LEARNING BASIC ITALIAN

This morning let’s learn some basic Italian:

“Mi dispiace che il tuo vomito sia caduto nelle mie scarpe”

means

“It displeases me that your vomit has fallen to my shoes.”

Our Country as a Cigar

In my many years as a cigar roller, I learned that any good cigar needs three elements: 1. the filler, the countless little leaves that are the real guts of the product; 2. the binder, which holds everything together; and 3. the wrapper, the outer cover for extra flavor and appearance.

It seems to me that our country these days still has great filler— millions of caring, good people. And all the politicians are battling to be our wrapper, to show off their flavor and image. But no one is willing to be the binder, that out-of-sight, unappreciated, hard-working little piece that makes the whole thing into one good, solid, piece of humanity.

To All Frustrated Writers

To all frustrated writers:

Two literary critics were talking and the first one said, “F. Scott Fitzgerald died a broken man, because The Great Gatsbywas a commercial and critical flop.”

And the second said, “Yeah, but he knew he wrote a good book.”

Don’t let those agents and acquisition editors and big house publishers get to you.  They’re mostly nice, overworked people, but they’re 20^thCentury dinosaurs, breathing in the volcanic ash of technology and slowly going extinct.  Fugetaboutit.

Technology has set us free.  Just go to somewhere like Amazon KDP and publish your book. It’s free, easy, you have complete creative control, the royalty rates are great, and you get immediate worldwide distribution.

Why are commercially successful writers like Lee Child and James Patterson and Stephen King still giving publishing houses a cut of their spoils?  I have no idea.  Loyalty maybe?  Inertia?

No, you won’t be the next King of book sales. You won’t get reviewed here in The New York Times and you probably won’t get rich and famous.  But you might.  I have a friend who publishes independently (Don’t call it “self-publishing,” it’s Independent Publishing) who has sold over 30,000 books.  Another friend often gets on The Timesbestseller list.  Another has had a major movie made from her book.

Will this happen to you?  Probably not.  I know it hasn’t happened to me.  But that’s not important.  There’s only one thing that matters:

You wrote a good book.