For you masochist freelance writers out there, which includes all of you, I offer advice that will ensure Points in Case (aka Court) never publishes your writing again.
1. Tell Court he's a tool.
The first way to achieve this is to tell Court he is a tool and has no judgment about what's funny. Remind him that Points in Case has virtually no readers, scant net reach, and is pointless.
Trash this online vacuous venture of his. Verbally relieve yourself on him and it. Let him know that of the 88% of the 88 articles he has rejected of yours, he diminished his site's content quality by 10%. Tell him he can do the math on this.
Beat it into his head that the only way to get more people to view his site, so he can ultimately sell it and make money, is to change the name of the site to UnFunny.com or LameAttempsAtLaughter.com, or ThisBlows.com. Tell him nobody cares about his site and never will.
2. Ask Court questions about your writing.
The second way to turn off Court would be to ask him a list of questions about your submissions. With each article you send, unload on him annoying, self-involved, and insecure queries that require several-sentence responses such as:
- "Hey Court, how do you like my opening paragraph?"
- "How funny do you think I am compared with your other writers?"
- "If you were a psychiatrist, what mental disorder do you think I have?"
- "Do you know of any other sites that have a lot more readers than yours so I can broaden my visibility and following—posting one or two of my articles on your site every month is wrecking my writing career?"
- "When you read my stuff, do you find yourself more or less amused than the stuff other writer's send you?"
- "Rank me on your list of writers on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being William Shakespeare and 1 being Charles Hartley and Charlie Hartley."
- "Would you write a double-spaced, well-formatted letter of recommendation for me to the editor of the New York Times, the Drudge Report and Deadspin saying they should hire me to write op/ed columns for them because I'm too talented for your sorry site?"
3. Crush Court's life.
Your third masochistic move should be to write insulting articles to Court about his life. Pen missives like:
- "I bet you grew up in a wussy neighborhood in Cleveland and wrote inane op/eds for your high school newspaper that nobody commented on."
- "You were probably the kind of college guy who got off being on the student committee that ruled on bad acts other students did on campus."
- "I bet your ambition is to one day pitch an idea to Jerry Seinfeld asking whether, to boost your click-thrus, he thinks you should change the name of your site to Pointless.com. When you do that, he will be dismissive and condescending, saying you would be ripping off his idea for the Seinfeld show. In one of the show's first episodes, Jerry and George Costanza pitched to NBC executives that they wanted to produce a ‘show about nothing.' The premise made Jerry wealthy, enabling him to retire young. Jerry would point out that changing the name of your site to Pointless.com would be ripping off an idea 10 years too late."
If piling up article rejections is the point you want to make, crucify Court. Tell him Pointless.com is classless, clueless, and cruddy. Kill his hopes. Torpedo his ego. Trash his venture.
In an article submission, point out that his life is Pointless.com.