Everyone has a book in them, right?

August 1, 2018 2:37 PM

No, you probably don’t have a book in you

I hate to break it to you but everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them.
I am a literary agent. It is my full-time job to find new books and help them get published. When people talk about “having a book in them,” or when people tell others they should write a book (which is basically my nightmare), what they really mean is I bet someone, but probably not me because I already heard it, would pay money to hear this story. When people say “you should write a book,” they aren’t thinking of a physical thing, with a cover, that a human person edited, copyedited, designed, marketed, sold, shipped, and stocked on a shelf. Those well-meaning and supportive people rarely know how a story becomes printed words on a page. Here’s what they don’t know, and what most beginner writers might not realize, either.

Every story is not a book.

posted by not_the_water (82 comments total)

I don't see the harm. I have a friend who writes 1,000 words a day, goes to a weekly writing group and submits his stories to be published places. His stories are prose so purple and ungainly that Eye of Argon looks like it's by Raymond Carver.

I once tentatively asked him if his group ever did exercises like trying to write a story without using adverbs. No, they just submit. They're definitely not helping him. He will never be famous.

And that's fine. Anyway, people are just being polite when they say you should write a novel.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:43 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

I... strongly disapprove of this viewpoint. Write a book if that makes you happy. You don't have to be the next [Insert author of your choice] to write a book. Plenty of amateurs work hard and practice until they do a pretty decent job singing songs or painting paintings. You can write a book if you keep at it. You may never be a rock star, or in a museum, or published, but yes, if you want to write a book bad enough, I bet you have a book in you.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:59 PM on August 1, 2018 [79 favorites]

This was a pretty aggravating read until the last paragraph where she said what I was thinking the whole way through. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I do think everybody has a book in them. Of course not a traditionally published best seller but writing for writing's sake can't hurt and might help. I've been writing something of a memoir (which is silly because who am I to write a memoir?) but I don't think anybody but me will ever read it. It's still been fun and hard and helpful for me to hack away on it though. I think it has made me a better reader too.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 3:01 PM on August 1, 2018 [12 favorites]

Just another manifestation of gatekeeping nonsense.

"No, you probably don't have a book in you and what I mean by that is maybe you DO have a book in you but it'll suck, as I'm a qualified professional to cast judgment, so don't bother writing that book and expect it to be a bestseller and oh god you plebs are such bores you should all just leave writing to the real talented people and you'd know you were talented already so don't write a book to learn how or to explore or expand your skills just go back to leaving my inbox to the worthy ones."

Maybe Kate McKean is embittered by her job, and the amount of mediocre or actively horrible writing she has to get through to find stuff she wants to represent, but you know what? That's the job description of a lit agent. Congrats.
posted by tclark at 3:02 PM on August 1, 2018 [54 favorites]

Which is why I enjoy collections of short stories.

I've had many people declare me "the master of anecdotes" because of my tendency to take the subject of a conversation and run with it for about the length of a 'Just So Story' or Aesop's Fable. It's not something I'm particularly proud of.

But the 'book inside me' is most likely to be a monthly comic book compiled into a so-called Graphic Novel.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:02 PM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

The author makes it clear that she's speaking from the perspective of a literary agent about getting books published, not about whether people should write if that's what gives them pleasure.

FTA:

You can tell a story to anyone who’s willing to listen. But writing a book that people will pay money for or take a trip to the library to read, requires an awareness few storytellers have. It is not performance, not a one-person show. It’s a relationship with the reader, who’s often got one foot out the door.

posted by Lexica at 3:03 PM on August 1, 2018 [22 favorites]

I once tentatively asked him if his group ever did exercises like trying to write a story without using adverbs.

...,he said, stroppily.
posted by thelonius at 3:04 PM on August 1, 2018 [13 favorites]

The author makes it clear that she's speaking from the perspective of a literary agent about getting books published, not about whether people should write if that's what gives them pleasure.

