Is This My Time?

I’ve been wondering lately if I’ll ever actually succeed as a writer.

I mean, yes, I’ve worked as a writer, but those of us who write see success differently from just earning a wage. We see it as more of a sense of … well, a feeling of … okay, dammit. We want to be famous.

Don’t shush me, I know I’m not supposed to talk about that!

Too late though, I said it. And I meant it. We all want to be famous.

In fact there are really only two stories we want told about ourselves. We want people to say, “They submitted their first story to seven different publishers and they all turned it down. Then one publisher took a chance and it was on the best sellers list in four short weeks.”

Or alternately, “They self published it electronically and it sold so well that publishers were bidding for the rights.”

The real reason I’ve never self-published is because I’m afraid publishers will not be bidding for the rights, and in fact will never hear of me.

So if they have no way of hearing about me …

If my name isn’t out there I don’t have to worry about making up excuses for them not noticing me, right?

Although, now that I think about it, fiction is my thing. I should be able to make up some fairly good reasons for the lack of my instant fame.

And then there’s the one hit wonder thing

You think I’m being negative here. Like I don’t want to be a one hit wonder, but I assure you, since I’m telling secrets today, I aspire to One-Hit-Wonderdom!

I would actually quite writing and move on to something else if I were to have one successful novel published. I’d even go so far as to say I would literally do that … get it, literally??

Unless, of course, the publisher who had the winning bid after my grand self publishing success subsequently begged me to produce another novel, in which case I would likely die struggling to produce one.

And while we’re on the subject of secrets

The recent passing of Alice Munro brings to mind an additional secret aspiration of mine and I suspect many other writers, We’d like to be known as the inventor of something, the mother or father of something, the instigator who turned something upside down or rewrote the way it was done.

And Alice rewrote the way short stories were created. She also acquired, among other great awards, a Nobel Prize for short story writing. We all secretly want to be Alice Munro. We all want to live a quietly grand life. We all want to be talked of and written about while we are alive and when we are gone.

And, as is her due, I here must say that she deserved all accolades and praise she has received and will receive, from this unworthily penned mention to the flowery and worshipful articles blooming in publications around the globe.

God Speed, Alice.

And as for myself

I’ll keep trying. As a common man I must accept that the best chance I have of any kind of fame is that my friends and acquaintances will talk of me when I am gone and will say, “He never did get there, but … he never quit trying.”

That’s fame of a sort. And maybe that’s the sort that most of us will achieve, so long as we keep going.

So, let me tell you a story. “There was once a cat. This cat’s name was Akia, and it had great aspirations. Akia had one day conceived of a plan to change his world and rid it of the nemesis that haunted his days, Mister … “