Over the years, I’ve collected rejection letters the way that most people collect books or underpants. I’ve learned that they’re part of the process, they’re pretty much inevitable, and, most of all, no matter how shitty my hair looks on any given day, they’re not personal. Also, it doesn’t matter how much good karma you try to generate by tossing pennies into the Salvation Army’s cup, or by smiling at post-office employees, the business of being rejected has nothing to do with how good of a person you are. The trick is to convince yourself that it has nothing to do with how good of a writer you are either.

My first rejection letter came on an afternoon in my preteen years. Coming home from a soccer game, which we had lost, I discovered a piece of mail on my desk, next to my goldfish bowl. My goldfish, of the five-cent carnival variety, was floating belly-up in the vase that served as his bowl. My fledgling poetry career was doing the same in the envelope. I lay down on my bed and took a nap.

Over the years I became desensitized, nay, even brazen about it. Stumbling home drunk at four-thirty in the morning, I’d struggle with my mailbox key and discover the latest gently-worded “fuck you” in the tiny compartment. I treated it no differently than the bevy of men and women I’d sauntered up to over the course of the evening, leaving with little more than napkin scrawl and a potential future outbreak of herpes simplex. Rejection is part of life. I stopped caring and started treating it as less of an occupational hazard, more as simply part of the job description. So long as I was still submitting I was still a writer. I became a hope junkie.

A few weeks ago I started work on a satirical essay that was pretty close to my little robot heart. It made light of caretaking and parents, it poked fun at some of the less-than-pleasant aspects of helping a sick family member at home. Of course, I drew on some of my personal experience thus far, as I’m lending a hand to my mom and playing the role of Falcor in our Neverending Chemo Story. I edited the shit out of the piece when I was done with draft one, and made sure that it struck the right balance between wholly acerbic and sorta poignant. I mulled over it, took my time, gave it breathing room, and…I liked it. That’s rare.

I thought of where to send it, after all, it’s not like there’s a gigantic market for gallows humor, unless I’m completely mistaken. Then I thought of McSweeney’s. Probably my favorite website, chock full of chuckle-worthy good writing and brainy wordplay, of course they’d accept a quirky little piece about homecare! They are the website that’s filled with genre-transcending prose and lists,  a sanctuary for the some of the most daring of swashbuckling pens. Maybe they had a slot open for a hopeful nobody.

As glib as I’m being, it wasn’t as if I simply expected to be accepted. I truly believe that I suck, just as much as the next fledgling creative, and certainly I acknowledge that I suck much more than those who have been lucky enough to find themselves in McSweeney’s. I’ve had more than one list play the role of skeet for their editor’s marksmanship. I hadn’t cared in the past. But this piece was different. More polished, closer to the marrow, locked within the birdcage beneath my nonexistent breasts. I edited it, spell checked it twice, said a small agnostic prayer, and sent it to their site editor, wishing it godspeed.

The days that followed were filled with what keeps me doing something so stupid as submitting to publications. I became buoyant with growing expectation, dancing along on my Converse, the Gene Kelly of my own rags-to-riches story of ambition, perseverance, and a flash fiction piece about cancer. My dreams were filled with literary success, launched by my little lampoonery. I’d make a name for myself. I’d be paid to write essays and articles. I’d make a living. I’d have Simon wearing a loincloth, fanning me with a palm frond, and feeding me green grapes by hand. (And vegan soft-serve by mouth.) Life was gonna look up. For the first time in my life as a writer, I was convinced I’d be embraced by the warm, snuggley arms of an editor on his ivory throne. Welcome, the letter would say, to where you’ve always wanted to be. Cherubs would sing and play Röysksopp on little harps. Chinchilas would do the hula.  Maynard James Keenan would write me fan mail. I would be in McSweeney’s. I would.

After my mom took her first monster dose of Xeloda, I ran out to buy her the B-6 vitamins she’d forgotten to take to prevent neuropathy. It was there, in the pharmacy parking lot, under a heavy, gray sky that I checked my email on my dented, pink Sidekick-ID.

“Hi, Ainsley. This one is not without its moments, but overall the conceit is just a little too dark to win me over. Appreciate the look, though. Hope you’ll keep trying.”

The sort of devastation one feels when dealing with acute failure is palpable. I’m not talking about the closing pitcher who blows an occasional game, or the still-beautiful pop singer whose third album doesn’t break the top ten on the charts. I’m specifically addressing the sort of failure that one feels when one believes, in no uncertain terms, that they will achieve great success. I hadn’t gotten all flushed and dewy eyed when Brown University bitch slapped my dreams of grad school in my early twenties, I didn’t let out a wail when Poetry Magazine sent me a very off-handed “thanks-but-no-thanks” in the tone of Sarah Palin. Like I’ve said, rejection is part of the game, if you’re truly a writer it should come as natural to you as the alphabet. I have no idea why the four lines from McSweeney’s caught me like a gerbil swept up the nozzle of a vacuum, but they did. My self-esteem, what there was of it anyway, has yet to recover, which strikes me as peculiar.