And yet the title of the piece is "No, you probably don't have a book in you" and only walks the assertion back a bit more than halfway through the piece.
posted by tclark at 3:05 PM on August 1, 2018 [10 favorites]

Maybe Kate McKean is embittered by her job, and the amount of mediocre or actively horrible writing she has to get through to find stuff she wants to represent, but you know what? That's the job description of a lit agent. Congrats.

I think my fear if I were in a position evaluating manuscripts is that a great and promising writer gave up because I didn't even make it far enough down the stack to read their submission.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:12 PM on August 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

This is a bad article. There is a huge difference between 'I want no part of unsolicited amateur efforts,' and 'You probably do not have a book in you.'

The first one, I totally get. I'm sure it's hard being a literary agent and wading through piles of junk. I'm not interested in doing it, certainly.

The second one is a terrible sentiment, if only because in our brave new dystopian cyberpunk present, there are plenty of ways for storytellers to connect with audiences that don't involve bothering people like her at all: Patreon, Amazon, etc. make it possible to bypass the old fashioned world of publishing entirely.

She should've led with the final paragraph, which was fine, and not all the defeatist grar preceding it.
posted by mordax at 3:18 PM on August 1, 2018 [18 favorites]

I mean, in some cases the book inside you is bigfoot porno or a picture book about horses that do drugs because of peer pressure, and I’m OK with that. The book inside you may not be particularly saleable or particularly good but at least you did something participatory and non-passive.
posted by blnkfrnk at 3:25 PM on August 1, 2018 [28 favorites]

....Funny, I had no problem ascertaining that by "no you dont have a book in you" that "you most likely will not be able to market your book", and the tone didn't bother me at all.

Are all y'all frustrated writers?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:27 PM on August 1, 2018 [19 favorites]

The problem isn't not having a book in you. It's having half of a book in you. Trust me.

::sigh::
posted by Splunge at 3:29 PM on August 1, 2018 [20 favorites]

'Everyone has a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay'
—Christopher Hitchens and a bunch of other folks
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:29 PM on August 1, 2018 [10 favorites]

It's too dark to read inside an aspiring author.
posted by sagc at 3:31 PM on August 1, 2018 [38 favorites]

Are all y'all frustrated writers?

My problem with her is more the opposite: I'm not, but I would've been if I'd listened to talk like this. The truth is, you don't need a literary agent to get some modest bucks, get some cool fanmail, etc. It's possible for plenty of people to enjoy a tempered version of this dream (seeing their story completed and for sale, then buying a celebratory drink with the proceeds), if they put in the work.

It's okay to point out that most people will never make the big leagues, be famous, quit worrying about money over this, etc. I know I won't. It's cool. I'm more bothered by the false dichotomy of 'if you can't make it through my office, don't even try,' which is where most of this piece dwells - the world is bigger and more varied than that now.
posted by mordax at 3:37 PM on August 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

Are all y'all frustrated writers?

My problem with her is more the opposite: I'm not, but I would've been if I'd listened to talk like this. The truth is, you don't need a literary agent to get some modest bucks, get some cool fanmail, etc. It's possible for plenty of people to enjoy a tempered version of this dream (seeing their story completed and for sale, then buying a celebratory drink with the proceeds), if they put in the work.


Yeah, I'm not sure anybody who really wanted to start writing but hadn't yet would be turned off by this ("that's not me she's talking about"), and anybody who's spent time writing for money already knows she's right ("most words don't make money, including most of mine, but I'm already writing so whatever").
posted by TheProfessor at 3:40 PM on August 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

Does this mean she's not interested in my murder mystery series set on Mackinac Island where the detective is a fudge shop owner and there are several delicious fudge recipes contained within? (Yes, I know someone is already doing this, but my protagonist has a pet Maine Coon, not a bichonpoo...)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:41 PM on August 1, 2018 [15 favorites]

You know, I would, if Joyce Carol Oates hadn't hogged them all up.
posted by thebrokedown at 3:46 PM on August 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

The advent of direct publishing has been a wonderful thing. Now with ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks, writers whose work (for whatever reason) doesn't have the kind of commercial potential that would interest a publishing house can go ahead and make a book available on their own.
posted by PhineasGage at 3:52 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

the book inside me is giving me indigestion and other problems and i would not want to release that unto the world
posted by numaner at 3:52 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

