Since the Occupy Wall Street movement began, I’ve been thinking more and more about the 99% of us writers who aren’t on a bestseller list or who aren’t famous. The 1% gets all the good stuff!
Every time I hear about a new celebrity memoir, tell-all or other star-powered book, I want to scream. Specifically, I want to scream, “You’ve already had your fifteen minutes (plus) of fame! Step aside and allow some of us poor, ignoble, unknown writers have a go.”
Here we are, the 99% of the writing world, languishing at the expense of reality TV stars hogging the slots on the bestseller list. This is so unfair!
OK, maybe a celeb book hires a ghost so there’s at least one writer getting paid. But if you’ve spent the past umpteen years perfecting your craft and then you can’t find a publisher because you aren’t Snooki or Carrie Fisher or that guy from Kiss, you feel kind of down. As in down at the bottom of the slushpile, moldering away.
I tell people that I’m the most famous writer you’ve never heard of, hoping they’ll think I won a big literary prize for a book nobody’s ever read. But the satisfaction doesn’t last and besides, I have yet to win a big literary prize.
So what can be done?Hey! I know! I have a tent! We could all camp out!
We should all fly to New York or Nashville or Colorado Springs and start the Writers’ Occupy Encampment. We WOEs are so underemployed, thanks to celebrities who hog all the glory, that surely we have nothing better to do than call attention to the poor huddled masses of quality writers who get upstaged by stars. We can stand outside our tents, freezing to death, and chant, “WOE is us.”
LOL! This is so funny, Linda. And your right, celebrities do tend to upstage good, hard-working writers. Even publishing companies are now saying – its all about platform. Thanks for a good laugh. 🙂
Thanks, Gwendolyn. It’s a jungle out there and if I’m ever going to get noticed by the writing world, I’m going to need a bigger tent. WOE!~Miss CP, aka Linda