Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pmcd9]

Today I'm gonna finally have a pitch accepted by Cracked.

I used to think Cracked was pretty stupid, but I've started to like a lot of it very much.

[doomglobe]

I have trained my kids to open the sliding glass door and yell "Ay! O! Ay! Ay O! O Ay!" into the backyard every time they see a squirrel digging in my plants. It's fairly effective, but with the kids back in school all day I need a backup plan.

When I was a kid, I was given a wristrocket and told to eliminate the garden pests. BEST. CHORE. EVER.


I soon learned that rocks don't hardly phase groundhogs no matter how fast they fly.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I have trained my kids to open the sliding glass door and yell "Ay! O! Ay! Ay O! O Ay!" into the backyard every time they see a squirrel digging in my plants. It's fairly effective, but with the kids back in school all day I need a backup plan.

Like this? I hear it this way a lot around here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVpL-PdIQ0g

[jay-ell]

Close, but sharper.

Today I'm gonna finally have a pitch accepted by Cracked. Too late to make any difference in selling my book, which Amazon no longer sells new copies of. But still.

Of course now I'm terrified I can't pull it off and feel like I need to go lie down.

Great for you! I have been trying to work up the nerve to pitch them something for ages. I'm in the writer's forum and everything, but I don't even lurk because I'm too intimidated.

I read Cracked daily, if you want me to take a look at a near-final draft I can at least tell you whether or not it "sounds right" for the site. They have such a distinctive editorial voice, and I know they are particular about maintaining that. Though I wouldn't go so far as to think I could offer helpful criticism, I can at least let you know if you're on the mark.

[jaydub]

Back in the day, I thought Cracked was the Hunts version of Mad.  Now MAD is a sad parody of itself and Cracked is usually worth a look and more than occasionally a belly laugh.

[wombat]

They have high standards. And that David Wong is such a good writer that sometimes I want to punch him in the face.

[littlefallsmets]

GO WHITE GIRL
GO WHITE GIRL
GO

I am basically Cracked's target audience except older and more broke so, like, I too would happily offer to give it a look-see too.

[jaydub]

Well...that was probably for the best.

[theinevitable]

Just laid out 100$ to share a motel room for the weekend, entirely in order to avoid the mild social discomfort of asking to sleep at my friend's house. Who possibly already assumed I was sleeping there. Because I already asked her, but I didn't understand her answer.

Sometimes I think I am getting better at this shit, but right now is not one of those times.

[doomglobe]

Dude, you need to desensitize yourself. Go to a bar, and make it your mission to get slapped. Seriously. No asking a girl to slap you, that is creepy. You got to earn the slaps, by saying something just outright sleazy. You do not have to mean what you say. You just need a woman to hit you in the face because what you said was WRONG. If you accidentally get laid, that is the only acceptable reason to not get slapped.


You see, your current baseline for what is polite is up at skyscraper level, and you need to recalibrate. Finding out what makes a woman slap you will give you a good idea of what other people think is okay and what is not okay. You cannot learn this by asking questions, or talking to people on the internet.

[jay-ell]

Dammit, I hate going on Cracked and seeing an article that I could have written, and written much better, if I'd only thought of it first.

[jay-ell]

Yeah, I totally mean that last part. That is the kicking-myself part. I am a passably decent writer, but in this particular instance I actually have more experience and knowledge about the subject than the person who actually wrote about it. My main weakness as a freelancer is not being able to look at a site that I really want to write for and say, "Oh, I bet if I wrote about (x) they would totally publish that."

I write best under assignment. I need to improve my ability to come up with ideas for articles that I can pitch, because once the idea is there I have a fairly good success rate. In fact, I have only written three full-length pieces on spec, and two of them were (eventually) published. Everything else I've written for pay has been assigned, and I once lost a good paying gig because they moved from an assignment-based model to a pitch-based model and I couldn't come up with any good ideas.

This is a flaw of mine, and seeing it play out like the Cracked article about board games today makes me...well, to put a positive spin on it, it makes me feel extremely motivated to work on this area of weakness.

[wombat]

Dammit, I hate going on Cracked and seeing an article that I could have written, and written much better, if I'd only thought of it first.

What's worse is starting to write a pitch because the search function didn't bring up a similar article and then stumbling across the fact that there actually is one. Also what's worse is finding an article where like 6 of 8 stories were on my blog.

[wombat]

No, you know what's really worse? Finally getting a pitch accepted and starting to write it and OMG THIS IS NOT REMOTELY FUNNY IN ANY WAY.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I know you're not writing the great american novel or anything, but it reminded me of what my favorite poet had to say.