I wrote my own grumpy piece about this last year.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:00 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have Booker's inside me.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:02 PM on August 1, 2018 [7 favorites]

No, you probably don’t have a book in you

When I say I devoured a book, that's not necessarily a metaphor.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:05 PM on August 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

Along similar lines: no, you don't have a song in your heart unless you have the songwriting skills of a Burt Bacharach and/or the production chops of a Max Martin.
posted by acb at 4:08 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

F' that. I have a song in my heart. I have thousands of them. They're all bloody *crap*, but that's fine. I still make them.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 4:13 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

Fuck you, guy.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:13 PM on August 1, 2018

I welcome the pushback against well-meaning chuckleheads' propensity to take any little thing a person shows some aptitude for and be all "OH YOU SHOULD ATTEMPT TO DO THAT PROFESSIONALLY AND MONETIZE IT"
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:15 PM on August 1, 2018 [14 favorites]

I have a book inside me currently, but the book is just Harry Potter except he has decent adoptive parents and also Sirius and Remus get to be god damn happy for a minute.
posted by nonasuch at 4:22 PM on August 1, 2018 [12 favorites]

Ironically, a very poorly-written article.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:27 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

No, You Probably Don't Have A Decent Clickbait Article In You
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:36 PM on August 1, 2018 [35 favorites]

murder mystery series set on Mackinac Island where the detective is a fudge shop owner

Terrance, convinced himself to leave the new batch on the marble slab.

"A murder you say"

"Ya, up at the fort, Gill Jenkins, the British reenactment guy was hit by a blunderbuss"

That's odd, he thought, the blunderbuss was not a weapon of choice for the British during the revolution.

"OK, Xenophon, fetch the golf cart."
posted by clavdivs at 4:36 PM on August 1, 2018 [13 favorites]

I mean, in some cases the book inside you is bigfoot porno or a picture book about horses that do drugs because of peer pressure, and I’m OK with that.

I am interested in your product and would like to subscribe to your newsletter
posted by chavenet at 4:49 PM on August 1, 2018 [9 favorites]

The book inside you is not one that should be tossed aside lightly. It should be flung with great force.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:02 PM on August 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

I don't know about a commercially viable book, but I think everyone here has a wonderful and entertaining MetaFilter comment in them.
posted by mattamatic at 5:03 PM on August 1, 2018 [14 favorites]

I feel really fortunate that I came to writing through zines, so the idea that anyone can make a thing, and that having fun and getting your feelings out and creating something nice for your friends are all perfectly good and sufficient reasons to write and publish something.

What a weird and poisonous idea, that if your hobby can't be successfully monetized it's not worth doing.
posted by ITheCosmos at 5:28 PM on August 1, 2018 [19 favorites]

Like oneswellfoop the "book inside me" is a graphic novel, one that I've been thinking about for over a decade. Not once have I thought about it in terms of "How is this going to make me rich?" as much as "Will I ever have the time, skill, and confidence to make this a reality?" Honestly, the idea of making something that makes me rich and famous freaks me out. I just want to make it a reality and if people like it that's just icing on the cake.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:32 PM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Having a story is different from writing a story. A story in the head is much like a dream, with an illusory unity born of the mind's tendency to overlook gaps in the narrative. Writing for an audience requires ruthless self criticism, and and ability to detach enough from the story to assess it as an outsider.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:34 PM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

This article strikes me as the work of someone who's been in their job too long. That's okay, it happens. I think her mistake was thinking there's an interesting story in it.
posted by Crane Shot at 5:35 PM on August 1, 2018 [10 favorites]

“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.” --- Clive Barker.
posted by SPrintF at 5:36 PM on August 1, 2018 [7 favorites]

Surely everyone has a light that never goes out, in them?
posted by nikoniko at 5:38 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

I once wrote a really crappy novel for NaNoWriMo. What I took from that experience is that writing a good story is REALLY tough. Narrative continuity, engaging dialogue, editing, those are the things that help make a rough draft into something worth reading, and they take lots of time and energy. They’re also tedious and often boring. I think that everyone has a story in them, but most people lack the discipline and motivation to be a professional storyteller.
posted by wintermind at 5:43 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

My girlfriend used to work for a major publisher. They were positioning her to become an editor, but she bailed when she realized how miserable she’d be. She says everyone seemed to be bitter and resentful, forced to read one awful manuscript after the other in the hopes of finding something marketable. She wanted books to be something she’d continue to enjoy as books, not as commodities.