Don’t be mistaken, this isn’t a woe-is-me thing. Sure, I’m destitute, have no new clients, and spend every errant wish, from stars to birthday candles to 11:11 on the car dashboard, on the simple hope of making a living as a writer. Absolutely, my current situation, living with my mother as she battles terminal cancer while my partner stretches out in bachelor bliss on the couch in what once was our house in Oklahoma, it sucks. No bones about it. But the hard rejections, the ones that are more of a broken jaw than a flavorless jawbreaker, those are just another key in the QWERTY of life. Rejection is like entry fees, each varies in the amount, and there are few you can avoid. You want to know what would be a shame? To not resubmit the same piece — maybe edited slightly to make it less dark, maybe not — to another publication or contest. To give up and say, “That’s it, done, fuck it. I want to organize shelves in Whole Foods for a living.” (All right, I admit it, I do. But I can write, too.) Even though this particular punch in the gut was a shocker, what can you do? I’m writing about it. And I’ll keep writing, for myself and for an audience I have yet to find. And maybe that makes me an impoverished fool, but it also makes me a writer. And a Leo! And maybe also bisexual, considering I do this hoping you all will want to take me out to dinner.




As a final note, I share with you some morsels on the misgivings of this profession, that I discovered as I tried to drown my sorrows in the comforting waters of the Internet:

The editor of the San Francisco Examiner rejected a short story by Rudyard Kipling by sending him this little love note, “I’m sorry Mr Kipling, but you don’t know how to use the English language.”

If you’re looking for more consolation, there’s always the Rejection Collection and Literary Rejections On Display. They’re nice little reminders that we’re all in this together. Don’t let the bastards grind you down!

Drop me a line, AinsleyDrew at gmail dot calm. And thank you to everyone who donates! Means a ton, makes me do a little dance.

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What good is a blog anyway?

The other night a friend of mine texted me about a new project of his. A straightedge Jersey boy with a weak spot for hardcore music and video equipment, he recently stumbled into painting. Enlisting friends to disrobe, coat themselves in colored latex Behr paint, and squish themselves against his wall. It looks something like this. Ideally he’d like to take the show on the road, creating some sort of colored corpus collection. His text asked me about blogging to get people involved, namely, was blogging worth it?

I’m often presented with the question Why do you do it? or What good does it do? when it comes time to talk about writing a weblog. (See, sounds more professional as “weblog,” doesn’t it?) And usually I’m able to pull some interesting “reason” out of my rear-end. Because it allows me to put my writing in a public forum. Because it forces me to edit. Because I like attention. Because I am no good at knitting.

The truth is that there are many reasons why people blog, and, to answer my friend, no, they’re not always worth it. Or, rather, they’re not always worth it to read them. There are blogs by assholes, blogs about assholes, and blogs that kinda sorta are assholes…in the good way. [Editor's Note: I am in love with Fuck You, Penguin.] There are blogs about makeup, blogs about generic snacks, blogs about how idiot hipsters are ruining fixed gears for everyone, and all of this has lead me to one staggering conclusion: There are far too many fucking blogs out there.

And it’s that sort of saturation that makes blogging an increasingly difficult way to do anything other than talk about yourself. Or whatever it is you want to talk about. Which, for a lot of people, is celebrity, sex, or celebrities having sex.

That said, if you have a decent intellectual property slant, or a decent enough service to offer (ahem), you stand a chance to generate some buzz. Not all endeavors have to include the promise of regular updates, either. Most of us, myself included, read blogs to be entertained. We sift through the enormous pool of the internet to find the gold that we treasure, none of it universal. For example, Simon reads The Lone Gunman every day, while I’m more of a Gawker girl. These are just blogs that we’ve each found on our own, to suit our tastes. For example, I don’t read Fleshbot to find out where to go for BDSM instructional seminars, or to find out what online adult superstore is having a sale. I go ’cause I enjoy the writing, and I find it fun and funny and totally not safe for a conventional office. (Take note.) If I want to find out cool goings on or how to spend the money I will one day have, I would look at blogs like …and the strangest things seem, suddenly routine, but that’s only because it’s the blog associated with a business I admire. So take it from where it comes. If there’s any sort of curiosity about what you enjoy sharing with the world, people will read. If the manner with which you present yourself is fresh and articulate — or, in my case, crass, rude, and sort of hokey — then people will subscribe. But as for electronically pressing the flesh, blogs can be pretty hit or miss. I think about corporate blogs and I’m a little perplexed; how are they any different from news updates? Why use the word blog? I’m sorry, but the last thing I’d want is for a potential client to click on my page and see a button for something associated with a Paris Hilton nip-slip. Of course, some corporate blogs are awesome, I’m just saying that in such a massively glutted blogosphere (hate that word) we’re all victims of guilt by association. Except for Jason Kottke. Because he is the Moses of bloggers.

