Wednesday, September 7: Tune It Or Die!
MY MUCH-PUBLISHED FRIEND
by Rob Lopresti
You might say I was cleaning out my files at Criminal Brief Headquarters when I found this scrap. The important thing to remember is that neither of the characters represent any real people. It is just a meditation on the writing life.
My much-published friend has a complaint. His latest book just received a bad review in a major newspaper and he wants to tell the world how unfair it was, and what an insensitive, incompetent idiot the reviewer was.
I nod sympathetically, all the while wondering what it would be like to get a review, good, bad, or indifferent, in a major publication.
My much-published friend is in a frenzy. Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines! His manuscripts are overdue, his book proposal isn’t ready, and he has proofs to read. It’s all too much!
I cluck-cluck and try to imagine how it would feel if someone other than me cared whether I wrote something today.
My much-published friend is cranky. He got a letter from a reader complaining about a mistake he had made in a recent novel. Apparently he confused a 44-caliber gun with a 45. The reader thinks public hari-kari would be an appropriate apology.
Oddly enough, I know all about this problem. The nitpickers find even little fish like me. But I also ponder the dozens of non-complaining emails my friend gets.
My much-published friend is having a terrible day. He is having problems with his editor, his agent, his audiobook publisher, and his publicist, all at once.
Which in our case we have not got.
My much-published friend is grumpy. He is complaining about fellow writers who are envious of his success.
Yeah, I tell him. I hate that.
Another thread from the web
This is the twenty-fourth and last installment in this occasional feature. I recently discovered dropbox.com which is a cool free tool for storing your files—and for automatically transferring them between your computers. Give it a look.
Though not “much published,” I can relate to some of that writer’s sorrows. The first really bad review I had made me want not only to defend the points he picked on, but to find him and give him a good southern wallop! I’m calmer now.
Thanks for dropbox.com.
there is an interesting article in the NYT yesterday about bad reviews, specifically of plays. One actor says (paraphrase) if your vocabulary doesn’t allow you to make your point without being mean, you are in the wrong line of work. I liked that.