The Gorko Gazette

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thegorkogazette

2.13.2025 7:00 AM

3 ROOKIE AUTHOR SUBMISSION ERRORS YOU ARE PROBABLY ABOUT TO MAKE THE FIRST ONE IS READING ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE

START THINKING FOR YOURSELF FOR A CHANGE

Why is it that every single thing you do you have to take a class first or read a manual or take some lessons? Life is not a job, man. Take a deep breath, look around you, and jump off the cliff into the water without checking for objects beneath, for a change.

THE SAME GOES FOR YOUR WRITING HOBBY, JACK

Many Gorko staffers also are under the mistaken impression that they are career writers, human beings who get by in this world year after year by relying solely on the power of the pen. They are wrong. See they DO write things, and we let them use our bathroom sometimes, and Mitch has his pup tent in the unfinished basement for which he pays rent, but aside from that no one is making any money off this. We are hobbyists, not professionals, even though Mitch has some manuscripts in the mail to Harper Collins………postmarked 1998.

Rambo writes, but we PAY him to cook us breakfast.

MISTAKO NUMERO UNO

You are not impersonating celebrity. Who is going to read a 900-page rough draft of a novel that has already been written a hundred times if the byline does not say Ashton Kutcher? NOBODY. Pick a celebrity you can do a plausible impersonation of on a Zoom interview, and bingo.

SO IF I DO NOT GET PAID I AM NOT A WRITER?

If you do not get paid you do not make your living as a writer. Capeesh? You are one of the 300 million people in the English-speaking world that conceives of themself as an artist that mimetes with a pen, or by the looks of it in your case, an iPad.

JESHUSH I MIGHT AS WELL JUST GIVE UP IN THAT CASE

Yes.

NO SERIOUSLY DO YOU HAVE ANY WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Don’t quit your day job.

MISTAKO NUMERO TWO-O

Easy with that cover letter, bucko! Too many words! The Gorko recommends only 3 words per cover letter per submission. You do not want the slush pile intern to start yawning before your infamous, 40-page Chapter 2: When Jesse Met Henry.

MISTAKO EL LAST-O

You were born in the wrong century, in the wrong body. You should have been Ernest Hemingway! You should have been Eudora Welty! YOU MISSED THE BOAT, BABY.