It was always a pleasure to see Jim walk in. He and his wife, Pat had been frequent customers at the diner and they always sat at my table. I got to know about them and their family. When Pat died, the whole diner mourned with Jim. After a while, he started coming back, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends or family.
This particular night he was with his son, Todd and daughter-in-law, Rosemary. Rosemary was a conservative Republican, professional CPA and mother of two who frequently went to church. This everyday soccer mom had an unusual hobby, she wrote and self-published adult porn. Since women like porn written from a woman’s point of view and men like any porn their women like, Rosie had become successful and developed quite a following. Last I heard, she had acquired an agent, and a publisher, and had a signed contract with an advance. I looked forward to congratulating her.
As usual, I chatted with them for a while when I first brought them water and menus. “Heh, Rosie,” I said, “so glad to hear you got a publisher. Quite an accomplishment, How is your latest book going?”
“I hate it,” she said. “Deadlines and revisions have taken all the joy out of writing. This is my last book with them.” “Sorry to hear that, Rose, At least you had a chance to try it.” The conversation moved on, the meal ended, and life went on with Jim continuing to come to the diner. About six months later, he brought up Rosie’s name. “Whatever happened to her book, did she finish it? Is she glad to be writing independently now?” “It’s funny,” he replied, “she finished the book under contract and hasn’t written a thing since. She was so unhappy writing under contract, she just lost all interest.” “You know what they say”, Jim,“ I offered, “Be careful what you wish for.” “You just might get it,” we laughingly finished in unison.
You stated that this was a true story and as I read the story, I believed it. Almost a sad story.
Recently, I joined a writers group and have been submitting short stories. The first thing I don't like is that they set the theme for each anthology and I have to write to that theme like I was writing for a high school English class writing assignment. And then, I'm required to have three edits by other authors. I don't mind being edited, but these folks go to the nth degree and use software that follows very strict rules of English to ferret out every little misplaced word or punctuation mark. I find that most of the corrections really don't change anything for the better but are just another way of presenting the topic. And sometimes, the story is cleaned up in a way that changes it… Not for the better. I can imagine a publisher doing that to my manuscript.
Publishers have to get their money back from offering an advance, paying for editing, publishing and promoting the book. The author must agree to travel wherever and do whatever the publisher wants to get the book sold. That's a lot of time away from writing.
My most successful book is selling more copies than all of the ugly covered anthologies full of mystery and intrigue combined from my writers group. Case closed.
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