Slush Pile

Here's something I tried to publish a while back, but didn't get any traction on

I’ve been a freelance writer for fifteen years now. I’ve written for a good number of your august publications (The New Yorker and Vanity Fair are still on the list to be conquered), as well as some places with tarnished reputations, and some that simply don’t exist anymore. I’ve written takes that don’t hold up, things I only did for the money, a few celebrity profiles, essays edited to the point I don’t recognize my own voice, and every now and again some things I’ve been truly passionate about and am proud to stand behind. I’ve played the game. I know it well.

None of that makes pitching and placing work any easier. I still get rejected, sometimes outright ignored, by editors, and I try not to take it personally. I try. It certainly damages my ego—to think of what I have accomplished and be told that’s not enough for editors to say “yes” to me more regularly. It stings. But you don’t survive this career for fifteen years if hearing “no” is enough to take you out.

Sometimes when I’m pitching, I feel the subject or idea so intensely that I go ahead and write a draft. Definitely not every time (I don’t love to work for free), but once in a blue moon that urge to just write hits me, and it’s nice to feel that it hasn’t been completely deadened by making this my livelihood.

Still, I hope to publish; it doesn’t always work out. Last fall, a book about De La Soul (High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul by Marcus J. Moore) came out and I wanted to review it. De La means as much to me as any artist ever has, and I wanted to express that. Then, the surviving members of De La (RIP Dave) took issue with the release of the book, and I really wanted to write about it, to say I understood their frustrations and offer a love letter (which the book already was) at a time it felt like they needed to feel that. I pitched it a few places; they all said no. They all had their reasons (wasn’t the right fit for them, someone else was already writing about it for that publication, by the time I reached out the moment had passed), but I still wrote my piece. (One of those rejections did yield a “yes” to something else, a review of Imani Perry’s latest book, which you can read here) And it has languished in my Google Drive ever since.

I don’t have a ton of work like this to share—as I’ve alluded to, I tend not to work on something until I have a full buy in from a publication ready to pay me (I’m a *working* writer, and now we’ve got a kid in here that needs many things… by the way, have you upgraded to a paid subscription yet?), but I have some that I’ll start sharing under the heading “Slush Pile.”

Here’s my review of High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul/love letter to the one of greatest musical acts to ever have been.

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