When it comes to self-promotion, blogs can be a great tool, at least theoretically. But there are really only two approaches that can garner adequate attention for content-driven blogs. The first is those that are discovered by people looking for what you’re doing/selling/giving information about. For my New Jersey pal, that would mean people Google searching for “naked people painted” or “nudie mural” or something. If he used a forum such as WordPress, he’d be able to tag his posts and then attract people that way. (In my case I think that people only find this blog when they search for Maynard James Keenan of Tool or how to eat a can of beans as a meal.) The other approach to self-promoting blogs are those where a person is already established in some way. In Malcom Gladwell’s world I think this is called being “sticky,” but maybe I’m mixing up my Tipping Point with my porn. My friend is a fairly well-known slam poet, which means that if he linked his blog to his poetry-related site, he’d have higher traffic. If people were fans of his poetry already, or just friends of his, they’re already interested. If the blog about giving a few coats to his friends without coats was good enough, well then sure, he’d have promoted himself successfully.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Twitter is perhaps the most effective means of getting word out about what you’re doing and where. Blogs allow for a little too much space. Oddly enough, the freedom that the medium affords can often lead to glut. So while I might not have any concrete “yes” or “no” to whether or not blogging is worth it for getting word out about an upstart punk rock art project, I can say that it’s worth a shot, may it be in under 140 characters, onTumblr, or on his very own WordPress platform. But I leave him — and y’all — with some advice:

Ainsley Drew’s Rules Of Blogging

• Don’t blog to sell anything other than ideas, and be willing to give them away. QWERTY conquistadors of cloying sales pitches, self-aggrandizing product pushers, and Twitter spammers this means you. We can smell it from a mile away. Remember that this is the Internet, not everyone here is looking to capitalize on a free market. Some of us just want to watch performance pieces about bad relationships.

• Don’t do it if you hate doing it because it shows.

• Don’t do it strictly “for yourself” because one day somebody will find it, read it, and judge you for it. I had a blog once that categorized the fights I was having with my significant other. It was a very, very bad idea. Which leads me to number three…

• Do not overshare. You will know what it is when you’re doing it. If you think, “Oh, man, will someone ask me about that tomorrow?” or “Oh, man, I hope someone asks me about that tomorrow!” you probably shouldn’t put it in. This also goes for posting anything that anyone you enjoy seeing naked might find offensive.

• Learn from it.

• Shorter is better. (Okay, okay, do as I say, not as I do, all right?)

• Post often. The one thing that can make me go back a page faster than a single click is an outdated blog. If you can’t keep it up, delete it. If you don’t want to delete it, just put a post saying the blog is dead, but read it for whatever reason.

Of course, take this from where it comes. I started this blog nearly a year ago when I lost my job. It was a means for me to publicly whine about getting canned from a company I didn’t even really enjoy working for. It became a way to document going professional, stumbling through networking, getting involved in projects that astound me, and being deeply in love. (Also, it’s become a way for me to give Oklahoma some much-needed good press.) But I never got a new desk job out of it. Only donations, gigs, and incredible email from strangers. So start a blog, see what you can do, but be ready for the return to be far different than you imagine. You might just find that you’re promoting something bigger than yourself.

If you’d like to become a part of the painted people masterpiece, aka Get Naked For Art, or if you just have questions about it, contact Chad Anderson.

I love mail. AinsleyDrew at gmail dot calm. Thank you to those of you who donate. Right now I can’t tell you how much it means to me, but one day I hope to hug you hard and show you.

Hire us to write your website, wedding vows, press release, brochure, business cards, the writing on the wall, etc.

If you’re a blogaholic, or just like the way your face feels when you smile, read Shows I Missed. In the interest of full disclosure, the author has sex with me, so I’m a little biased.

