A quick followup to my recent post about hack writers: this story, from the New Yorker’s Book Bench blog, about a woman writer setting up “a small letter-writing stand in Union Square.”

She sat behind a small Lettera typewriter and a cardboard menu listing your options: you had to first chose your language (English or Spanish), type of letter (regular letter for $2, love letter for $3, illicit love letter for $5, postage included), and type of paper (blue, yellow, or onion). Some customers sat down in the chair opposite her and dictated a letter in full; most gave her a few key bullet points and let her abstract the rest. A man stopped by to discuss a business inquiry he was working on—Hofer said she would write it later and send it to him by e-mail.

Compare this to an advertisement written by Laetitia Pilkington, one of the subjects of my dissertation, about her own letter-writing abilities:

If any illiterate Divine, from Cambridge or Oxford, has a Mind to shew his Parts in a London Pulpit, let him repair to me, and he shall have a Sermon, not stolen from Barrow, Tillotson, or other eminent Preachers, as is frequently the Practice, with those who have Sense enough to do it; but Fire-new from the Mint. If any Painter has a Mind to commence Bard without Wit, and join the Sister Arts, I also will assist him. If any Author wants a Copy of commendatory Verses, to prefix to his Work, or a flattering Dedication, to a worthless Great Man; any poor Person, a Memorial or Petition, properly calculated to dissolve the Walls of Stone and Flint which inviron the Hearts of rich men, Prelates in particular; any Print-seller, Lines to put under his humorous, comic, or serious Representations; any Player an occasional Prologue or Epilogue; any Beau a handsome Billetdoux, from a fair Incognita; any old Maid, a Copy of Verses in her Praise; any Lady, of high Dress, and low Quality, such as are generally the Ladies of the Town, an amorous melting delicate Epistle; any Projector a Paragraph in Praise of his Scheme [Ed. note: LP, the original promiscuous blurber!] ; any extravagant Prodigal, a Letter of Recantation to his Honoured Father; any Minister of State, an Apology for his Conduct, which those Gentlemen frequently want; any Undertaker a Funeral Elegy; or any Stone-Cutter an Epitaph; or, in short, any Thing in the Poetical Way; shall be dispatched in the most private, easy, and genteel Manner by applying to me, and that at the most reasonable Rates.

The New Yorker blogger calls this ghostwriting, but I hope the writer setting up her stand in Union Square wouldn’t mind being called a hack, particularly if that meant she could claim literary allegiance with someone as saucy as Mrs. Pilkington.

David Barnett has a great blog post at the Guardian today entitled What’s wrong with being a hack? Since my academic work focuses on professional women writers of the early eighteenth century — the era of Grub Street, paper wars, and slipping emetics into your literary enemies’ drinks, if you happened to be Alexander Pope — I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about hackery.

Some of the writers I study are refreshingly honest about their status as hack writers; Laetitia Pilkington, in particular, details down to the shilling the amount of money she receives for hastily written-up poems offered to the great. Once, she receives two guineas for her troubles and is so thrilled that she tosses them up in the air in glee. One promptly slips into a crack in the floorboards of her rented room, and her landlady won’t let her pull up the boards to get it out. Poor LP. (If you ever have the time to read a three-volume memoir by a mid-eighteenth-century woman writer, go for hers. And read Woolf’s essay about her, too.)

Anyway, I like the message of Barnett’s piece, and as I’m currently in the season of funding applications, it feels pretty applicable to academia as well. I only hope I can hustle half as well as Mrs. Pilkington.

The DNB offers one entry free to the non-paying public daily, and today it’s my BFF Dr. Samuel Johnson, born on 18 September 1709. If you haven’t read his Preface to Shakespeare, I highly recommend it — it was one of the first things that got me hooked on eighteenth century literature.

(Did you know that Johnson, Hester Thrale and Boswell all have Twitter accounts?)

A quick post just to recommend Sarah Rees Brennan’s latest short story offering, “The Arundel Tomb.” I haven’t yet had a chance to read her The Demon’s Lexicon, which is waiting for me on my Kindle, but I really liked this story. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about “golden age” stories, stories that begin with a period of grace and love and togetherness and then proceed to dash that all to bits. Without being too spoilery, Brideshead Revisited is a good example — and so, in a more thrillery fashion, is The Secret History. I don’t yet know what happens to the characters of “The Arundel Tomb” after the events of the story, but I know it’s not good, and that sharpens and sweetens the story.

I’ve been teaching my intro English class on the history of the romance for a week now and so far everything is sunshine and roses.  Seriously, I’m very happy with this class and I think we’re going to have a great time, partly because many of the students chose the class because they want to read the books we’re reading.

I am looking forward to getting the last bits of my schedule settled — those of us who teach in the shiny computer-stocked classrooms also work as proctors in the computer labs, and that schedule gets revised after a week or two of term — so that I can figure out how to shove some fiction writing into my schedule, along with my teaching prep and dissertation work.

A few links for today:

Sarah Eve Kelly on “the matter of detail” in writing historical fiction.

Megan Crewe posts on the results of her survey of writers who recently sold their first books. Short version: the majority of writers sell their first book not because of connections but through a cold query.

The Telegraph reviews a new book on Waugh and the Lygons, the family who apparently inspired Waugh when he created the Flytes.

My favorite Kate Beaton comic (which I will be sharing with my class).

The newly-formed and super awesome Outer Alliance has declared today Pride Day and has asked those of us who are members to post the Outer Alliance mission statement as a sign of support and solidarity, which I will happily do:

As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity.  I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.

The next part of Pride Day is to post a bit of something queer and speculative. So: this is the first section of a story that I could never quite get to go right, though I still love it and hope I’ll be able to figure it out someday. It’s a ghost story, and it’s also Much Ado About Nothing. It’s called “The Former Hero.” Excerpt below the jump.

Edited to add: It occurs to me that I should also mention that my first novel, Alcestis, is also a work of queer historical fantasy. It’ll be out in February 2010 from Soho Press.

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