Literary Genius or Bestselling Author Who's Lost the Plot?
Firing my editor is only the first step, can you figure out whose footsteps I’m following?
After becoming a bestselling author and letting success go to my head, here’s how things will play out:
1. Each book shall be twice the length of the last, bloated like a dead ferryman’s corpse.
2. I will fire my editor for questioning the narrative value of dedicating 12 pages to the silk brocade buttons on a minor character’s jacket.
3. I won’t bother with facts; someone who studies semiotics is a “symbologist” as far as I’m concerned.
4. Fans waiting on the next installment of my fantasy series will eventually find themselves complaining to their grandchildren about how long it’s taking me.
5. I will drench fans in an endless deluge of extracanonical information. (“You’ll never guess which character was prone to haemorrhoids!”)
6. My lawyers will write cease and desist letters to 14-year old fanfiction writers.
7. I will insist all my books take place in the same universe even if—especially if—it makes no sense.
8. I will hire a crack team of research assistants only to open my novel with a trite factoid about the number of words Eskimos supposedly have for snow.
9. Not content to represent the power of friendship through a linking of arms, I will have my sole, underage female character subjected to a gangbang in a sewer. It’s the only logical way to bond a group of children so they can defeat an evil clown, it's Creative Writing 101.
10. My trilogy will span four or five books.
11. Instead of being happy that my work will reach a wider audience, I will out myself as an unbearable snob who thinks my prose too precious to be gazed upon by the housewives of Middle America.
12. Al rite ma dialogue as dialect n such. Aye, it be Inglesh, but it be incomprehensible.
13. After publishing a scathing take-down of my high society friends I will have the audacity to sulk when I’m no longer invited to their parties.
14. To counter accusations of racism, I will make sure all my Jive talking Black characters mention they’ve recently been accepted into Harvard.
15. I will become enamored of the old-fashioned meaning of “ejaculate” and use it to tag all my dialogue. (“Good heavens”, ejaculated the Vicar during intercourse with the Women’s Missionary League.)
16. Beleaguered by my adoring fans, I shall find myself thinking, “Well, if they like mysteries so much, why don’t I stage my own disappearance?”, whipping up a media frenzy in the process. You know, ’cause I hate attention.
17. All of my sex scenes will describe a fetish I am desperately trying to normalise.
18. While other authors settle for thinly-veiled self-inserts, I will make it part of my protagonist’s quest to hang out with me.
19. I will so tire of signing books that I will commission the creation of a robotic arm to do it for me.
20. When a Black actress is cast in a production of my work, instead of invoking theatre conventions or arguing that the core of the brave, bookworm character she portrays remains unchanged, I will insist the character was Black all along.
21. Instead of forking out cash for a wedding gift, I will slap a dedication to the happy couple on one of my old short stories.
22. My descendants will stumble upon a new novel of mine in the attic every couple of years when the family coffers are looking a bit empty. This “new novel” will be a few pages of notes they will fluff up or the first draft of an already published work.
23. When I pass away, my one-time co-author will insist that because I was "wise and kind" I support men expressing their authentic selves by exposing themselves to women and girls in the ladies’ change rooms.
Answer key:
1) JK Rowling; 2) Anne Rice; 3) Dan Brown; 4) George RR Martin, Patrick Rothfuss ; 5) JK Rowling; 6) Anne Rice; 7) Stephen King; 8) Jodi Picoult; 9) Stephen King; 10) Douglas Adams; 11) Jonathan Franzen; 12) JK Rowling; 13) Truman Capote, Dan from Gossip Girl; 14) Stephen King; 15) I need no inspiration; 16) Agatha Christie; 17) 99% of writers; 18) Stephen King; 19) Margaret Atwood; 20) JK Rowling; 21) Neil Gaiman; 22) The estates of Hemingway, Harper Lee, Tolkien, and Flemming; 23) Neil Gaiman (of Terry Pratchett)
Till next time!
I laughed so hard that tea went up my nose. Thank you, Angela. This is splendid.