So far my week in Oklahoma has exposed me to a few things that I was not prepared for. I watched the Bedlam Game between Oklahoma University and Oklahoma State University. I learned that I like the Sooners because if I don’t I could get shot. I heard actual use of the phrases “y’all,” “cussin’ and raisin’ heck,” and “hellcat mad.” I watched a turkey get fried, learned that you soak cowboy boots in the bathtub and wear them wet in order to break them in, and became acutely aware that Baptists do not dance – ever. I ate cranberry salad that had marshmallows in it, and tried Indian food for the first time. It has been exciting and strange, but above all it’s been educational.

For a state founded on a history of hard work, dust, sweat, and tears, Oklahoma has work ethic. Coming from Portland, where a small, but still way too large, population of young adults wastes their time doing nothing, buying retro clothes, snorting lines, growing ironic facial hair and looking apathetic, this red-blooded ‘Merican-ness is refreshing. If it’s between cowboys or hipsters, I’ll choose cowboys anytime. Same goes for frat boys. (Go Sooners.)

In order to try to understand where things go wrong between this red state and the blue that flows through the streets of Puddletown, I decided to start with those who make up the work force of this area of the south-central US.

Anonymous employee and staff opinion surveys are some of the assessment tools that the Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce and OKCBusiness Magazine use to gauge the list of “Best Places to Work in Oklahoma.” Tate Publishing made it on among the elite, ranking an impressive number two on the list. As a writer, the publishing world fascinates me, and a Christian publisher based out of a town called Mustang seems like an ideal resource for the hard working professionals that keep the intellectual oil of Oklahoma pumping. Tate Publishing has a staff of only one hundred people, but operates as a main-line publisher of book products, audio books, and music. Every year they select only 5% of the thousands of manuscripts that are submitted for publishing. Moreover, Tate gives back to the state by generating interest, revenue, and professional prestige, not to mention the jobs that they create that often attract the best and the brightest graduates of local schools. Keeping with the traditions that they hold dear, the company regularly contributes to the community by sponsoring non-profit groups and assorted philanthropy projects year round.

Rita Tate thought that she would become a lawyer when she was in high-school. After graduating college with a degree in Speech and Communications she became a speaker and a writer, eventually publishing a book with her husband, Richard Tate. That experience pedaling their pages sparked the Tate’s interest in the publishing industry, and from that tiny flicker a company was born. Seven years later, Rita Tate can regard the company that she helped to create with quiet pride. “As I face retirement I look back and discover that every job, every challenge, every relationship impacted the choices I made to help establish this company. I am doing exactly what to do, and the best part is, I’m doing it with my family at my side,” she says.

There is a quote in The Grapes of Wrath: “The migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement.” These words, and the plot of the book as a whole, deal with the way that Oklahomans, and Americans in general, have struggled and will continue to struggle to varying degrees throughout the course of history. Yet, no matter how tough times are, we always need diversion. A company like Tate Publishing exemplifies the union between a toiling mentality with the enjoyment of books. But that’s not to say that the universality of what they produced can’t be traced back to the trials and tribulations of their great state.

“The state shaped my outlook on work because Oklahomans are made of tough stock, [with] a deep, strong work ethic. We possess something intangible, yet so evident: true grit,” says Rita Tate, who is also a native of Oklahoma. “Maybe it is the natural disasters, the tornadoes, the Dust Bowl, the Murrah bombing, those experiences that made headlines across the country when “the Oklahoma standard” became a measuring stick for the rest of the nation on how to handle life’s greatest challenges.”

Although I’ve only been here for a little under a week I can say that Oklahoma’s main export isn’t cowboy boots, or styrofoam, or even rabid football fans, it’s thick-skinned, assiduous stock who might lack some of the glossy ambition of city folk, but more than make up for it with their ability to buckle down and persevere.

AinsleyDrew at gmail dot calm. Thank you to everyone who donates!

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I’ve always loved haunted houses, ever since I was a kid.

The Price is right.

All right, I’m lying, the first time my family and I went on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland I screamed, cried, nearly pissed my OshKosh B’gosh overalls, and pitched a fit. I was not a big fan.

But ever since the age of thirteen or so, when my goth phase hit me full-force, I became a haunted house enthusiast. That’s not to say that I’ve been to very many. Long Island isn’t the kind of place that caters to sulking teenagers who don’t like to shop at the mall or avoid dating boys, let alone ones named Jimmy. The haunted houses I have been lucky enough to venture inside of have been, for the most part, frightening enough to make me yelp like a poodle left out in the snow. Take the Bayville Haunted Firehouse. I waited on line for an hour and a half which, at the age of fourteen or so, was a frightening prospect in and of itself. Once inside, my forced teenage apathy gave way to screaming like a little bitch. I vividly remember one darkened room that appeared to be filled with roaches. Underfoot there was something that gave off an unpleasantly realistic “crunch, crunch.”