Yeah, most people won’t be bestsellers, but that shouldn’t be the point to everything. The cult of the amateur is annoying, but so is the pervasive idea that you’re not really doing the thing unless you’re making good money from it.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 5:55 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

Chavenet, unfortunately I am only able to link to one of those subjects at this moment and it’s the naughty horses which I suppose have had their viral moment and returned to obscurity where they belong.

Lots of people think they can write a children’s book; they can, but definitely not a good one.
posted by blnkfrnk at 6:15 PM on August 1, 2018

I’m not saying don’t try, I’m just saying: manage your expectations.
posted by blnkfrnk at 6:26 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

My mother swore that I had the Great American Novel in me.

Apparently, the Great American Novel is two Bulwer-Lytton dishonorable mentions and a bunch of Miraculous Ladybug fanfics.
posted by delfin at 6:42 PM on August 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

Lots of people think they can write a children’s book; they can, but definitely not a good one.

If you are suggesting that The Little Puppy Who Shat Constantly will not be a good children's book, we are going to have words
posted by delfin at 6:44 PM on August 1, 2018 [21 favorites]

I thought I had a book in me, but when I tried to get it published I found out it was word-for-word identical to a novel written in the 1500s by some Spanish guy.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:57 PM on August 1, 2018 [10 favorites]

Breaking news: writing a book and selling a book are both very hard.
(Turns out this guy didn't even have an interesting essay in him)
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:58 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

The point of NaNoWriMo isn't to complete a salable novel in 30 days. It's to write 50,000 (or however many) words of a first draft. Maybe that's half a first draft, maybe three quarters. I can guarantee you Water For Elephants, Wool, and The Night Circus weren't completed in their publishable form in November of whatever year their authors started writing them. It's a means of proving to yourself that you can buckle down and do something. Even 1,667 bad words a day (on average) can be hard work.

I have a book in me. I've written it (90,000-plus words, not a NaNoWriMo project) and I keep rewriting it to make it better. It's been hard work, endlessly frustrating and more fun than I've ever had. Even if it never sees a the inside of a publishing house, I am happy to have written it.
posted by lhauser at 7:13 PM on August 1, 2018 [11 favorites]

Lately I've been toying with the idea of getting back to writing fiction after I retire from my current career. I write for a living, now, so I have no illusions about what it takes to do the work of cranking out lesser words and assorted punctuation marks. I've even completed a few long-form fictions when I was younger, so I know I can manage the discipline. But to be honest, the thing that really intrigues me is the idea of writing a novel with no real pressure to bow to commercial viability or to prove that I can do it, or even just to show off. What would my twisted imagination unleash without a young writer's constraints to hold me back? Don't know, don't know. And certainly I like to think that I've got a much better sense of how to write inclusively than when I was younger. So I'm sure I'll give it a try, just for the sense of play.

But I don't know that I would bother trying to sell it. Fame doesn't interest me enough to do the social legwork of selling books, and I don't feel like the world has any great need to hear from another old white straight dude, anyway. I feel like my silence helps make a space for other voices.

