Originally published on Facebook 19 September 2014.
X,
You have just been through a very traumatizing couple of years.
It was one of the most difficult, life-changing things that ever happened to you.
I understand how it seems to loom over everything else.
As people who care about each other, we can talk about it. I’ll be there for you.
But, no, I don’t think your experience will make a great book.
This is why. First, as astounded as you are that this happened to you, it also happens to a whole lot of other people — and your experience was neither as dramatic nor as extreme as what happened to many others who have written about such things at great length. Second, and it really hurts me to say this, you don’t have a book. I have already talked to you about it at length and you do not possess any unique insights, any special angle, any comprehension other than the most superficial, of your experience.
If your experience really is “amazing” and “unbelievable,” as you say, you don’t have to be that inspired a writer to tell us about it; just relate the straight facts, and people will shout, “Amazing!” and “Unbelievable!” if it’s as common and frankly as undramatic as yours was, then you need to be brilliant to present us with the immediacy and the insights that would make it a compelling book. To put it in perspective, lots and lots of people have suffered the tragedy of children with fatal illnesses; it took one very specific man with a genius for evoking the emotions and the particulars of the events to write DEATH BE NOT PROUD. Lots of people grew up in crushing poverty with alcoholic Dads. It took one to write ANGELA’S ASHES. The same can be said of memoirists who had dysfunctional families, financial reverses, bouts of depression, and service during wartime; sure, they had the material, but they also had the perception.
Your belief that all you have to do is get me to help you write your amazing story is understandable, because your story seems amazing to you and I add the professional writer part of the equation, but you didn’t collect enough from the experience to make a book and I am not sufficiently engaged with the material to add it.
Of course, I may be wrong.
Write 200 pages, or about half the length you will need, and get back to me.
Comment By: David Gerrold
September 19th, 2015 at 7:17 pm
Right answer. Too wordy. Try this instead: “Great idea. If you can do first draft, I’ll polish it up.”
Comment By: Michael John Donahue
September 19th, 2015 at 8:31 pm
How about, “Oh, good, cause I had not another project I was even thinking about doing. Where’s the cash?”
Comment By: Marc Wielage
September 19th, 2015 at 8:31 pm
I go for answer #3: write the first draft and pay me money, and then I’ll polish it up.