Honey, many, many great writers had a day job. There is no law saying that a great book will be a profitable book. Your agent is right. Suck it up and deal.

playing world's tiniest violin for this person.

Huh.

I was more than a little sympathetic towards her. I'm a little shocked at the pile-on here.

My anger is at the sense of entitlement -- she appears to feel that she has a right not only to write great books but to earn a living wage from them. Hundreds of great writers haven't. She talks about earning a day job the way that Alice Adams does -- as the ultimate degradation. And she says she can't write without the dream of making the New York Times bestseller list.

Don't get me wrong, I have that fantasy, too. But it isn't why I write, and I don't expect it as my due.

You see it as a pile-on, Plei? It's three people, and as far as we know she isn't reading this board.

I probably would have been more sympathetic towards her if her writing style hadn't bugged me so much.

I totally got something completely different from that.

What I took away was that someone who had, for a short period of time, seen the potential to actually do what she loved as a job, rather than to continue to work doing something that she wasn't especially happy or comfortable doing, only to see the potential give way to harsh reality *despite* relatively good reviews. Not only that, but to see herself losing the potential to be published, period. Not just the potential to be a NYT best seller.

You see it as a pile-on, Plei? It's three people, and as far as we know she isn't reading this board.

I guess my schadenfreude is broken today.

only to see the potential give way to harsh reality *despite* relatively good reviews.

But every serious writer I've talked to, every book on writing I've ever read, says in large capital letters that publishing is a crapshoot. Books that deserve to get noticed don't. Books that don't deserve attention hit the best-seller list. It isn't about virtue, it's about luck.

It does suck when good books lose out to...I don't know, Grisham.(Not that I haven't read one or two and been amused for an hour, but there's no meaning in it.)

But every serious writer I've talked to, every book on writing I've ever read, says in large capital letters that publishing is a crapshoot. Books that deserve to get noticed don't. Books that don't deserve attention hit the best-seller list. It isn't about virtue, it's about luck.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they have to be happy about it.

I mean, I've heard basically the same thing, and the same frustrations, from every writer I've ever known. Details change, but the frustration's the same. I rarely, however, see it put out there for the masses.