So even if it turns out that I do have a book inside me, I might just put it back where I found it when I'm done.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:14 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

Whatever you do, just don't pull the book out of your ass!
posted by cjorgensen at 7:18 PM on August 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

I tried that once. Almost got a Pulitzer for it.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:23 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

If I pull it out of someone else's ass, that would be plagiarism.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:26 PM on August 1, 2018 [9 favorites]

This article made me want to do NaNoWriMo again so badly, I can't even... And the plus side is that I'll likely be unemployed by November, so this might actually work (Shroedinger's book aside). Come Metafilter! To the keyboards!!!
posted by ninazer0 at 7:32 PM on August 1, 2018

You'd never know it from my comments here, but I was a Professional Writer. That's what I always liked to say when people were arguing about language: word choice or connotations or whatever. Well, I am a Professional Writer, and I think... Whether they were intimidated, amused or annoyed, it did always serve to get the conversation off that topic and onto something more interesting. But sometimes people would ask me why I don't write stories. Well, I am a Professional Writer, and fuck that.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 7:33 PM on August 1, 2018

I tried to write a math book, once, but it was too derivative.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:43 PM on August 1, 2018 [13 favorites]

I wrote a book about calculus but no one would publish it cause it was too indiscrete.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:45 PM on August 1, 2018 [9 favorites]

Is your book the square root of –1? Because it sounds imaginary.
posted by ejs at 7:55 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

sure it's imaginary but it's also quite complex.

I thought I wrote a book about Wittgenstein but the publisher said it was just a big language game.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:57 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

I wrote a book that is currently in the middle of an extensive and lengthy rewrite, and while I originally had the idea of trying to get it professionally published, I have changed my mind about that. I need to figure out how to self-publish in such a way as to get it in front of as many people as possible who might be interested in it, but I have no expectation or plan to actually make money from it. (Unless it goes the Scalzi route, and my freely available yet awesome novel somehow convinces someone to pay me to write another one.)
posted by ejs at 8:00 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

I mostly wish it was easier to make money with writing not for my own sake but for the sake of a number of people I know who are very good at it but stuck in other jobs that don't pay a living wage. One of the reasons I believe long-term in Basic Income is that there are a lot of minor artistic talents--not the next Shakespeare, but people who are capable of making clever and interesting things--who will be working retail the rest of their lives and I am really okay with my taxes increasing to get those people making stuff instead, stuff that doesn't need to have sufficient appeal to be worthy of literary agents or major publishing budgets but stuff that will make a few hundred or thousand people happier by existing.

I used to want to write books, but honestly I realize now that I never wanted to write books. I want to write. I do write. And roughly six people get to read anything I write, and they enjoy it, and I'm happy with that. I wish some of the people who write things I love could make a living at it, but at the same time I wouldn't wish for them to have to deal with the market as it is now.
posted by Sequence at 8:39 PM on August 1, 2018 [10 favorites]

The marathon analogy struck me as odd because running has shown me that I actually can do things that more than twenty years' experience had convinced me that I couldn't. I didn't really start running seriously as an adult until a couple of years ago, and at the time, doubted my ability to run more than a mile. A few months later, I'd finished a ten mile race without much pain or complication. Exhaustion and effort, sure. And I now have little doubt that, with some moderate dedication, I could in fact run a marathon. Not quickly, but enough not to get kicked off the course because they need to open the roads five hours later.

If people are healthy, and have the time to train (neither a given, I know), they can do it.

I don't see how writing a book is different. With time, and practice, anyone can write a good book. It may not stand out from a crowded field, but it can be, and be good, no matter how many or how few people read it.
posted by pykrete jungle at 9:12 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

A lot of people have a book in them. It may not be a commercially viable book, it may not be something people would even try reading, but still... Well, I think that it's a bit shame that we have a lot of knowledge, anecdotes, stories and tidbits that never get written down and will get forgotten. And it's kind of a shame that this has been going on for ages. But it kinda gives me hope that humanity is good at reinventing.
posted by wwwwolf at 10:26 PM on August 1, 2018

I skipped to the end of the article and only read the last paragraph.

If you want to write a book, do it. It’s wonderful and horrible and fulfilling and soul-crushing all at the same time. But do it because you want to, not because someone suggested it one time. Be mindful of what it fully entails before you start, so you have reasonable expectations and set reasonable goals. You don’t have to write with the aim to get published, and you don’t have to publish with a traditional publisher. There are many options if you just want a copy of your story that you can hold in your hands. Just be careful when well-meaning, though wholly uninformed, people say you should write a book.

