, naturally, some weeping. The weeping has nothing to do with local teams or anything—I think it’s neat when the Mets or Yankees make the playoffs, but I watched the entire 1991 series between the fucking Twins and the Braves, so I think it’s obvious I just like the damn game. I don’t know much, but I’ve learned a thing or two about baseball on TV over the years. Rule number one is, you’re better off listening to the radio. Rule number two is, Joe Morgan sucks.

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If  you’ve been watching HBO’s WestWorld, then you’re probably pretty creeped out about the coming Singularity that will result in thousands of super-strong robots murdering us all in our beds.

If you’re a writer watching WestWorld you’ve just witnessed a Master Class in Audience Trolling.

The premise of the show is pretty clear: In an unspecified future (we assume) a hi-tech resort is built where the American Wild West is recreated using robots. Essentially this is a sandbox-style video game brought to 3D life; you dress up, interact with robots you can’t tell apart from the humans, and have adventures. These adventures might include killing or even torturing a robot, or having sex with robots, or generally doing whatever you want. Guns can hurt or “kill” robots but are only minor annoyances to Guests.

So, everyone watching the first episode is immediately trying to suss out who’s a robot and who’s real. And the writers know this, and they do what ever smart writer does: They treat their readers/viewers like the enemy and they troll them.

LAST STOP FOR THE TEDDY TRAIN

We’re introduced to Teddy, played by the impossibly handsome James Marsden, as he wakes up on a train heading into WestWorld. A few Guests in front of him discuss how much fun the resort is going to be. Teddy comes into town, resist the invitations to engage in a bit of side-questing, and interacts with Dolores, the pretty rancher’s daughter who is programmed to conveniently drop some groceries so Guests can latch onto her storyline.

Teddy has obviously played this loop before. He knows his lines, and before you know it he’s back at the ranch, where Dolores’ father has just been murdered. Now this is some Wild West action. Dolores is menaced by a man in black, Teddy steps forward to defend her … and then Teddy is killed, because (surprise) Teddy isn’t a Guest. He’s a robot.

TROLLING YOUR READERS

This is good storytelling for three reasons:

1. It uses reader’s assumptions against them
2. It keeps them engaged in what is otherwise exposition—the purpose of the preceding scene is to establish the loop and that robots interact with each other independent of Guests
3. It ensures that viewers will begin speculating on who is a robot and who is a human, because you’ve established that this is a Trickster Universe

Treating your audience like the enemy means you’re in control of the narrative. Being overly friendly towards your audience means they’re in charge, because you’re trying to please them, trying to anticipate their needs like a good host. The former might seem counter-intuitive—aren’t authors supposed to please their audiences?—but it’s more effective because you’re setting the pace of discovery. And because people like to be tricked.

That last bit is one of the best things you can learn as a writer. Don’t be afraid of leading your readers on. People enjoy it when they’re fooled well. Just be certain your tricks have a narrative purpose.

GIVE ME YOUR RED WINE. ALL OF IT.

So, as you read this I am either on a plane drinking heavily or in Italy drinking heavily. Or possibly in an airport lounge drinking heavily. Wherever: Drinkin’. Because that’s what one does on vacation when that someone is: Me.

I am a man of various odd rules and requirements that often defy explanation, and one of those rules is that when I travel to a foreign country I must at least attempt to learn a bit of the language. This is partially because of an urge to be respectful to other cultures, partially because tourists who can’t speak any English at all irritate me so I would be something of a hypocrite otherwise, and partially because I very much want to be able to shout help me I am being eaten by a horde of mice when in foreign land. Also: no I am not an agent of the CIA stop electrocuting my nipples or please do not take my reluctance to eat that as an insult.

So, I’ve been trying to learn a bit of Italian. My efforts have been slightly stymied by general incompetence. I’ve wanted to learn a second language for a long time, and I’ve frankly been kind of amazed that I could have grown up in Jersey City, New Jersey and not learned a licked of Spanish. This general feeling of Fail Shame has been pretty oppressive, and whenever I meet someone who speaks English as a second language my jealousy and sense of inferiority is pretty epic.

Because it’s not like I haven’t tried.

AGRICOLARUM ALARUM

I went to an all-boys Jesuit high school, so I took two years of Latin. Latin! Believe me, 14-year old Jeff couldn’t believe it either. Absolutely none of it stuck, of course; I was far too busy memorizing batting averages and masturbating to actually learn anything, which is the Basic Fail of all American education. If you ask me, school should start at age four, then take a break at twelve through, say, thirty, then pick up again. Under the Somers Plan we graduate at age forty, broken and ready to sit at a desk for the rest of our sad lives before being made into Soylent to sustain those who come after.

But I digress.

I also took two years of Spanish, which should have been great, but I left school speaking less Spanish than when I started school. As a high school freshman I had a large complement of curses and insults in Spanish, when I graduated I knew nothing. At one point a teacher tried to convince me that my name would be Gofredo in Spanish, which was confusing; isn’t your name just your name?

So, after four years of letting some kid named Ian do my Latin homework and responding ¡No es bueno! to every exam question, I somehow graduated, but with no usable language skills at all. I can only conclude that I was a pretty cute kid.

Tais-toi, Chien Américain!

The Duchess is determined to travel the world despite the fact that the world is a terrible place, and despite the fact that I do not want to travel at all. I don’t even want to leave the house. I am so in charge of my own destiny, in fact, that I have traveled to several foreign countries despite my oft-stated desire not to do so.

We went to France once, and I spent months trying to learn some French. I worked at it, man, and by the time we arrived in Paris I was confident I had the sort of pidgin French that Americans have been relying on for years. Here’s how every single interaction went:

JEFF: French french french french french.

FRENCH PERSON: <sigh> Want to speak English?

Every. Single. Time.

Now, no doubt my French was awful. No doubt their English was excellent. Still, I remain enraged by these interactions. What’s the point of the immense weight of privilege I drag around with me everywhere I go if I can’t insist on speaking my half-assed French whenever I wish, forcing the poor citizens of France to adapt to my feeble communication skills?

SImilarly, when we were in Florence a few years ago I made an initial attempt at Italian, and upon arrival at our hotel I proudly introduced myself to the owner in Italian, or at least I thought I did. He smiled broadly, and said “Very good! Now we will speak in English.”

Fuckers.