How not to become a respected author

For the last year or so, word of an aspiring SF author by the name of "Robert Eggleton" has been circulating through writers' grapevines. This writer, you'll notice, shares a name that is quite similar to Bob Eggleton, the famous genre artist. They are not one and the same, although Robert doesn't make this clear in most of his emails--and emails he sends.

Robert has been emailing his novel--unsolicited--as an attachment to unwitting and unsuspecting writers everywhere. He started out with fairly high-profile authors, and has apparently just now worked his way to the bottom of the barrel, moved said barrel and dug down a few feet to find yours truly. The email I got was essentially a variation on those others have gotten, opening with complimentary small talk and then asking for a critique/review/blurb of said novel. How is this wrong? Let me count the ways.

First off, boys and girls, never, ever send someone an unsolicited attachment, especially one that's larger than 1 meg. Clogging someone's inbox is a fast way to endear yourself to them, youbetcha. If you really want to make them remember you, send your magnum opus to authors who specifically tell you not to, out of the fervent belief that said manuscript's sheer brilliance will show them the error of their ways. And above all, if one of those hoity-toity literary snobs decline the singular (or in this case, plural) honor of reading your work, send them a snide and bitchy message telling them what weasle-brained hacks they really are. If anyone calls you on such boorish behavior, you can simply explain it away by claiming naivety (but never let on to the fact that way back when you began your email campaign, at least one writer took it upon themselves to explain to you why this was an unprofessional way of going about things, and why you shouldn't continue these antics. The advice, obviously meant to keep your work languishing in slush piles, should be immediately discarded).

What we have here, sadly, is yet another case of a would-be literary Wunderkind wanting to cut to the front of the line, because they're far too intelligent and talented to fight their way up through the much and the slime of slush like everyone else. If Wunderkind could just find that one patron, that one kindly writer willing to pass along the secret handshake, then all the doors of publishing riches would immediately be flung open to him and life would be peaches and cream from then on. The trouble with these Wunderkinds is that they've already got it figured out in their heads, and no matter how one tries to point out the fallacy of such thinking, the only thing that's accomplished is that said newbie grows more and more convinced that the veteran writer is a selfish obstructionist, more threatened by the newcomer's talent than anything else.

It also doesn't help when Wunderkind opens his/her letter to a multiple-Nebula-Award-winning author by saying "I don't know who you are or have read any of your stuff, but here's my book you need to read." Writers talk amongst themselves, and that kind of dirt travels pretty fast. I'm just saying, is all.

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