Now, this doesn’t mandate a total neglect of personal hygiene. Hopefully, there will be occasions — autographing sessions, media interviews — when it is preferable that people can come near you without being overcome by fumes. A hot bath, at least once a month, isn’t a philistine luxury; they provide those extra moments of relaxation that generate some of our best ideas, such as topping the bath off with a nap.
Now may be the time to have your photo taken … before you’re really immersed in rejection slips. When your work is accepted by a publisher, the house will want a photo to put on the cover of your book. And you are not going to look any younger before you find a publisher. Appearing haggard or dissipated can be offensive, especially to someone shopping for a children’s book.
No, the snapshot that a friend took of you last summer molesting a beach ball may not be suitable if your book is a serious novel. It may be prudent to book a professional photographer who has the skill to personalize the bags under your eyes. It’s an expense, true, but tax deductible should your book get published in your lifetime.
Do not get a publicity photo of yourself holding your own chin. Go the whole hog: get a shave. Also, forget the pipe. Even if you actually smoke one, ma’am. And no gazing off toward a brighter horizon. It may have worked for Aldous Huxley, but yours will be a mug shot better suited for the most-wanted list.
Also, remember that studio photo sessions go on for so long, holding rigid body positions, that your eyes — as recorded in the final shot — will show the loss of the will to live. In fact, the only author known to have survived the ordeal without a permanent spastic twitch was Winston Churchill, who had taken the precaution of drinking heavily beforehand. Woody Allen, in his studio photos, appears totally suicidal. This is quite fitting, as humour writers (i.e., Robert Benchley, Groucho Marx, George Burns, et al.) have all had the bearing of a Muse that isn’t amused.
Okay, now that you’ve wiped that grin off your face, let’s move on to a more serious issue: sex. The question remains: What gender should you be to maximize your chance of success as a creative writer? Male, female or undecided? Don’t guess.
At this point in time, fortune appears to favour the female writer, as long as she doesn’t overdo it. Exuding her femininity creates the impression that the writer is interested in reproduction of a more bodily nature than that of the Xerox machine.
On the other hand, the female author is much better off today than in the nineteenth century when Mary Ann Evans felt obliged to transmute into George Eliot, and Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin hit pay dirt only after becoming George Sand.
Today the pendulum has swung the other way. Female authors actually flaunt their real names, while the guy named Joe might be tempted to transform into Josephine. This isn’t a good way to get in touch with his feminine side.
Most successful novels today are written by gals. Guys feel handicapped. They may even come to resent their own genitalia, as betraying the cause of that creative organ situated above the belt. But this is scapegoating of the worst kind.
Now, if a guy wants to experiment with wearing a bra just to get the feel of being Gertrude Stein, no harm done — probably. But stiletto heels are inappropriate on writers of any gender.
Now that you have chosen your wardrobe, gathered your reference books, and informed your family that you won’t be available for six months, it is time to decide: What kind of creative writing do you want to do?
Yes, there are lots of choices. They range from the highly commercial to the purely recreational, the supplemental to the masturbatory. Here is a list of some possible genres:
• Novel
• Kids’ lit
• Young adult novel
• Chick lit
• Autobiography (not the life history of an auto)
• Travel (rent-a-camel)
• History (no fewer than twelve hundred pages)
• Medical (requires author to have a degree in something personal)
• Personal essay
• Screenplay (appropriate to one thousand videos)
• Stage play
• Poetry (commercially limited to greeting cards, but cost- effective in regard to not needing a haircut)
• Journalism (sometimes called “the Fourth Estate,” because part of you has died)
• Humour (a very chancy genre unless your name is Woody Allen or Dave Barry)
• Income tax return
NOVEL
Not just the short story on steroids, the novel is a relatively recently evolved species of creative writing, still treated with contempt by some older literary critics. Even the noun was unknown until the sixteenth century when the Italian novella was introduced to Western Europe, along with the pepperoni pizza.
For centuries the novel form was monopolized by male writers such as Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. Women were waiting for the invention of the printing press, which boosted book sales enough to make novel writing competitive with prostitution. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, made a bigger killing than her monster, inspiring female novelists everywhere to create heroes who needed to be struck by lightning.
Today virtually all successful novelists can be clinically identified as female. The exception being Stephen King (horror has no gender). The bestselling of these novels is called chick lit (with apologies to the chewing gum). They are stories written by women, about women, for women who have tried real men and moved on. You shouldn’t attempt chick lit if you are a virgin or otherwise sexually impaired. (Another test: can you write with your legs crossed?)
If you feel that you don’t meet any of these criteria, it doesn’t mean you are totally lacking in sensitivity and should be writing parking tickets. Your talent may be juvenile, and better suited to writing books for children.
KIDS’ LIT
This is a tremendously lucrative market for writers who have refused to grow up. Reason: parents are frantically buying books for their children in a desperate if futile effort to dislodge them from the Internet. Having to compete with porn channels is a real challenge to the children’s author trying to create a bedtime story that doesn’t involve handcuffs.
In order to write for children, it helps to think like a child, without having previously played professional hockey without a helmet. Some frequently asked questions about kids’ lit:
Q: I’m a guy. Won’t people look at me funny if I try to write children’s books?
A: Of course. That’s why you need to write under another name (nom de plume). Charles Dodgson, a respected English mathematician, could never have written Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As Lewis Carroll, he did. Just make sure your literary alias hasn’t already been taken (e.g., Mark Twain).
Q: