Fiction

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Dear Julia,

Your thick novel about a prune-faced Danish woman was too riddled with $50 words for our current publishing needs. Perhaps you need to reconsider the outrageous hyperbole and re-submit so the average reader can understand. Remember: sometimes less is more.

Ed Dittorson
PolCorPub. Int’l
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Mr. Ditterson,

I ‘m sorry you cannot appreciate the ABCs of truth I tried to weave through my garden of juicy and satisfying expressions. I’ve read some of the pitiful, pale, pabulum you serve to the masses as you kowtow to the lowest common denominator instead of striving for excellence in the dying art of painting purple words.

I would assume, like the tacky obsession your writers seem to have with loo language and base characters, the pictures hanging on your antique white walls can be nothing short of visor draped, cigar smoking, ale imbibing, low-life gambling DOGS.

I will not water-down, trash-up, or delete perfectly wonderful, colorful, and poetic verbiage to satisfy the brain-dead, passive, and yellow journalism loving groupies to whom you cater. You just may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, shot yourself in the foot, and hoisted yourself on your own petard.

It is insulting to address me by my first name.

I remain,
Lady Julia Dickens*

*Yes, Mr. Ed -- I am the great, great, great granddaughter of Charles, and proud as a peacock to wield paragraph-long, purple prose sentences oozing with interest and buzzing with life’s very nectar. As Great Grandpap Chas would say, “It intoxicates me with joy.”

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My Dear Lady Dickens,

It has been some months since your amazingly creative and breathtaking submission. After careful reconsideration, PCP INC, now under new editorship, respectfully requests permission to publish your outstanding piece of work. We are trying to test the waters regarding a sharper class of consumer for our product as we move away from the standard slipping-on-a-banana-peel humor padded with tasteless innuendo and foul language.

I apologize for the disrespect I see aimed at you in communications with the former editor. Mr. Dittorson is no longer with us. He moved on up to the east side to a television network.

Most sincerely,
John Smart

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Dear Mr. Smart,

Thank you for your interest in my manuscript. I’m sorry to inform you it has been published by a company with the good sense to understand a human’s need to stretch once in a while, and that looking up a word or learning to strain a brain cell and read what is implied can be more exciting than futile cyber games and tiresome boob-tubing on a sea of mediocrity.

Even more sincerely,
J. Dickens
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J.D.

Would you consider writing a special book for us?

Hopefully,
Mr. Toolate Smart

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Toolie,

Please forgive the lateness of my response. I have been busy filling out forms at the request of the Pulitzer Prize Committee.

Sometimes, less is more, but sometimes, less is actually less, and more really is more. Please read between the lines.

Thankfully,
Julie

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