Reasons I'm Glad I'm Not An Author
blackholly is feeling cruel.
Because I'm an editor, not an author, I don't have to worry about this sort of thing:
Contract sent to wrong address.
Contract stolen by gypsies who finish book and turn it in.
Roommate thinks contract is junk mail and throws it away.
Contract actually from Satan. You sign anyway.
Book not completed by contract date.
Book completed by contract date, but terrible.
Only copy of book blows out of car in friend's hilarious re-enactment of Wonder Boys.
(There's more. Go there. Read. Rejoice that your concerns don't involve the freelance copyeditor replacing every instance of the word "the" with the word "lambchop.")
The perturbing thing is that so many of the authors posting to her comments have had one or more of those things happen to them.
Of course, just because bad things happen to authors, it doesn't mean they're not prey to other neuroses.
A sample of my favourites:
I know I’m three years late on this book, and I didn’t warn you that I’d finally be delivering it, but you’ve now had it sitting on your desk for a month! Why haven’t you read it yet?
Your editorial comments are brilliant. I adore them. No one has ever understood my writing as well as you have. I am now so paralyzed that I can’t revise the book.
If only you didn’t insist on packaging and marketing my books in the ways that have hitherto made me a bestselling category author, I just know they could be reaching a much wider audience.
Here, too, read the entertaining and instructional comments.
Because I'm an editor, not an author, I don't have to worry about this sort of thing:
Contract sent to wrong address.
Contract stolen by gypsies who finish book and turn it in.
Roommate thinks contract is junk mail and throws it away.
Contract actually from Satan. You sign anyway.
Book not completed by contract date.
Book completed by contract date, but terrible.
Only copy of book blows out of car in friend's hilarious re-enactment of Wonder Boys.
(There's more. Go there. Read. Rejoice that your concerns don't involve the freelance copyeditor replacing every instance of the word "the" with the word "lambchop.")
The perturbing thing is that so many of the authors posting to her comments have had one or more of those things happen to them.
Of course, just because bad things happen to authors, it doesn't mean they're not prey to other neuroses.
A sample of my favourites:
I know I’m three years late on this book, and I didn’t warn you that I’d finally be delivering it, but you’ve now had it sitting on your desk for a month! Why haven’t you read it yet?
Your editorial comments are brilliant. I adore them. No one has ever understood my writing as well as you have. I am now so paralyzed that I can’t revise the book.
If only you didn’t insist on packaging and marketing my books in the ways that have hitherto made me a bestselling category author, I just know they could be reaching a much wider audience.
Here, too, read the entertaining and instructional comments.