Is there a book you couldn't or wouldn't write - even if a good friend begged you and offered a suitcase full of money?
I know the real answer to this, but I have to admit, when I closed my eyes to think about the question, my first thought was “How much money?” So, whatever I concluded, I guess I have my price. I just don’t have any friends who can meet it, not surprising since most of them are writers or artists or otherwise underemployed.
50 Shades of Graycomes immediately to mind. I haven’t read it, but someone quoted a truly awful couple of sentences in a review that made me cringe. The writing was amateurish and whatever thought the author seemed to be trying to express was lost in the weeds. The reviewer was ruthless. I’d be mortified to have a reviewer do that to a book with my name on it, so that’s one for the list.
Add anything purporting to be the shocking and hitherto unknown truths about proven instances of UFOs in New Mexico being covered up by a massive conspiracy among the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon. The exception would be the script of any of a dozen episodes of “The X-Files” in which Scully pokes out her lower lip and says “Mulder…” Those, I would have liked to write for bags of money.
I would turn down a ghost writing contract for celebrities whose only claim to our attention is that they have gotten attention before. You know them even if their names blur. They’re on the home pages of every online and supermarket rag, have their own TV shows, give birth to babies they monetize, and get the book contracts my fellow writers and I only dream about. But I suspect they have few ideas outside of seeking celebrity/money and I couldn’t stand being forced to listen to them and take notes for months.
It might be easier to win the lottery than to be offered a suitcase full of money to write anything unless you’re James Patterson or J.K. Rowling. But it’s a nice daydream, so thanks for asking.
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