About Me,  Meaningless Drivel

10 Reasons I Don’t Want to Be a Bestselling Author

August 31, 2009 /

1. I’ll have to purchase a whole new wardrobe from somewhere other than Wal-Mart so people don’t accuse me of wearing my false modesty like a neon sign.

2. Jerry Bruckheimer will want to add explosions to the movie adaptation of my bittersweet love story.

3. I’ll be the guest who gets bumped from Letterman when his lovefest interview with Julia Roberts runs long.

4. Struggling authors will hold quarterly “Hate Stephen Parolini” days to coincide with the receipt of their royalty statements.

5. An interviewer will ask me questions like “Did you know you had written a bestseller?” and “What’s your secret to writing a bestseller?” over and over again until I finally lose the very patience that helped me to complete a novel in the first place and I’ll snark my response to her and ask “What’s your secret to asking such inane questions?” and then she’ll get all huffy and accuse me of calling her “insane” and when I correct her and say “No, the word was ‘inane’ and I was referring to the questions” she’ll get even huffier and yell “So are you calling me stupid?” to which I’ll reply, “Not, ‘stupid’ per se, but possibly ‘vocabulary-deprived’” and I might giggle a little at that but she’ll have already started swinging the microphone toward my head and when it lands with a dull thud against my skull I’ll fall limply to the ground (all the while, chiding myself for having fallen in collusion with an adverb) and wake up days later in the hospital with temporary memory loss and blindness that last just long enough for readers not to care about any subsequent books I might write.

6. I’ll have enough money to afford a new laptop. This will trigger a six-month season of writer’s block while my muse considers whether or not she wants to move from the old one.

7. People will ask me all kinds of questions about my writerly influences and quiz me about famous authors and their books and stuff. I can only get away with saying “I like Tender Is the Night even though it lacks the brilliance of The Great Gatsby and occasionally reads like Fitzgerald’s thinly-disguised memoir” so many times before people will realize just how under-read I am.

8. I’ll never be able to go to the grocery store again without being swarmed by adoring fans. Er…wait, I’m an author, not Robert Pattinson. No one knows what I look like. Cool.

9. Everyone I know will ask me “So, which character is based on me?” and when I offer a generic response they’ll be immediately disappointed that I didn’t say “the beautiful protagonist” and will think instead that they were the inspiration for the shrill, selfish, tramp and then they’ll stop talking to me. Which, I suppose, could give me inspiration for another character in my next book.

10. Oh, yeah. I have to write another book.

18 Comments

  • Kelly

    August 31, 2009 at 5:14 am

    I think you may be a little overworked. 😉 We’ll take the latent brilliance, though. My husband and I quite enjoyed this today. Thanks for the wake-up help!

  • Mike

    August 31, 2009 at 9:59 am

    Hi Stephen,

    Did you ever think that you might be scaring young (in need of some novel doctoring) writers away with the fantabulous metaphors and witticisms they probably wished they could think up on their own?

    Seriously though, what kind of cookies do you like?

    • Steve P., ND

      September 4, 2009 at 10:07 pm

      It is indeed my intent to intimidate young writers with my fantabulous metaphors and witticisms. That way they’ll be more likely to make cookies for me. Snickerdoodles. And cake-like chocolate chip cookies. Thankyouverymuch.

  • Nicole

    August 31, 2009 at 10:21 am

    Snickerdoodles all ’round!

    11.You won’t be able to help yourself as you gaze upon your fellow writers doing your best to hold back that self-satisfied smirk.

    • Steve P., ND

      September 4, 2009 at 10:13 pm

      12. I’ll feel pressure to write a very long acknowledgements page so I can list all of my bloggish friends who have said such kind and encouraging things to me over the years. But I’ll be too afraid I might forget someone important, like Nicole, for example, and so instead I’ll just offer this apology in advance for the cop-out version of the page that will read: “Thanks to all those people who encouraged me. Instead of naming you here, I chose to include you as one of the characters in the novel. In case you’re wondering, yes, each one of you is the beautiful protagonist.”

  • Elaina

    August 31, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    If Jerry Bruckheimer wanted to make a movie of one of my novels, I would cry. Hard. After I asked him to sign my Top Gun movie poster.

    Funny post!

    • Steve P., ND

      September 4, 2009 at 10:16 pm

      Well, yes. Jerry Bruckheimer should be required to sign all Top Gun posters as penance for exploding things. But that begs the question: what could Michael Bay sign for his penance?

    • Steve P., ND

      September 4, 2009 at 10:18 pm

      Wait, what made you laugh? Your “haha!” or my post? I’m assuming it’s the post, but you’ve got that little double-laugh sitting in front of your words and sometimes laughter begets more laughter so I was just wondering. (Oh, and thanks. 🙂 )