I used to fantasize about the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol storming our yard, piling out of the prize van with the giant check, the balloons, the flop sweaty boom mic guy, and the star of the fantasy, the old guy who looks like Ed McMahon, rushing to ring my door bell. I couldn’t wait to be in the center of it, with all of my dreams coming true in front of everyone. Not that we had a chance—my parents shitcanned the yellow envelopes with promises of millions saying that nobody ever won these things.
At least my grandmother gave us a shot. Thank God. I loved watching her affix the stamps, her hands trembling while she checked off the fine print giving them permission to sell all of her personal information. Then we prayed. We had saints for everything, Saint Anthony for losing things and Saint Jude for impossible causes, but for Publisher’s Clearinghouse, the house where dreams were made, we went straight to Jesus Christ.
Of course it was only advertising. According to the website, the odds of winning their sweepstakes are 1 in 6.2 billion, which approaches the population of the planet. This is fine. I’m a gambler. Although not in the fun Kenny Rogers cardshark way with poker and babes and cowboy hats, and only in the lonely way everyone else is, eager to bet on signs and shooting stars and any other hit of serotonin I can find.
It’s my life’s dream to look good in a cowboy hat. My other dream is to be a famous writer. What are the odds of making it? In various polls found online, something like 80% of population wants to be a writer. Over half the population believes they have a novel inside of them. Being a writer is this ultimate dream. It basically comes dormant in the starter pack for the survival of humanity. It’s primitive in everyone, which in nature, means you’re fucked from the start. In some of us, it’s all-compelling. Some of us are so cursed, we actually try to write these books, make these Everest-esque climbs, attempt to fling ourselves across impossible canyons of capitalism.
We’re like baby sea logger turtles in a nature doc narrated by David Attenbourough, all blinking and watery-eyed, completely adorable and about to get absolutely slaughtered by asshole birds and crabs before ever making it to the ocean. And if you survive drowning in the onslaught of waves, making it into the shallow waters, there are sharks. From there it’s pollution, climate change, endangered species and extinction all the way down. Only 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10,000 sea logger turtles will ever survive to adulthood.
Those are also the odds of making it as a writer, probably. But then it gets worse. Despite what JCO says, your best chances of making it are to be a straight white man and it begins to dwindle to after that. The Big 5 are consolidating into 4, but don’t worry, writers have more opportunity than ever according to the CEOs and lawyers, which is why they’re telling us this in marathon 14 hour depositions. Very normal.
According to the amusing livetweets from Publisher’s Weekly reporter John Maher, the merging billionaire companies consider self-publishing and indie press to be an “ad-hoc Big 6.” The prestigious houses also consider themselves “angel investors in authors and their dreams,” as they raise the gates of heaven higher and higher, letting in only the richest and the most certain bets.
Being a writer is ingrained in everyone because it actually is that impossible. One you make it past the seagulls, the crabs, being a baby, the self-doubt, the loneliness, it gets harder. There’s aging, there’s disillusionment, there’s burn-out. That’s why making it young looks like an such an advantage. You won’t outrace them. And youth can be a disadvantage.
Beyond that, in the deep, dark waters, it’s only more capitalism, sharks, where the blood money gets laundered through the dreams of creative writers. It will kill your dreams long before you are aware that you even gave up, exactly as it was designed to do.
Try to make it.
I think about how all of my identities are compelled towards hope. I’m a writer. I’m going to make it. The dreams, the balloons, the boom mic. Never tell me the odds.
I’m queer. I’m trans. I’m nonbinary. I have to fight. Love will win. We will live.
I’m also a parent of two kids. I have to believe there is a future where they will be safe and happy. I have to go further than that. I need so much more and it still won’t be enough. I have to believe that I will always be there for my children, somehow, even from beyond. I won’t give into the fashionable nihilism. I am wild-eyed, unblinking, drawn to the supernatural, searching for saints and signs, ready to bet wildly.
Do you really want to know the odds of survival? It probably approaches the odds of getting the entire population of the planet to care enough to save ourselves. I love stupid dreams and dumb bets. And I think I would look good in a cowboy hat, if only I could find the right one.
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I loved your tweets and just looked up your literary magazine. I'm giving it a shoutout in my next newsletter for food writers. P.S. I think the Big 5 still exist: Penguin/Random House, Hachette Book Group, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan.