I watched an episode of I Love Lucy today that cracked me up. She read about a housewife making ten thousand dollars for writing a book, so she decided to write on. How hard could it be?
Let's count her mistakes.
1. She not only wrote about her husband and friends in this novel, but she told them she was doing it. Promising she wouldn't use their real names, she changed 'one' letter. Instead of Ricky Ricardo, her husband was Nicky Ricardo.
2. She broke the Show Don't Tell rule throughout. It wasn't even actually a novel. They read parts of it out loud. It was something like: I was going to have a great career as an actress, but then I married a bongo player and gave it all up for him.
3. She mailed the first draft to a publisher. Lucy didn't even have an outline. She wrote whatever popped into her little red head. Then she pronounced in gold and mailed it in.
4. When she got the bad news that it was not going to be published by the first publisher she sent it to, she tore the pages up and threw them away. She swore never to write another thing as long as she lived. If every writer was like this, there would be no books in the world.
5. When the publisher told her a friend was interested in publishing her book, she had to retype the manuscipt. Still, she didn't bother to rewrite. The woman was positive that it would make millions. Then she found out that the publisher was going to put excerpts in his non-fiction book in the Don't-Do-This section of the book.
This episode was so funny from her husband threatening to sue her and take every dime that 'he' has ever made to her wearing glasses without the lenses so that she could 'look' like a real writer. But there are a lot of people out there that believe they can sit down and write a bestseller with minimal effort. Anyway, just wanted to share this with you. If you ever get a chance to see it, it's worth watching.
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