We’re jumping in the Way-Back Machine today. This was the very first of my numbered-list posts—from January, 2010—and the comments are still some of my favorites!
- You’re not going to get rich. You’re probably not even going to be able to pay your bills. In fact, money is going to turn out to be the last reason to do this. I know—you guys hate it like blazes that I keep telling you this. (Huffington Post). But keep reading (or skip ahead) to 7, anyway.
- Your friends and family will LOVE IT. They’ll start following you everywhere, waiting for famous people to accost you so they can be the shy, self-deprecating second person, blushing and elbowing you and saying, “I’m just the sister. Really—we always knew they [pointing] were a genius.” Humorous, eye-rolling, palms-up shrug. This will be fun for awhile and then become intensely annoying, especially when the famous people never materialize. Your grandparents will keep your book on their coffee table until the day they die (when you will inherit it back).
- Your book will have a really strange reaction to publication. It’s going to open itself up in the middle of the night the night before your publication date and rearrange all the words to make you look like an idiot. It will choose one obscure paragraph in one chapter to arrange exactly the opposite—so beautifully and profoundly and perfectly that, as god is your witness, you know for a fact you did not write that. The rest of it. . .yeah, it kind of sounds like you.
- You will spend at least a week in an alternate universe in which your entire head is bigger than your body and your hair is actually bigger than your head. You will have eyes like a fly, facing in all directions at once. Your neck will be a thin string tied rather inexpertly to the base of your head. Although the view from up there will be extraordinary, the bobbing up & down will be so disorienting that it will affect your ability to speak clearly.
- You will come back from this alternate universe a humbler and better person.
- You will suddenly hate your book, hate everything about your book, hate everybody else’s books, too, and lock yourself in your attic with your dreams and your words and your vision and begin the real task of writing what you know you can write, what you’ve had inside you all along. You just needed the self-confidence of getting published to bring it out.
- Your boss will call you up at home and tell you to get back to work or you’re fired. And you’ll go—but you’ll still be thinking all the time about what’s going on in your attic. Eventually it will occur to you that this is also how you were living before you were published. And that’s the reason to do this. . .because this is a wonderful way to live.
100. I don’t know a hundred other things about being a published author. A commenter said readers like really big numbers, and I thought I’d roll with that. But even if I did know a hundred other things, you guys would never read them all, much less remember them. And how helpful is that?
GO WRITE.
That is a hilarious ending. Thanks for the post, all points taken.
Yes, I’m reading this instead of writing right now. Bad me. This was a lot of fun to read, and painfully true, I’m sure!
OR:
1. Your book will make the NYT’s bestseller list overnight and you will become fabulously wealthy.
2. Those famous people will materialize and will want to follow you on Twitter. Your grandmother will discover the secret to eternal youth and you’ll never get your first signed copy back from her.
3. You’ll fall asleep every night knowing that each word will live ion forever written as perfectly, as melliflously as any of the greatest novels ever written.
4.You will stay perfectly porpotioned. In fact, people will compliment your figure and ask if you got a new haircut.
5. No change. Because you’ve memorized “IF” and know you must treat those imposters the same.
6.You will love everything and everyone in the universe, especially your editor.
7. Your boss will call you up and you’ll sweetly tell him to take his job and….
8-100. No time to finish this list. Peter Jackson is on line 3.
Aw come on, Victoria. We are writers. We gotta stretch our imaginations. 🙂
Thanks for the laughs with my morning coffee, Victoria. These are ridiculously amusing! #4 almost made me cry, LOL
Well, the really big number attracted me. I saw it and thought “Yowza that’s a lot of things to know!” But I wasn’t disappointed.
Maybe the rest of us will have to come up with other reasons to complete the list. It could be one of those meme things….
Camille, that’s brilliant. Go for it, you guys.
This is one of my favourite blog posts I’ve ever read. Aw. How am I going to top this?
Well written and honest.
I would like to add that each sale is precious.
Never say to your publisher – ‘I only sold three books sold last month!’ That’s three readers who have committed to spending time with your work.
Thank you so much, everyone. Who knew we were in such need of lists? It must be the organizational principal involved. I have oodles of lists I could write for you all.
Yvonne—yes. Absolutely. There is nothing a publisher loves more than to work their heiny off for an author and put their own money up for someone else’s baby, only to hear, “Is that ALL you can get them to do for me?” Not to mention how dismissed those three precious readers feel.
Gratitude is the name of the game in publishing, as it is in life itself.
Odd! I clicked on the post because of the large number with no intention of reading that many points. Your technique worked!
LOL, I would have read the other 100, saved it in my manuscript file for future reference – but I’m just like that. It made me laugh though. Seems the new thing is lists and numbers. Makes things manageable. I am at point six, where the rough draft at the end is better than the beginning and I have to go back and revise, revise, and revise. Geesh. Where’s that magic wand when I need it.
Have a blessed day.
Heather
LOVE number three. And number 100 made me glad it was number 100 — I didn’t have time to read a lengthy list. Love this!