There. That's a much better message.
posted by Revvy at 11:34 PM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

But even then, I don't think anyone writes a book because someone suggests it. It's a huge amount of work, even a shitty one. No one is going to do that much work off a suggestion unless they actually like doing it. It's a false and silly premise.
posted by smoke at 12:04 AM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I tried to sell a book about the history of intellectual property laws in the US, but the publisher said they didn't have time for Mickey Mouse bullshit.
posted by ODiV at 12:53 AM on August 2, 2018 [9 favorites]

I wanted to be a writer as a small child, and in high school started making zines and comics. I'm still doing this more than 20 years later, with comics as a constant and zines as something I picked up again a little over five years ago. One of the things I've always loved about this community is the low bar to entry: you don't have to have a book in you, or at least you don't have to pull it all out at once. You can write something shorter about anything you like, make copies, and get it to your audience. They'll generally be up for paying enough to cover the cost of making the thing, you get experience, and then you can go on to write the next thing, whatever that is.

I'm much happier in this community, writing smaller things, than I would be trying to haul an entire book out of myself all in one go. I get where this literary agent is coming from about what it takes to make a good book, but - all the little stories that inspire people to be all like "hey you should write a book" - those would make great zines.

And after a while, when you have enough zines, maybe you'll have a book.
posted by bile and syntax at 5:59 AM on August 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

But even then, I don't think anyone writes a book because someone suggests it. It's a huge amount of work, even a shitty one. No one is going to do that much work off a suggestion unless they actually like doing it

Yeah, that's where she lost me. The section where she tries to scare someone out of writing a novel based on the fact that it will be like writing a school paper, but so many more pages and you can't manipulate the margins and, like, so boring is completely ridiculous. Like she's writing this to discourage a high school kid that really, really hates writing essays for English class because novels are long. (In my limited experience, the hardest thing about trying to write for publication is not how much you'll have to write, but how much you'll probably have to edit out of what you write. I had an agent for a minute. His comment, you should really aim for about three hundred pages was addressed to me after he'd read the seven-hundred page draft I gave him. That book never did get published, by the way. I'm not particularly sad about it).

I read the slush pile at a job once. It was years ago and just short fiction (for a magazine). It was exhausting and demoralizing. There's a lot of shit out there and a lot of shitty writers. Sometimes the ones you think are the shittiest end up with huge book deals. Sometimes you miss something great because you're tired. Most of my favorite writers never find huge commercial success even once they find someone to publish them. Some of my favorite writers may never find someone to publish them at all. Some of my close friends are talented poets and playwrights and experimental writers. None of them waste time worrying about the marketability of their work. Because it is a waste of time.

Make art. Do your thing. You'll probably get something out of it, even, maybe even especially, if it's just a little personal catharsis via the essay you write because you're an overworked, underpaid editor and you're so, so tired of reading other people's stuff because you have no energy left to write anything except this essay about how other people should really stop writing and expect you to read it so you can catch your breath, for the love of God. And the really remarkable, absolutely nutso thing is that , even that shit sometimes finds an audience.
posted by thivaia at 6:31 AM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Everyone agrees that, by any measure, the large majority of people do not have a book in them which has either the literary merit to be enjoyed by well-read people with good taste, or the lucky-and-or-savvy ability to push the buttons of readers of poor taste that makes bad novels into best sellers.

The more interesting question is whether people who don't have such a book in them, ought to still write the terrible and not-enjoyable-by-anyone book that they do have in them. What's the opportunity cost of such an endeavor? Most people probably have an real active or latent talent or interest that they ought to develop in lieu of charging windmills. On the other hand, I am never going to be a bogie golfer to say the least of scratch, and that's 4 hours of my life every time I go out to say the least of tipping the caddie. I'd probably be better off writing a novel...
posted by MattD at 6:44 AM on August 2, 2018

okay so I have this vague memory that someone (jessamyn?) once commented that she loves books so much she eats them when she's finished but I can't find it ANYWHERE via all the search tools and now I'm thinking that I made this up in my brain
posted by lazaruslong at 6:46 AM on August 2, 2018

She liked the comment so much that she ate it when she was done with it.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:45 AM on August 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

Interstitial organ fluid rendered the book inside me unreadable.
posted by Chitownfats at 9:14 AM on August 2, 2018

Found it! 2007! The things we remember....
posted by lazaruslong at 10:05 AM on August 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

I DO HAVE A BOOK IN ME!
HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE!
IT WAS TASTY!

though perhaps it's causing a bit of indegestion...
posted by evilDoug at 11:27 AM on August 2, 2018

In all seriousness I would strongly suggest that everyone, yes everyone, has a short story in them.

