posted 20 May 2001

The "Top Ten" List of a Beleaguered Writer
by Laura Resnick
www.sff.net/people/laresnick

Award-winning sf/f and romance writer Laura Resnick a.k.a. Laura Leone gets all her ideas at a Mafia-run idea shop on the corner of Fifth and Vine. What she makes for her books is none of your damn business — though it's not nearly what she deserves.

After I sold my first book, my father, a longtime science fiction writer, warned me that now that I was a writer — a professional, a novelist — everywhere I went I would constantly encounter people who would ask me to: (1) read their manuscripts for them; (2) write their life stories for them and split the proceeds; (3) write their novel ideas for them and split the proceeds; or (4) teach them the Secret Handshake, the key to becoming a published (and, of course, extravagantaly wealthy and internationally famous) writer — the jealously guarded Secret which (of course) has nothing whatsoever to do with talent, hard work, and persistence in the face of rejection.

Much as I hate to write these words...: Dad was right. I now seem to meet someone like this almost every time I leave the safety of my home. As a young, innocent, naive writer, I actually tried to deal rationally with such requests and demands. However, that was fourteen books and thirty-five short stories ago, and I'm a little tired now. Besides, I'm not exactly known for my patience, and so I eventually developed stock responses designed to thoroughly discourage such petitioners:

(1) I'm sorry, my lawyer won't let me read your manuscript; take it up with him if you're not satisfied.

(2) I'll be happy to write your life story. My rate is $300 per day, 5 days per week, payable in advance at the beginning of each week, regardless of whether or not you ever find a publisher for this book.

(3) No, I don't want to write your idea for a novel. It sucks.

(4) Yes, I could teach you the Secret Handshake... but then I'd have to kill you.

Last year, a New York Times bestseller in her sixties and a professional writer in his early twenties both listed for me the questions they're most sick of being asked. Not only were the lists of these two writers identical despite the vast disparity in their age, experience, and success levels, but I (a midlist writer in my thirties) have the exact same list. So it's not just me!

Barbara Mertz, who is one of my all-time favorite authors, writing Egyptology under her own name and fiction under the pseudonyms Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, provides my favorite answer to: (5) "Where do you get your ideas?" Barbara's response: "I order them from a catalogue, or I steal them from my friends." Meanwhile, another writer told me he can't understand why people always ask, (6) "Have I read anything you've written?" as if he should know what they've read.

Mike Resnick (my dad) hates it when people ask, (7) "And what name do you write under?" as if they've heard of every writer in the world except him.

In his guest of honor speech at the 1995 World Science Fiction Convention, Nebula Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delaney said that upon learning that he's a science fiction writer, people frequently say, (8) "Oh, I don't read that stuff," as if (a) he had asked them, (b) he cared, and (c) he should now be impressed by their honesty.

I ask you, when was the last time you met a doctor at a party and automatically said, "Oh, I never have surgery"?

However, the disrespect that Delaney encounters now and then is nothing compared to what a blonde romance writer (like me) endures. Before I started writing non-fiction and science fiction/fantasy, when I used to simply say, "I write romance novels," I couldn't even begin to keep track of the number of people who, with apparently no awareness of their own rudeness, would immediately say, (9) "Oh, you write those really trashy books?"

I ask you, when was the last time you met a doctor at a party and said, "Oh, so you're a money-grubbing quack with a God complex?"

I'll tell you when: You did it the last time you automatically asked that total stranger, (10) "Really? And how much money do you make doing that?"