Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Neighbourhood Snark

Speaking of blogging and the L train...

Over the weekend, while writerprocrastinating, I discovered nycbloggers.com, a New York City blogging map, which lists blogs by subway line and subway stop. Think of it as a sort of Gawker Stalker for bloggers. My subway stop, the Grand Street L stop, has 18 blogs listed. I haven't yet joined up because of their "New Yorkers Only" criteria, which made me stop and think about whether I could qualify as a New Yorker...and the next line on their form is "if you have to ask whether you qualify as a New Yorker, you're probably not." Huh. They also say ex-pats are welcome, but I don't think they mean Irish ex-pats, exactly...

Anyway. Forget all of that. My initial pleasure at finding a blogging map to poke around at was quickly curtailed and transformed into sheer terror. What kind of sheer terror, you ask? Well, the kind of sheer terror that only a writerprocrastinator - that is, only a trying-to-write-a-novelist - acquainted with the catty directness of Miss Snark, Literary Agent can understand. Miss Snark tells it like it is. She's an agent, who writes an anonymous blog in which she answsers questions from idiot (and not so idiot) writers about querying, agent-hunting, agent-pestering and publishing, and she doesn't mince her words. Witness her crapometers for synopses, query letters and first pages. Yeah, those sarky red notations she inserts into submissions as she tears them to shreds are funny. Catty. Hilarious. Until you find it's time to write a synopsis or a query letter yourself (NOT for Miss Snark...who would seriously put themselves through that ordeal?), and then you start to see her red notations in your dreams. She scares the bejaysus out of me.

So, you'll be wondering about the reason for my nycblogger.com-induced sheer terror. Turns out Miss Snark lives one subway stop away, at Montrose Avenue. That's less than ten blocks away. I probably see her on the subway every morning. Oh my god, what if she has seen me reading over print-outs of my bloody novel? Standing behind me during the morning rush and snarking silently over my shoulder? Aiming virtual red-pen squiggles at my every page?

Thanks a bunch, nycbloggers. Making me feel like a tourist in NY was bad enough. But this is just too much.

22 comments:

j said...

I love Miss Snark, and I've read at least some stuff by you, and I cannot imagine that she'd be red-penning much of your work. Remember she always says that at the end of the day it's about the writing, in which case, my dear, you're in!

Lane said...

your twenty's in the post

hesitant hack said...

who the blazes is "hesitant"? That was me. Or is there a phantom user logged into my account? I'm really freaked out now...

j said...

Do you have two gmail accounts? Cause sometimes I forget and log into blogger with the wrong account, and my real name shows up. (Shock! Scandal!)

hesitant hack said...

I actually have four gmail accounts.
(cue evil laughter...)

But no, that wasn't what happened there. It just chopped off half my username for no reason. Ah well. No biggie.

Anonymous said...

don't feel bad about the nycbloggers site:

1) of course you can join it!
there are no gatekeepers...
2) of course you're a new yorker...why not?
3) that site has links to neolithic blogs that nothing has been added to since the first world war...

http://sexagenarian07.wordpress.com/
read me!

Anonymous said...

OMG I hadn't read Miss Snark before now and it's fantastic .. can you see a theatre critic version of this or what? Looks like there may be an opening for you there :)

PS TOL is back so drop by some time

Anonymous said...

mmmm how come blogger doesn't let you hyperlink to other blogs

Like this: www.thinkingoutloud.biz

hesitant hack said...

Hi TOL! It's great to see you back online. Yeah, I'm also very unimpressed with blogger's unfriendly policy on linking to non-blogger blogs. I'm thinking of moving home as a result, actually.

Anonymous said...

I'm hosting my own blog (using Movable Type) cos it cuts through all of that nonsense so I'd really recommend it (lots of nice templates to choose from as well)

www.thinkingoutloud.biz

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