Present Imperfect

Postponing the inevitable, seven facts at a time. | January 05, 2009

What’s that shiny glove-like thing at my feet? Why, it appears to be a gauntlet hurled in my direction by the esteemed Mr. Ethan Marcotte. Just because tomorrow is Macworld doesn’t mean I’m not checking my RSS feeds, mister. (Does this mean you broke rule #4?)

Now I shall thrill you with seven facts about me. Here are the rules for thrilling others in turn:
• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

In the spirit of laziness, I’m going to match my facts to Mr. Marcotte’s:
1. I am a grad school dropout. Washington State University. Would have had my Master’s in English Literature (pronounced: “lit-rit-shuh”) in 1997. Instead, I dropped out and got a low-paying job copyediting a dirt bike magazine. Huh huh huh. “Supermotard.” Huh huh huh.

2. I sang a lot in high school and college. In the former, I sang alto and was always cast as the town whore in the school musical. In the latter, I sang first soprano and nearly had a heart attack singing a solo in the Carmina Burana whilst under the influence of five cups of very strong coffee.

3. I once broke my foot playing paintball. I jumped into a foxhole and landed wrong. (That’s what she said.)

4. In ninth grade, I wrote half an epic poem about The Smiths. It fizzled out after 30 pages. But what pages they were…

5. I was my high school band drum major. I spent 10 minutes of every Friday night leading 100 similarly unathletic kids in an attempt to distract you from getting a sloppy joe at the concession stand at halftime. You know who you are.

6. I have seen every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer no fewer than 10 times. It’s no Paradise Lost, but it’s not entirely dissimilar.

7. I once co-choreographed and performed a large-scale lip sync and dance number to TMBG’s Fingertips.

People about whom I would like to know more facts:
Ryan Sims (bonus if he can do it entirely with song lyrics)
Wilson Miner
Laura Brunow Miner
Mark Trammell
Julie Melton
Lawrence Yang
Matt Rubin

Postponing the inevitable, seven facts at a time. | January 05, 2009

What’s that shiny glove-like thing at my feet? Why, it appears to be a gauntlet hurled in my direction by the esteemed Mr. Ethan Marcotte. Just because tomorrow is Macworld doesn’t mean I’m not checking my RSS feeds, mister. (Does this mean you broke rule #4?)

Now I shall thrill you with seven facts about me. Here are the rules for thrilling others in turn:

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.


• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.


• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.


• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

In the spirit of laziness, I’m going to match mine to Mr. Marcotte’s. 

1. I am a grad school dropout. Washington State University. Would have had my Master’s in English Literature (pronounced: “lit-rit-shuh”) in 1997. Instead, I dropped out and got a low-paying job copyediting a dirt bike magazine. Huh huh huh. “Supermotard.” Huh huh huh.
2. I sang a lot in high school and college. In the former, I sang alto and was always cast as the town whore in the school musical. In the latter, I sang first soprano and nearly had a heart attack singing a solo in the Carmina Burana whilst under the influence of five cups of very strong coffee.
3. I once broke my foot playing paintball. I jumped into a foxhole and landed wrong. (That’s what she said.)
4. In ninth grade, I wrote half an epic poem about The Smiths. It fizzled out after 30 pages. But what pages they were…
5. I was my high school band drum major. I spent 10 minutes of every Friday night leading 100 similarly unathletic kids in an attempt to distract you from getting a sloppy joe at the concession stand at halftime. You know who you are.
6. I have seen every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer no fewer than 10 times. It’s no Paradise Lost, but it’s not entirely dissimilar.
7. I once co-choreographed and performed a large-scale lip sync and dance number to TMBG’s Fingertips.

People about whom I would like to know more facts:




• Ryan Sims (bonus if he can do it entirely with song lyrics)


• Wilson Miner


• Laura Brunow Miner


• Mark Trammell


• Julie Melton


• Lawrence Yang


• Matt Rubin

  “Yes, you’re older now and you’re a clever swine...” | August 03, 2008

  I’m more likely to be struck my lightning than I am to have a novel published. Firstly, and probably most importantly, because I have no novel to publish. But secondly, because it is practically impossible for anyone to get a novel published.

  I’m not talking about Lulu or Blurb. I’m talking about publishing the olden, moldy, Miss Havisham-y way: Finding an agent, shopping a book around, securing a deal, getting a write-up in any publication with the words “New York” in the title, selling even a modest amount of copies, and going on a book tour where you drink $2 bottles of treacly chardonnay out of plastic cups and make obscure jokes that people wearing thick plastic-framed glasses, $200 jeans, and worn-out Chuck Taylors — in other words, people painfully, exactly like me — will Twitter about later. 

  So why would any author in his or her right mind complain about getting published the old-fashioned way? Easy! Because his or her book has been banished to the dark side of the publishing moon: the Young Adult market. 

  At least, that’s been the prevailing sentiment amongst authors who thought they had written Oprah’s Book Club novels only to find their publisher pimping it to the WB crowd. Which, as this article wisely concludes, is a big fat load of horseshit.

  True, it is strange that publishers and marketing departments have tunnel vision concerning coming-of-age books. If it’s about anyone under the age of 18, well, then it’s clearly meant for readers under the age of 18. By that logic, only rabbits should be reading Watership Down. 

  But maybe it’s something less demographic and more stylistic that makes a publisher say “this is a Young Adult book.” Maybe it’s a certain unselfconsciousness of voice. A directness, a purity, a lack of pretense. And maybe that is something to celebrate, not denigrate.

  Now comes the part where I say “some of my favorite books are Young Adult books.” And I list books like Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and John Knowles’s A Separate Peace and E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and practically everything by Neil Gaiman. To paraphrase The Smiths, don’t forget the books that made you cry and the books that saved your life. I’ll wager a good portion of yours have “Young Adult” somewhere on the title page, too. 

  And thank the stars for that. And for J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer and Christopher Paolini and every other writer who isn’t arrogantly ashamed to write for young adults. Without them, it won’t matter how many endnotes David Foster Wallace can fit on a page or what the Cormac McCarthy body count is. Without them, there will be no more readers.