A man called me a skeezer on The Pick and Roll’s republishing of The Fallacy.
I did not know what this word meant. I suspected by his tone, though, it was most likely unflattering, and that was correct.
I was perturbed by the characterisation. I would consider myself someone with high morals and, at the least, average standards of cleanliness.
I responded as any mature person on social media would. I called him a skeezer back.
Brad is the name of the skeezer-designator. He even specified my particular skeezer type: ungrateful.
Although the delivery could have been kinder, it was not a completely incorrect observation from Brad: I did not go overseas to college.
The Development Player essay has endured at least five different draftings. The version Brad read was the second time it had been publicly published, after originally being released here, and working with The Pick and Roll team marked at least another two rounds of edits.
Brad made me wish I could edit it again.
It would be an easy amendment: I never pursued offers of interest from American colleges because, by being selected as a DP in the WNBL, I was supposedly already on the way to becoming a professional basketballer. I did not need an NCAA scholarship. I could stay in Australia and use our pathway.
One small sentence! Further clarification! Specificity! It probably would not have stopped Brad and his vigorous posting of a comment, but it would have left him with little other than his misogyny and strange syntax. It would have at least dissolved his, or anyone’s, ability to utilise that reasoning — and, when you’re writing an article as potentially inflammatory as The Fallacy, the job is mostly one long exercise in preemptive rebuttal of hypothetical arguments.
Brad’s comment made me restless and dissatisfied. It was chafing; a sudden sense of incompleteness. I did not want to reply to Brad, I wanted to rectify the small cavity Brad had unwittingly pointed out in my piece.
A large part of being a writer is that impulse: to continuously revisit, revise, correct, distill, expand, improve.
Which leads me neatly to welcoming you to the first instalment of scenes.
Writing is a slow, sometimes secret, regularly lonely, process. It can feel, in phases, like being smothered — when pieces collect rejections; when they encounter an acceptance but the publication process is naturally protracted; when there is, ultimately, constantly, such limited artistic release. The amount of work being created is enormously disproportionate to the amount able to be shared.
I am often asked about my writing. I always struggle to find a succinct answer. There is sometimes a tiny bit of success. There is mostly a lot of failure.
I am interested in discussing all the failure now. It is tempting to wait for the protective gauze of accomplishment before I reveal all my defeats and deficiencies … but the gauze might never come! And ego is boring! Judge me with impunity now!
Scenes is a summary: of recent rejections I have received, submissions I have made, art I have consumed and, most importantly, for thist full subscribers (love you) the title and synopsis of upcoming work — and when you can expect it.
The schedule for those main pieces have been far less predictable than I would like — I am simultaneously trying to cut 90,000 words from a novel (sorry, Aviva) and learn a new sport (in other words: actually get a game) — but I appreciate your patience, and am so thankful for your support. The essays are coming. We will find a regular publication slot.
If you’re new here, hi. For everyone else, thanks for hanging around.
RECENT SCENES:
scene 003
The tiniest scrape exposes the fragility of it all: any of my ‘achievements’ are so complex they are sullied — each ‘success’ might be more accurately defined as a composite of failures.