Toe in the Water

The Writer's Greatest Fear

The Writer’s Greatest Fear

I know you can imagine the scene. Somehow the secret is out and they know you’re a writer. Grit your teeth and hang on grimly because here comes the inevitable response.

“Oh, you’re a writer? Well, I’ve written a novel/book/poem and I wonder if you’d read it and let me know what you think.”

The heart sinks as you search for a way out, but there is no escape - you’re trapped and might as well give in gracefully. You agree and, in due course, the promised manuscript is delivered.

We might as well face it. Friends and family have absolutely no idea of how to write. Once you’ve said yes, you’ll read the thing, you have to come up with a nice way to describe something that is, frankly, unreadable. As an exercise in tact and diplomacy, this is, no doubt, highly beneficial. But it’s pure torture while it’s happening. There just aren’t the words in the English language to describe the solid chunk of boredom these optimistic offerings invariably turn out to be. Not that you could use them, anyway.

No, you have to be nice and say encouraging things to soothe the expectations of the perpetrator. This is a friend/relative we’re talking about, after all. Now all we have to do is try not to depart too far from the sunny uplands of the truth in a judgement that is as kind as possible. Sometimes the only way out is emigration.

Things aren’t as bad when it’s a writer who asks for your opinion. You stand a reasonable chance of avoiding the typical friend/relative scenario outlined above and, even if the work turns out to be pretty bad, you’re bound to find a few good things to point out in it.

And, if you’re incredibly lucky, you could get to read something really good and have an easy job of detailing your positive response. This happened to me a few days ago when a WdC member I’m just getting to know asked me to take a look at a novel he’d written. Knowing that he could write, I agreed straight away and now, having read it, I can say that I’m glad I did. It turned out to be easily in the same class as books by well known authors writing in the same genre. If there were any justice in the world, he should have no trouble finding a publisher for it.

But that’s a big if, of course. The world being what it is, he’ll struggle to get agents and publishers to read even a chapter or two and he’ll have a fine collection of rejection letters in no time. Meanwhile the air-headed celebrities will continue to have their ghost-written tomes of nonsense fought over by the publishers. There are still a few decent publishers out there, mostly the little, unnoticed ones that specialise in particular narrow genres but it’s not easy finding them and hitting at the right moment - before they’ve completed their publication list for the coming year, in other words.

Good luck to the guy - he deserves to be in print.

But me, I’ll just pat myself on the back for having given up on the whole thing and carry on writing because that’s what I do. I suppose I might agree to publication if they came begging to my door but I’m certainly not going to go looking for it. I’m not built for that amount of rejection.


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