The Odyssey of Writing PROSPERO LOST
My adorable and talented wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, has published to her website an account of the trials and tribulations she suffered with the patience of Job in order to get her novel published. As a public service to all would-be young writers out there, she tells of what, if her experience is typical, one might expect.
Here is a link to Part One.
http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/75048.html
I am not sure in what part of her history, we come to the scene where she is sitting in the ashes, scraping at her boils with a potsherd, while I am telling her to curse the Publisher and die, when the Publisher speaks to her out of the whirlwind and tells her to contemplate the hippopotamus. "Declare! If you have understanding–gird up your loins and answer! Where were you when I set the foundations of the Flatiron Building, and established the publishing house? Or who hath measured the distance from my fourteenth floor office to the street? Where you when all the Sons of our Stockholders sand aloud for joy? Can you bind up Harlan Elison in a swaddling band? Can you draw him up with a hook, yea, with a hook through his cheek, or make him to sing like a bird? His scales are tightly fitted, and he esteemeth javelins as straw! He maketh the sea to bubble like a pot of ointment, and a shining trails in the water as he passeth! Can you make him to publish DANGEROUS VISIONS THREE? Harlan is the king of all the children of pride!"
Ah, it is a great scene. I hope she gets around to writing about that one, too.
In the meanwhile, please visit her page and leave a kind comment. Leave all unkind comments here, where I can deal with them.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
