I generally enjoy Cintra Wilson‘s pop culture columns on Salon–enough that I picked up her essay collection, A Massive Swelling–so I am looking forward to seeing how she does as a novelist. Descriptions I have read of her novel, Colors Insulting To Nature, make it sound like a farce about our culture’s obsession with fame, which sounds like it could be something I would enjoy. (I will spell ‘colours’ incorrectly when referring to the book for the same reason I call it ‘Lac Lemont’ instead of ‘Lake Geneva’.)
The kids over at Bookslut did an interview with her about the book (and Gwenda, it’s not Jessa doing the interview, so you can read it too) which is an interesting read.
I especially love this part, which makes me imagine a book, something Chuck Palahniuk would wite, about a protagonist who makes his living off of kill fees and never gets published at all.
On your CintraWilson.com site, you make some references to a… complicated relationship with magazine editors — specifically, you write: “I write countless other articles for big glossy magazines that I invariably take kill-fees from rather than agree with the editor, so on any given month I might not be appearing in such reputable magazines as Details, Rolling Stone, Esquire, etc.” How tough is it to keep that purity of mission when the money’s tight?
Well, it’s hard and not hard. I mean, let’s say Glossy Magazine X asks me to do an article. I am delighted. I warn them with my usual spiel: “You know who I am, right? I write with this kind of voice and I don’t do puff pieces and I am not going to do this in the X voice I am going to do this in MY voice so if you don’t want me to do it, I understand…”
And the (junior) editor says, “No, no, of COURSE we want your voice. That’s why we called YOU.”
“You SURE?” I ask very pointedly.
“Oh YES.”
So then I write the article. Junior editor gives it to senior editor. Senior editor comes back with comments like (and these are pretty much factual): “Tell Cintra to rewrite it but make it 40% more sincere,”
or,
“Tell Cintra to rewrite it and take out the initial set-up paragraph and insert {brainless, unintelligible piece of shit X},”
or,
“Tell Cintra we’re ‘reworking’ the concept for that page and that the 800-word essay we just asked her to write on Pam Anderson’s tits is going to need some ‘rethinking,’ to make it more like the ‘rework’ we intend to do.”To which I generally respond: “Give me the kill-fee, please,” because I know that at this point the whole thing is a glue-trap and there is no further action that can be done without getting all of my limbs and hair sucked into the tar, forever.
Which means I get 75-percent less money and 100-percent less exposure and no glory whatsoever — but at least I’m not trying to chew my own arms off and hating myself while I do it.
I dunno. At a certain point, people know who you are well enough to know you are unsuited to certain professional opportunities. If you’re too personally creative, you don’t get work in Hollywood. If you’re too serious about your own writing style, you can’t write for most magazines — that’s not the job. The job isn’t to be a showboat or an original, in those situations — it’s to serve the voice of the magazine, or the TV show. Which is fine. It’s just not fine for me.
