Starry Starry Fright
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- Posted: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:12:08 +0000
So, the literary devil (who presumably looks like Edgar Allan Poe with Stephanie Meyer's face grafted onto him) owes you a favour. Maybe you helped him clean out his garage or something. He's agreed to make you a great writer, with no obstacles in your way. No publisher or literary agent will ever reject your work. Even your first drafts will be considered publishable (a clear sign that there's sorcery involved). Writing will pay for all of your basic needs, and you will never be forced to punch the clock at a day job ever again. Soon enough, you'll forget what a rejection letter or a boss even looks like.
But there's a catch.
Seriously, he's a devil, of course there's a catch. You'll be given two options for how your writing career will turn out, and there are no intermediate options available.
Option One - You'll be one of the most popular authors the world has ever seen. Your books will set sales records that make Harry Potter look like a household guide to breeding head lice, and first edition prints of your books will be regarded as collector's items. There will be movies, spin-off comic books, conventions, TV series and theme parks. Your books will be translated into every human language with enough known words to recreate them, and you'll have to squeeze in writing time between travelling the world on book tours and posing with the A-list stars from your movies on the red carpet. You're forced to make your family sign contracts agreeing not to auction off the personalized books you give them for Christmas. Everywhere you go (transported, of course, in the stylish flying limousine you paid for in cash on a whim), fans will sings your praises and beg you for autographs. Your publisher jokingly releases an anthology of your grocery lists and is floored when it outsells the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series.
But, no matter how hard you try, and no matter how much depth, social commentary and political satire you put into your books, they will never be regarded as anything more than shallow, amusing stories. Parents and teachers who see a child reading your books will shake their heads and say "Well, at least he's reading something." You could put out a book about a woman with cancer who is beaten to death by a medical insurance representative, and it would received as nothing more than a mindless tearjerker. After you die, your books are put up on the shelves next to the Twilight series, and the only people who remember you hundreds of years from now are the Anthropologists studying your inexplicable popularity.
Option Two - Your books are some of the most incredible - albeit obscure - things ever written. Grown men openly weep in public while reading them, and after you receive your Nobel Prize in literature (an accomplishment which, bizarrely enough, fails to catapult you to worldwide fame), the selection committee has to put out a memo reminding itself that there are other authors writing books besides you. You occasionally get letters from PhD students who are basing their thesis on your work, and reading your entire bibliography is practically mandatory for any serious literary scholar. You have to stop printing your books with all of their award medals on the cover, because they would need to be inconveniently poster-sized to fit them all.
But no matter what you do, you are never able to break free of obscurity. No movies are ever made, and you're lucky to be recognized in public even once per year. Book royalties aren't nearly sufficient to cover your expenses, and you mostly finance your modest lift with arts grants. The only time you ever meet fans is when you give talks in front of an enraptured audience of perhaps a dozen people. Your books are celebrated for centuries after your death by the few scholars who have heard of you, and you are consistently remembered as the greatest author of the 21st century.
This literary devil really doesn't like to be refused, and if you turn down his gift, he'll turn you into an aggressive species of fungus. So which do you choose - shallow popularity, or brilliant obscurity?
But there's a catch.
Seriously, he's a devil, of course there's a catch. You'll be given two options for how your writing career will turn out, and there are no intermediate options available.
Option One - You'll be one of the most popular authors the world has ever seen. Your books will set sales records that make Harry Potter look like a household guide to breeding head lice, and first edition prints of your books will be regarded as collector's items. There will be movies, spin-off comic books, conventions, TV series and theme parks. Your books will be translated into every human language with enough known words to recreate them, and you'll have to squeeze in writing time between travelling the world on book tours and posing with the A-list stars from your movies on the red carpet. You're forced to make your family sign contracts agreeing not to auction off the personalized books you give them for Christmas. Everywhere you go (transported, of course, in the stylish flying limousine you paid for in cash on a whim), fans will sings your praises and beg you for autographs. Your publisher jokingly releases an anthology of your grocery lists and is floored when it outsells the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series.
But, no matter how hard you try, and no matter how much depth, social commentary and political satire you put into your books, they will never be regarded as anything more than shallow, amusing stories. Parents and teachers who see a child reading your books will shake their heads and say "Well, at least he's reading something." You could put out a book about a woman with cancer who is beaten to death by a medical insurance representative, and it would received as nothing more than a mindless tearjerker. After you die, your books are put up on the shelves next to the Twilight series, and the only people who remember you hundreds of years from now are the Anthropologists studying your inexplicable popularity.
Option Two - Your books are some of the most incredible - albeit obscure - things ever written. Grown men openly weep in public while reading them, and after you receive your Nobel Prize in literature (an accomplishment which, bizarrely enough, fails to catapult you to worldwide fame), the selection committee has to put out a memo reminding itself that there are other authors writing books besides you. You occasionally get letters from PhD students who are basing their thesis on your work, and reading your entire bibliography is practically mandatory for any serious literary scholar. You have to stop printing your books with all of their award medals on the cover, because they would need to be inconveniently poster-sized to fit them all.
But no matter what you do, you are never able to break free of obscurity. No movies are ever made, and you're lucky to be recognized in public even once per year. Book royalties aren't nearly sufficient to cover your expenses, and you mostly finance your modest lift with arts grants. The only time you ever meet fans is when you give talks in front of an enraptured audience of perhaps a dozen people. Your books are celebrated for centuries after your death by the few scholars who have heard of you, and you are consistently remembered as the greatest author of the 21st century.
This literary devil really doesn't like to be refused, and if you turn down his gift, he'll turn you into an aggressive species of fungus. So which do you choose - shallow popularity, or brilliant obscurity?