My investment in this type of terror is not just ‘cause I’m a fraidy cat. Halloween is widely regarded as the second largest commercial holiday in the US, with seven billion dollars (“with a b,” as those chatterboxes on CNBC like to say) spent every year on costumes, activities, and dental rot. It seems that most people enjoy a scheduled scare, and in a world where we have a woman with the intellect of a pitbull wearing lipstick running for the second highest office in our nation, two wars being fought and forgotten, a global economic clusterfuck, and shows like The Hills actually being considered entertaining, well, dress me up like a sexy nurse and lock me in a warehouse filled with vampires. Or actors dressed up as vampires, whatever.

Haunting is big business, complete with formal membership associations, trade shows, and safety codes. Big, sticky amusement parks like Six Flags have events like Fright Fest ($39.99 when purchased online) and towns like Omaha have the Stalks of Terror Maze at Scary Acres ($5.00, excluding the cost of traveling to Omaha.) There are haunted house “consultants” who, for just shy of four grand, will spend a day evaluating the fright factor of your attraction. The cost of the 10-Hour Maze Design/Consultation package is what is truly scary. $2,500 to make my house easy to get lost in? I do that daily, and for free.

I’ve always figured that house haunters fell into one of two categories: carnies or actors. (Both are groups I would not like to spend a Friday night hanging out with.) It always seemed a little odd to me that people looking for part-time work would choose to spend a few nights dressed up like Marilyn Manson groupies, jumping from behind doors and turn teenage girls into dog whistles. What sort of a person has so little pride and so much time? Again, my answer turned to carnies or actors.

It turns out that it’s the less humble of the two, namely actors. Granted, a lot of house haunters in non-urban areas are the average group of young people looking for a fun way to make some money. But in cities like New York and LA, the prospect of scaring can border on pretentious. Catering to your favorite skinny waiter, the advertisements for haunted house help suggest that a background in acting would be helpful, as would expertise with stage make-up, and non-guild members are preferred. It’s funny considering that some of the stories from workers that I encountered included were less like Shakespeare, more like a Ying Yang Twins video. “I can’t count the number of times that guys tried to crawl on the table with me and grab me in inappropriate places,” recalls one worker who was employed at a haunted house in both the torture chamber and the coffin room. “When I worked both rooms, I found that some people are a bit sick and like to attack the actors,” she added.

Not all attractions are outfitted with strip club-level security. What they are required by law to have in place are a working sprinkler system, early warning smoke and/or heat detectors, emergency lights, fire proof materials, adequate electricity, and easy access doors. I suggest adding Mace to that list.

Scare actors are usually raking in the standard $8 an hour, though some places that are more high-brow offer samples for their portfolio, as well as the standard free food and parking. Sometimes the drawbacks outweigh the phantastic perks. Common complaints include headaches from the strobe lights, respiratory issues caused by smoke machines, bumps and bruises, overwhelming heat from costumes, and the general stress of being a human pretending to be a screaming dead body. Workers’ complaints generally boil down to it being scary to scare people. Personally, I would like to look at this as proof of humanity, but maybe it’s just that being paid under ten dollars an hour to be a macabre massacre is pretty standard crappy low-wage work.

But keep in mind these statistics (most of which come from the Nostradamus of finances, Forbes):
Nearly two-thirds of Americans celebrate the holiday, with 1.6 of those “with-a-b” dollars being spent on decorations alone. Some haunted houses cater to over ten thousand people, with 15% of our population visiting at least one haunted house attraction on Halloween this year. Lastly, the amount of money Americans are projected to spend on Halloween is equal to the gross domestic product of Nicaragua. And that’s not including the condoms, eggs, Bacardi, and ecstasy tablets. That amount of cash is nothing to boo at.

E-maul can be sent to AinsleyDrew at gee male dot calm. Keep it creepy. Thank you to everyone who donates, my gratitude cannot be overstated. It’s worse than those old Sally Struthers commercials, the sort of sappy impact you have. I’d send you a Polaroid of me buying a box of tampons with the money, but that would probably just cross some sort of line.

If you, or someone you know, is looking for a writing team to revamp any webtext, compose a press release, or rebrand a company, hit us up at Ministry of Imagery. We need work.

This causes far too much stress, but I do it incessantly anyway.

My better half:

Shows I Missed

Pagecrusher

Notes: The last image in this post is from a phenomenal B-movie called Spider Baby. It has a pretty cool history if you’re a film buff, and it’s fun to watch. Moreover, Jill Banner was incredibly hot in that nightgown.

Lastly, there’s a difference between a “haunted house” and a “haunted house attraction.” I was discussing the later in this post, obviously. The former is the real fucking deal.