From: Patricia C. Wrede (pwrede6492@aol.com)
Subject: The Hat Lecture (was:Re: rejection contest!!!)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.composition
Date: 2003-09-08 08:48:14 PST
OK -- somebody asked for this, but I seem to have cleaned out the message before I got around to responding. I apologize for getting it out-of-thread.
THE HAT LECTURE
Because writers are self-employed, they must wear many hats. There's the Creative Artiste's black beret, the Accountant's green eyeshade, the Editor's fedora, the Publicist's whatever's-current-in-headgear, and so on. This can create dangerous fashion difficulties for the novice writer, as many problems can be caused by wearing the wrong hat at the wrong time. Putting on the Publicist Hat during revisions, for instance ("Baby! Every comma is golden! Let's do lunch..."), leads to lousy revising and an expanding waistline. Wearing the Accountant Hat when deciding where to send things out is often a bad idea as well ("Let's see, this will cost $3.27 to mail, plus return postage; if I send it to 100 places, that'll be over $600! Hey, if I don't sent it out at all, I can save $600!") And of course the perils of wearing the Editor Hat during the first draft are well-known.
But possibly the most common fashion error made by beginning writers is to choose the wrong Hat for dealing with submissions and rejections. Many try to wear the Publicist Hat, or make the serious mistake of putting on the Creative Artiste Hat, when what they really need for this taks is the humble but vital Secretary Hat. The Creative Artiste Hat is for coming up with ideas and doing first drafts, not for mailing stuff off or dealing with rejection letters. Faced with a rejection letter (or the possibility of one), the Creative Artiste strikes poses and contemplates retiring to a monastery in Tibet, while the Secretary merely gives the classic overworked-secretary snarl because the rejection means packaging the thing up _again_ for _today's_ five o'clock pickup.
The Secretary does not care what is in the manuscript. She does not go into a funk because the ms. might not be perfect yet, or into deep depression because it has been rejected for the 500th time. Her job is to type the cover letter, assemble the mailing, and make sure it gets in the mailbox in time for the five o'clock pickup, and she performs this job with efficiency (and only a *little* eye-rolling over the antics she anticipates from the Creative Artiste later on).
Many writing problems could be solved or avoided by paying a little attention to this simple fashion tip: wear the right hat for the job at hand.
Patricia C. Wrede