On the heels of Britney Spears' tearful television interview last week, Claire Zulkey sharpened her writing knives and chopped the singer into a million funny pieces:"At first she was reluctant to show off her kid Sean Preston, and now she's carrying it around more than most actresses carry sissified little dogs. And now I'm just sick of looking at that fat, fat baby."
Over the past few years, Zulkey has published a countless stories with that smart and funny voice. In addition, she now maintains a Media Bistro blog for freelancers--helping a new generation of funny writers.
I had no choice but to pick her for my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...
Jason Boog:
You have a daunting set of clips on your site, everything from McSweeny's to the Huffington Post? How did you build relationships with so many publications? How do you suggest fledgling writers approach their dream publications?
Claire Zulkey:
It's sort of like the interviews: you just need one decent clip to build up a bunch of others...
Of course it helps to write good things but a whole stack of great pieces isn't necessarily going to get you into the New Yorker. My advice is to keep plugging away at submitting--WITHOUT seeming like you're going about a shotgun approach.
There will be times when I'll get a mass email from somebody that goes something like, "Dear bloggers. Here is a piece that I wrote that is awesome. You should publish it. When you do, let me know." That's just very lazy.
In the meantime, if, say, you really like author John Doe and see that he publishes a lot on McSweeney's, Google him and see where else he has published. Perhaps he's also published at X literary journal and Y humor writing website.
You might have a better shot getting something published by those guys, and in the meantime, you'll know that McSweeney's has a history of publishing people who have also published in those spots.
Just be sure, always, that you know what you're pitching to and why.
Don't ever say "I want to be published in McSweeney's but I can't right now so in the meantime will you publish me?" Or anything that sounds like that.
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