Heather Barton

Free movie marathon for 4 days on my cable this last weekend and I just picked ANYTHING that looked remotely interesting.  In the course of that I watched Julie & Julia, the movie about the writer who wrote a blog about cooking from Julia Child’s cookbook.  The scenes with Meryl Streep as Julia Childs are brilliant.  And the other story line is very interesting also.

But hit a bit close to home at one point.  She moans that no one is reading her blog but her mother.  Then suddenly she has lots of readers, many who comment and some who send her gifts!  Then months later the New York Times does a story on her from her blog and BAMM, she has 64 messages from agents calling and publishers interested in having her do a book.

And I burst into tears.

Because its every writer’s dream to be valued like that.  To have people WANT to validate your talent and work.  And turns out, its incredibly difficult to obtain.   An agent has to work just as hard as the writer to try and get a book published.  And an editor has to fight within their own COMPANY to get the book they’ve contracted the best sales deal and marketing they can.

Because everyone’s career hangs in the numbers.  The first 3 months and end of year sales numbers.  Even if the book is a masterpiece, it may not have the numbers to make ANYONE want to invest in that author/agent/editor again.  So in an incredibly strange sense.. it’s like playing the lottery!

And sadly…. I’m a cost accountant’s daughter.

I’ve weighed the amount of effort and time it would take to “get” something I might write published.  I briefly looked into what it might take to self-publish.  And as a divorced, mother of three, I can easily realize I don’t have the time nor the money to do it.

Oh, perhaps if I give up on many other things and lock myself away, immerse myself in the book.  Maybe, I’ll produce something worthy of amateur self publication.  If I don’t go crazy by the end of it.

And that’s the very reason I don’t.  It’s all a maybe.  While if I set aside the dream of writing, I KNOW I’ll have the fun of spending time with Sex God.  Being a good Mom.  Working to keep the business I run floating smoothly.

Still…  there are moments I look back on the “maybe” dream and wonder.   And like a child wishing Santa was real, I wish I had agents and editors WANTING me too.