Why I never get published.

I have just eaten a shitload of Doloxene and washed it down with grapefruit juice. Hopefully this makes sense.


Ever since my heated emails with Bel MoneySMELLY (yeah, you heard, I fucking hate you. You are obviously using a pseudonym, and mines better, so suck a fuck you pompous bitch.) I have been at wits end with the 16-24 literary journal, Voiceworks. First she receives my submissions, and lets me know that I'll receive an acknowledgment of submission in a week. 4 months later without any commuication, I'm like, wow, did she die in a horrible aeroplane accident leaving nothing but ash and my manuscript, fluttering in the wind?
Please refer to the FUCK BEL MONEYPENNY
post I made a few months back to get rejigged on the sitch I'm trying to handle here.
However, checking my email on my iPhone, half asleep, which has grown to be routine for me, I receive the following. A whole 9 months after my first submission. I could of had a fucking baby for Christ's sake.

"Dear Jimmy,
Thank you for your submission, ‘The Beginning of the Beggar’, to Voiceworks. Unfortunately we were unable to include your contribution in this issue.

[insert form letter about how they get SWAMPED with submissions yada yada here]

The committee enjoyed reading over your submission, which has some very poetic and profound moments while also being humorous. That said, the committee were unsure as to what your piece was trying to achieve. At this point, it seems to be more a constellation of (very interesting) ideas than a coherent piece. Instead, you could have selected one or two ideas from the piece to focus on and develop, tying the ideas together with an easily discernible purpose. Having an ‘argument’ or ‘purpose’ helps to guide your readers along the piece and allows you (the author) to better express your ideas. Another alternative could be to use parts of what you’ve written as the thoughts of a fictional character. You’ve definitely got a strong voice here, but because they aren’t placed in a particular context the text becomes disjointed.

Does everything have to have a purpose? The achievement was a text of non-linear racing linear up a hill on a single speed bike, smoking Marlboros in a vain effort to leap over the fence and rest my head on some laurels. Why do I have to argue a point in a Non Fiction piece of Gonzo journalism. I've pretty much become a junkie to understand the thought processes and what makes sense to the dreamers, and they say I haven't achieved anything? And the lines about the "fictional character" say, "thinking" these "things".
DON'T THEY UNDERSTAND THAT I AM THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER?
THEY ARE THE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS?
IF IT WASN'T FOR ME ENGAGING INTELLECTUALLY WITH THEM, I WOULD NOT EXIST AND BE RELEGATED TO THE BRAINSTORMING SHEET OF SOME ESTABLISHED WRITER, OH SO STRUGGLING IN PAIN TO COME UP WITH A CONCEPT OR CHARACTER, THAT DIDN'T REVEAL ENOUGH, OR TOO MUCH, OF THEMSELVES.

I took it a step further. I became the beggar. I am the beggar. And the beggar has started to round up all the other beggars, miscreants and ill-thinking vagrants. The way that people can interpret my text is, well, however they want to. All you stoners out there, who can't stay focused can skip through it until a passage lights up their blood red eyes. All you smackheads can read it and think to yourselves, why am I here? Why am I holding this piece of paper? Oh, back to sleep. But when their muscles are cramping up and the nod has all but left them big eared, they will listen to what I have to say.
All you crackheads, you can read it and understand me more than I understand myself.
But let's not limit this to just drug induced psychoses for the moment.
WHEN I PRINTED THE FIVE COPIES THAT I SIGNED, SELF PUBLISHED AND NOT SOLD FOR ANY MONEY WHATSOEVER, EVEN PEOPLES MOTHERS ENJOYED IT.
I have families of people who I don't even know who have told me they really liked the magazine I printed.
I MADE FIVE.
If man is five, and the devil is six, then god is seven.
The email then goes to crescendo with,

We would love to hear from you again in the future.
Yours sincerely,

Adolfo Aranjuez – Voiceworks Editorial Committee

You know what Adolfo?
How about you click the link to this post I emailed you, AND I HEAR FROM YOU.
Quite frankly, I thought I burnt my bridge at Voiceworks with a blowtorch after I cast fecal matter all over the head editors opinions. Although you were much more encouraging Adolf,

I still don't think you get it.