It’s a question of coming up with new strategies. But I’m a writer. Not just a writer but a writer. I’ve read about what that means from a number of different angles and I’m most partial, I think, to Roland Barthes’

"How do you ask permission for something which is not permissible? How do you enter into a game of authority knowing full well that real authorship is the dissolution of authority, that the novel is the dissolution, moreover, of the very possibility of authority: the space, as Milan Kundera says, in which no one (nobody!) owns the truth?"

assertion that writers--not just writers but writers--are people who think in sentences. I am a writer. Not a writer. That’s too banal. I’m a writer. A writer who does not consider himself a writer because the terminology is too clumsy, but acknowledges that he is a writer for the benefit of all of those who lack the nuance to conceive of what he does as an agent of the creation of text without making reference to the dead metaphor of writing. I am a writer, metaphorically speaking. I think in sentences. I am no good at thinking of anything that does not come in the form of a sentence. My mind, which is usually full of sentences, goes blank. Strategies, for example. Strategies do not come in the form of sentences. I don’t know what they come in the form of. Obviously. If I did, I’d probably have some. Charts and graphs? And yet, despite all of that, I’ve come up with a strategy. It goes like this--or, rather, first a little background. Although I’ve managed to peal through three literary agents since I started seeking literary agents at the age of twenty-four, I’ve never succeeded in pairing myself with a literary agent who was able to sell my work to a publishing imprint of any repute. Or no repute, for that matter. I don’t blame the agents, I blame the world. All the same, blaming the world is a little too general and diffuse, so I do blame the agents, despite the fact that I know that it hasn’t been their fault. In any event, because I don’t have an agent at the moment, if I decide that I am going to pursue publication by way of a publishing imprint of little or no repute--I wouldn’t dare pursue publication by way of a publishing imprint of more than little to no repute without an agent to mediate the pursuit--I am responsible for writing my own query letters, which are the letters that you send to people who you hope will read your work asking for permission to send them a manuscript copy or, more often than that, a small fraction of a manuscript, of a text the creation of which can be attributed--although, of course, fraudulently (death of the author, etc.)--to you. In short: “Dear Sir, and etc. etc. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Eli S. Evans, and etc. etc. You have not heard of me. Obviously. Which is why I am writing you this letter. Over the years, I have written etc. etc. and now I have decided is the time to pursue publication and etc. for the etc. etc. that I have written over the years. The world, I believe, is ready. Perhaps you would be the ideal outlet for that publication. I would like to send you something to consider. Perhaps ten pages of my most recent etc., which you could consider at your leisure, more than likely three to six months, and decide whether or not you would like to grant me permission to send you my most recent etc. in its entirety, or perhaps another portion of my most recent etc. for you to spend another three to six months considering. Or perhaps you would like to give me permission to send you a summary of my most recent etc., which is, of course, precisely that which cannot be summarized, for if it were something that could be summarized it would not be etc. but rather etc. All the same, perhaps if the summary piques your interest you would invite me to send on a portion of the manuscript of my most recent etc., or any other etc. for that matter, and etc. etc. With your permission, it would be an honour to do so. Yours, etc., Eli S. Evans.”