I find that writing has really taken away a lot of my pleasure in reading new stuff - then she needs to decide which matters more to her. If it's one or the other, she needs to decide which, and go there.

I wonder if, reading between the lines, the author in question hasn't also lost her pleasure in writing, as well. It certainly seems to be the case, and would explain the emphaisis on things selling, or succeeding, or what have you.

I mean, tempermentally, I'm always in the midst of an existential crisis. I could be Steven King, and I'd be in the midst of one, wondering if any of it mattered or was worth doing. I'm Eeyore after he dipped into the Sartre one too many times. So I'm used to it. Seems to me, though, that this author isn't used to such things, and is thus questioning her worth based on artificial standards and her own failure to live up to them.

I say, stating the obvious.

Deb and Lyra Jane, meant to say I got both your emails. Thanks so much. And will respond, maybe later. Right now I've taken on a lot of extra freelance work since the book thing went 'splodey and it's not easy to work with the baby. She really only takes one long afternoon nap, and the husband is working till nine every night but Friday, so I'm having trouble keeping up with everything.

I think the way she said it got on my nerves.

I'm with Erika. I just realized that I'm much more comfortable with sorrow than with rage. "Damn, I really wanted things to turn out differently" is much more palatable to me than "Damn, I was SCREWED!". As writers, we're all screwed. Better to light some candles than to scream about it.

I've spent at least ten years talking to writers and reading about writing. (Possibly instead of writing, I admit.) EVERY serious book about writing I've read, and every writer I've known, has said "Don't expect to get rich. Don't even expect to make a living. If you do make a living, it's a happy accident." The idea that great writing ought to make you comfortably middle-class is alien to me.

Seems to me, though, that this author isn't used to such things, and is thus questioning her worth based on artificial standards and her own failure to live up to them.

Plei, you're a wise woman. It's a pity she managed to be so damned irritating about it, because I felt the same sort of irritated sympathy toward her that I would to a spoiled kid who, good at heart, was suddenly confronted with something he/she couldn't get just by wanting. That's where I was totally with Betsy in the irritation stakes on this woman's lament: I wanted to shake the girl, and say look, dear, you need to suss this out, and do it quickly. Yes, you liked the smell of the pretty shiny money and the idea that this would now and forever keep you from being a secretary, or whatever. I totally understand that.

But your agent has a point: suck it up and do one of two things. Either write because you're a writer, and stop hanging your writing on the dollar attached, or else stop writing because the industry is out to pay 22-year-old chick lit writers from Ireland, who write books savaged by nearly reviewer on earth, $1m contracts for US rights to a first novel.

Hell, I've done both.

Plei, you're a wise woman.

Yes. I liked that a lot.

I'm with Erika. I just realized that I'm much more comfortable with sorrow than with rage. "Damn, I really wanted things to turn out differently" is much more palatable to me than "Damn, I was SCREWED!". As writers, we're all screwed. Better to light some candles than to scream about it.

Yeah, we've most certainly got a POV difference. *grin* I don't do sorrow. To Ralph Wiggums it, it's unpossible. Sorrow, to me, is endlessly more irritating than a rage-on. It's just so... passive.

Betsy, did you read the article on chick lit from Ireland? It left me blinking. In the first place, the woman who wrote it had such a nasty snarky tone that I wanted to smack her. But the idea that a 22-year-old kid writing a weepy could get $1M for a first book just sent me into despair.

Not for myself; but there are now 20 or 30 writers who may not get offered a deal of any kind, because Hyperion has tied up so much in this child's book. I find that infuriating, and depressing.

For me, it makes about as much sense as the Cleveland Cavaliers offering a kid out of high school $103M over five years to sign with them. Guys, the poor brat hasn't played one minute in the bigs, going up against seasoned B-ball players. What in hell are you doing? Other than making sure there's not enough in the budget to hire backup?

Seems a similar situation to me.

Plei, you're a wise woman. It's a pity she managed to be so damned irritating about it, because I felt the same sort of irritated sympathy toward her that I would to a spoiled kid who, good at heart, was suddenly confronted with something he/she couldn't get just by wanting.

Oh, I can totally see that. To which my mother's respose, btw, was always a shrug and a "life's not fair."

Yeah, we've most certainly got a POV difference. *grin* I don't do sorrow. To Ralph Wiggums it, it's unpossible. Sorrow, to me, is endlessly more irritating than a rage-on. It's just so... passive.

I don't mind the sorrow or the rage, although I'm disinclined toward a pure version of either - mine tends to be a sense of shocked outrage at a perceived injustice, and then I steamroller. As you may have noticed, I'm neither passive nor passive-aggressive.

She just managed to phrase things in a way that would easily ping the "uh-oh, whingeing self-entitled yuppie brat, here!" buttons. A pity; as I say, I do think the story is valuable, in its base information.

probably ensuring a cocaine problem.