I ponder these issues in lonely motel rooms at the edge of town.

Why.

Mainly because I have wasted MY LIFE writing books no one wants to read.

And mainly because I REGRET doing that.

Allow me to explain by a focus on the Medium.

Today, I’m writing in French so no one will know what I’m saying.

I have published eight books people know about. I have published a number of books where no one knows it’s me.

I often write under a female pseudonym. If publishers knew that so-and-so was Tim Barrus, the screaming, oh. tell me it’s not so would commence and I am over it.

I’m over agents.

I’m over contracts.

I’m over Manhattan publishing.

I’m over the Internet.

I’m over editors.

I’m over reading to people sitting in bookstore folding chairs in the back of the bookstore by the fucking toilet.

I’m over the toilet but I would still pick up someone hot there.

I HAD a hope chest. It was FILLED with book manuscripts no one will read.

I dragged it into the yard, and the boys and I poured gasoline on it and we burned the manuscripts AND the chest because I hated it. I am a hateful, burned out, washed up, failure of a human being who has no goddamn fucking talent who finally decided to stop WASTING his life so I can work with boys I think are cute but I do not have sex with because sex is so yesterday and they’re fucked up in let me count the ways.

Writing mattered writing mattered writing mattered writing mattered until it didn’t matter anymore.

Writing doesn’t matter. It’s a crock of venom filled with poisoned people.

There are rules.

All of them are dull and boring and I am only interested in writers who are brave enough to break them.

The Medium does censor.

I did a bad thing.

I wrote a piece called Fucking Young Boys that really had nothing to do with fucking anyone.

It was a stupid piece.

But I had to test the limits because like the kids I teach, it’s what I do.

BIG numbers.

For a piece that was designed as clickbait.

People also bitched.

The Medium took it down, but they did not kick me out.

Usually, they kick my fat white ass into the street. I am banned a LOT.

So, there is a Mister Bones in there at the Medium who does decide these things in Oz. There always is.

The boys and I have a lot of stuff on Tumblr. I am over constantly hearing from adolescent angst. I have enough of it in my face.

Virginia Heffernan said: Go to the Medium. And so I did.

And there it was. More Manhattan publishing. OMFG. Not again. Sighs. Yes, again.

It’s About the Money.

People will SCREAM bloody murder it’s not like mainstream publishing. Not only is it like mainstream publishing, it IS mainstream publishing.

Same people. Same carrot. Same stick. Same wannabes. And here’s the gig — same readers.

I would be the wrong bitch to lead the battle to change things . I DID THAT for fifty fucking years.

I write about the boys I deal with because they’re my audience.

They’re not snotty. They do not care who said what about whom on the Internet. And it allows them to be that guy in the above graphic who ponders and THINKS before he does something dumb like steal a car or kill himself.

What I write about opens up a dialogue with THEM. I care about THEM.

Until I get kicked out, I’m exploiting the Medium.

Virginia Heffernan has become quite snotty lately and why should it surprise me that a media CRITIC would basically tell me: you’ll last a week.

I have been here a while now. I do not think anyone reads content on Tumblr. It’s adolescent photography porn.

I know many things. Virginia Heffernan was really saying: YOU’LL NEVER PLAY WITH THE BIG GIRLS AT THE MEDIUM.

She means her Harvard PH.D. friends. It’s all very heady, you know. Virginia herself has a PH.D. in Lit from Harvard.

I have read their stuff.

Gag me with a very big dick and be done with it.

It SOUNDS like Harvard. Snotty until the cows come home.

The Medium is nonprofit.

That’s like saying the Ford Foundation is nonprofit. And guess where that is. I have worked with the Ford Foundation and it’s in Manhattan and so is the Medium.

San Francisco is cute but the money is in New York.

The Medium was recently hiring. For their New York office.

Follow the money.

I love the guy who patiently explains: we are working hard over here to create systems that bring the writers into the process. And idiot that I am, I do believe him.

But I have been an editor in New York and it’s about the money. You cannot escape it.

Only writers write for free. Unless it’s Virginia Heffernan and her friends who have formed a fucking club and if you put a snotty group of writers together into one room all they talk about is where is the money and they form a snotty club. These are the Big Girl Writer Clubs and the Medium is infected with the virus they are.

Usually, they do not write for free and they do not like revolutions or scaring the horses.

