A Mea Culpa on Weekend Updates

It occurred to me this week that preparing the Weekend Updates for 101 Reasons has become my own self-inflicted slushpile.

I use RSS feeds to speed up the process, but I'm now tracking over eighty blogs, many of which post several times a day. At the moment each Update is compiled from an average of over 400 posts/articles, most of which I read thoroughly before coming up with some pithy comment to swing the context in my favour (which is more work than simply pasting "Not right for us" into a reply email).

Most of it is basically irrelevant, of course (you would not believe how many reporters, esp. sports writers, tell themselves in print to "stop writing" about some hobby horse they've been hyping to death), but it's not always obvious from the first paragraph. Much of it is blog-blather from people who mix business with self-pleasure. Some of it is rah-rah you-can-do-it from people who haven't done it. A small proportion is thoughtful, well written, and simply cannot be made funny, even by me. A sliver of it is concrete, helpful writing advice that I bookmark, and don't tell you about.

So I'm getting a crash course in what agents experience -- thankfully without the cold-calling, begging, whining, name-calling and spite that agents have to put up with. (Cue begging, whining, name-calling and spite in the comments section. Be funny.)

Since I'm now one week behind, I thought I'd start using my twitter account to keep you informed of just how far behind I am. At the bottom of the column at left, you may notice an Instead of Writing box, which lists my recent updates. I'll post numbers there every day or so. The number will represent the current backlog.

Presently there are 879 unread items in my queue, dating back to May 1. Yeah, I'm that bad. Whenever I get through a week's worth, I'll post a Weekend Update. Or, if the queue hits 3,000, I'll sell.

Note to writing bloggers, or blogging writers, or bloggers of or about writing:

If I've never linked to you in a Weekend Update, there are a number of possible explanations:

1. I've never heard of your blog
2. You don't actually blog about writing
3. You're too damn cheerful and upbeat, it makes me want to become an agent just so I can reject you
4. You spend too much time writing about your fsckin' cat
5. Your opinions are one of the many flavours of useless
6. You don't have an RSS feed (I don't open my browser for nobody)
7. You don't have a full-text RSS feed -- I'm talking to you, Galleycat
8. You just suck