Think about something funny or unusual that happened to you. Or near you.

Repeat it to yourself as if you were talking to a person that is very interested in what you have to say. Then embellish it. Make it yours.

Then write it down. Or type it into a computer. But DO NOT EDIT IT. Just let it flow. From beginning to end. Put it down in a form that you can later read. Then leave it alone for a few days.

Then read it as if you never have heard of it before.

Everyone has a story. Everyone.
posted by Splunge at 5:49 PM on August 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

I disagree with the headline. I'm okay with where the article wound up, sort of.

I do think everyone has a book in them - sure, it would take time, patience, skill-building and editing to make a *good* book happen, which is not quite the same thing as a best-seller. And I think she's not accounting for the fact that some really excellent books are very short. Or collections of essays (to me a collection of essays seems far less intimidating than writing a novel).

Anyway I wish lots of people in my life would write their stories so I could read them.
posted by bunderful at 5:38 PM on August 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Honestly, having spent a year and a half doing historical research, I wish everyone would write down their life histories, or write the novel they want to write, or write a bunch of essays, no matter how uninteresting they seem. I love local histories, and the random stories people have, like how someone's dad made her learn a word from the dictionary every day, or how someone once saw a ghostly dog next to a bridge near a cornfield. People are so weird and so interesting, and we never hear about them because everything is designed to be mass-marketable! We defer our storytelling to other people, because the message we keep hearing (reinforced here) is that our own stories aren't really that interesting or that important. That's all wrong.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 5:56 PM on August 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

That was also a story from Maurice Sendak. He sent a drawing to a young fan whose mother reported that he loved it so much he ate it. Sendak said it was the best compliment he ever got.
posted by PussKillian at 6:03 PM on August 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yes to everything you say, shapes that haunt the dusk. There are so many untold and lost-forever stories in my family history and in my city that I would love to know. Why my ancestors made so many, many moves, where they came from in the first place and when, why certain marriages ended, what they thought about the world they were living in, the odd little personal habits and preferences they must have had. As far as I know none of them kept a journal and most of them were too poor to be featured in newspaper articles beyond births, arrests and obits.
posted by bunderful at 8:00 PM on August 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I do not believe everyone has a book in them, but everyone who wants to should write for themselves, as therapy, for family and friends, as catharsis,to sort out their own thoughts and feelings, to express what cannot be expressed in other ways. Such writing need not be eloquent, professional, correct, or even good or worth reading. The act of writing is the reward, not the finished product.

However, such writing is only rarely "a book". Self-publishing has made it possible for many who have no skill in expressing themselves in writing to put out a "book" that is painful to read and often trivializes the subject that they are passionately trying to convey. Everyone who can pick up a pencil or type thinks they can write, after all, writing is easy and writers make tons of money. As the author of the original article points out, writing to sell commercially is very different from writing for one's self or as therapy.

I am involved in adoption reform and have seen so many of these "my true story" books, often written by those who think they can write, but do not read, and have no interest in learning even the basics of writing. Most of these people end up with many cartons of unsold books sitting in their basement. I suspect this is true of other self-help groups as well.
posted by mermayd at 11:12 AM on August 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Several years back I had the pleasure of attending a poetry reading with the late, great Philip Levine at one of our local universities. And in response to some angst-laden questioning from the students, he retorted with a line that has become a metaphorical catch-phrase in our house ever since: "Go ahead! Write bad poetry! It's not like you're hurting anyone."
posted by shelbaroo at 9:03 AM on August 5, 2018 [6 favorites]