You are asking writers to all band together to…

Have a voice.

OMFG. That is like asking writers to build rocket ships and to be quiet about it. Seriously, would you get into one.

It would go the New York because WRITERS WANT MONEY. Why. So they can be writers.

You cannot get published unless you have an agent, and you cannot get an agent unless you publish.

I am here to tell you that even with an agent, you cannot get published. It hurts. I know.

I am also here to tell you that value and worth are decided in many ways. Agents are using Medium stats to push their writers.

A writer with 963,782,162,778 recommends on how to write for agents and lose that godawful twenty pounds is FAT and will probably get published.

And paid.

Another fat writer from Connecticut with a big fat check. It’s been done before.

I’m not even sure the techies at the Medium know the stats are being trotted around New York mainstream publishing AS REALITY.

There are not people who give a flying fuck about reality. All they care about is the HINT or the SMELL of money.

One of my favorite stories is about how Jenna Bush got published and represented by a DC criminal attorney.

All they saw was a Bush and an attorney saying our shit don’t stink.

The stink over Manhattan publishing puts a pig farm to shame.

You see, I would like to see all of these charming people get exactly what they so richly deserve.

Ideally, it could be someone dynamic at the Medium writing dynamic things.

And don’t think the Big Girls at the Medium do not know that. You will not pry their stats out of their dead and dying hands because they smell money.

The Medium just plays along. Publishing calls the tune. We dance. I have tried and tried and tried and tried — above and beyond the call of writer duty — to change that. I have gone out on a very little weeny limb to show the reader who is an idiot that it is about the PEDIGREE not the content.

There is no hope to change the Medium. The Medium will change the Medium.

I even like the people on the Medium who write to me. Their arguments have holes big enough to drive a truck through, but I like them. Idealism has no bounds unless you are me.

Ev Williams knows all of this.

The fact that the Medium’s recommend paradigm is being used to agent material to New York publishers is not a secret.

It should be a crime, but it’s not a secret.

The carrot and the stick was invented by New York scum. IF YOU ONLY WRITE HARD ENOUGH, THEY WILL COME. Be patient. We are hard at work on it here.

Random House says that 5,000 times a day. Word for word.

Writing doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. It won’t change the world. It won’t even illuminate any reader who fucking actually reads. Why. Because it’s all singing to the choir.

No one seems to know that publishing — and the Medium IS publishing — is a cottage industry.

I am bumping into the exact same people I bump into at the ABA where we all go drink ourselves into oblivion which is where editors live.

Publishing is scum. I’m sorry but that is how it is.

I am not even sure about the extent to which the techies at the Medium understand how the stats are used.

By publishers.

I know how some of these deals are being made, and, quite frankly, the readers and the writers are just getting fucked in the ass again because that is what publishers do.

It’s not an issue of fairness and some great pieces are being ignored.

GREAT WORK IS ALWAYS IGNORED.

The issue is money. Money denotes WORTH and VALUE. This is where publishers, and this IS publishing, it’s just Internet publishing, and the operant word is just, are skating on very thin ice and they know it.

The odds are better in Vegas.

They are using popularity as VALUE to the tune of a LOT of money.

Entire contracts are being written (do not believe a word that comes out of a publishers mouth even in a deposition) on a BOGUS value.

Jenna made a lot of money. Her book was shit.

Compute the Jenna Bush story time and time again.

It’s not a nice philosophical issue. Zuckerberg didn’t make the idea of the like button. He just exploits it to the tune of every platform has to have the tired old idea trotted out or the investors are going to say: where is the like button. In fact, as a nonprofit, the Medium will be the last place that bucks the system. But the recommend button is being abused by agents who characterize the thing as value and worth to publishers who jump to gamble. On things like six, seven, eight figure advances. In the hope they have a real thoroughbred.

When what they have is a tired old horse and the subsequent horse shit called there is worth to be found in the recommend button. Get a clue.

Popularity is what kills the horse. It makes honest thought expendable because it’s junk food for lazy ass people who click and move click and move click and move and think they’ve done something, well, they have, they just landed Joe Blow a big advance at Simon and Schuster. The Medium will not be the entity that changes these underpants. It will require courage not rhetoric.

It’s about the money.

I have to go check into my motel room at the edge of town now and smoke some weed and drink this bottle of cheap port from Walmart.