Russ Rossam
Dear Ben:
You don’t know me, I’ve been reading your short stories in Modern Horror and Suspense magazine. I’ll start, unfortunately, with my only compliment to you, which is to thank you for being brave enough to post your email address publicly on your website. That takes guts, dude.
Notwithstanding my admiration for your willingness to answer to your critics, criticize I must. I find your writing style to be needlessly repetitive, and your characters to be utterly stock. Perhaps once per page I see a glimmer of true inspiration, but without exception, the light is ultimately snuffed out by what I can only call a compulsion to regress to the tired tropes of whatever genre you believe you are writing in.
Certainly, you (who have actually published your work in a widely-circulated periodical) have every right to disregard my words and block my emails going forward. I am un-published, and am what any reasonable person would call a failed writer.
So there you go.
Sincerely,
Ellen Bostwick
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Dear Ellen:
Thank you for your email, withering criticism and all! I respect your willingness to come forward with an honest attempt to improve the general quality of published fiction, so kudos on ya’. Of course, I can’t (and don’t wish to) please everyone with my writing. I do the best I can with my limited talents. I was the most surprised of anyone that the public responded favorably to my fiction. If I could write better, I would! So I am the lucky one who found success despite modest talent.
Keep up with your writing, you’ll get to the finish line eventually!
Truly,
Ben Millwright
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Dear Ben:
Thank you for responding with such graciousness. I’m glad to know you’re a good guy. However, in the spirit of honesty between co-professionalists (oh, if only that were a real word!), I must take umbrage in your apparent attempt to excuse mediocre output purely by its reception by an uncritical, tasteless consumer base. What you’re basically saying is that units sold justify the content of the units. To be blunt, that is disgusting, and exemplifies an attitude that is slowly (or not so slowly) grinding down the quality of writing, and of art in general. Under this aesthetic ethic, the time will come in the not so distant future that writers are being applauded for using both a subject and a predicate in their sentences.
Can you tell I’m very frustrated with my life?
Sincerely,
Ellen
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Dear Ellen:
“LOL!” on the last part, “yikes!” on the first part. A fella’s gotta eat, as they say.
Truly,
Ben
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Dear Ben:
Forgive my uncouthness, but that’s just a pathetic attitude. Just pathetic. A lot of us out here care about our place in the legacy of the written word, and we’re bleeding out our hearts and minds to get to a certain truth. Yeah, a guy’s gotta make a living, but at the expense of an entire tradition of quality?
Maybe I’ll try to sublimate my anger into some decent writing.
Sincerely,
Ellen
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Dear Ben:
The old silent treatment? Perhaps I hit a nerve?
Sincerely,
Ellen
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Dear Ben:
Well, too bad you don’t have the fucking guts to admit you’re fucking over an entire community of which you don’t even have the common decency to appreciate.
Ellen
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Dear Mr. Millwright:
My apologies in advance for the unorthodox nature of this email. My mother was apparently in an email dialogue with you over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, we’ve had to report her as missing, as none of her family, friends or co-workers have had any communication with her since last Wednesday. I decided to finally check her email, and saw your back-and-forths. I didn’t want to leave you hanging needlessly. In fact, she seems to have been mid-draft of an email to you, which I have included below. I will keep you updated on her whereabouts.
Kindly,
Dolores Bostwick
(Her email to you beings here:)
Dear Ben:
And by the way, your understanding of telekinesis is so woefully lacking that I hesitate to even start to fill you in on the details of either the known science on the subject or the literary tradition of the subject. Your general lack-luster attitude towards the art of writing seems to bleed into your attitude towards research. Perhaps a tad more interest in just getting things fucking right might behoove you as you stumble through your excuse for a
(End of email)
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Russ Rossam has written numerous short stories, articles, and screenplays (feature and short-film length), and was formerly co-executive editor for The Daily Princetonian newspaper at Princeton University. He values the simple, evocative sentences of Sherwood Anderson and Thomas Wolfe.