{"id":17777,"date":"2013-03-11T12:23:05","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T16:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=17777"},"modified":"2013-03-11T12:23:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T16:23:05","slug":"dont-let-fifty-shades-of-grey-pee-in-your-wheaties-writer-types","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2013\/03\/11\/dont-let-fifty-shades-of-grey-pee-in-your-wheaties-writer-types\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Let Fifty Shades Of Grey Pee In Your Wheaties, Writer Types"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the news <strong>Fifty\u00a0Shades of Grey\u00a0<\/strong>author E.L. James was publishing a writing guide, I tweeted the following because I am at\u00a0at least<em> a little bit<\/em> of a dick:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p>A writing guide by the 50 SHADES OF GREY author is like a cookbook written by Ronald McDonald. <a title=\"http:\/\/bostonherald.com\/entertainment\/books\/2013\/03\/fifty_shades_author_to_publish_writing_guide\" href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/0DVRTuD3CQ\">bostonherald.com\/entertainment\/\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChuckWendig\/status\/311124418929758209\">March 11, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script charset=\"utf-8\" type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script>And it was a ha-ha-funny tweet admittedly tasting of the vinegar tang of sour grapes because E.L. James has sold an eye-bursting number of copies of her book. I think by now everyone on the planet has at least three copies even if they don&#8217;t realize it. In truth I laud James for her success &#8212; I mean, shit, it&#8217;s out there, it&#8217;s selling, who am I to say she doesn&#8217;t deserve it? The joke for me is that just because the book\u00a0<em>sold\u00a0<\/em>well doesn&#8217;t make it the watermark for good writing, and so &#8212; well, blah blah blah, I&#8217;m explaining the joke, which of course kills it.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless! A few folks tweeted or commented that it&#8217;s horrible she sells so well and what chance do they have of getting published and life sucks and the publishing industry is a cabal of vampires and we&#8217;re all fucking doomed so fuck it and let&#8217;s all just cry into our pillows.<\/p>\n<p>Stop that.<\/p>\n<p>Stop that right now.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re looking at the wrong thing.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re saying, &#8220;This crap over here is popular and that&#8217;s bad.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Who cares? Who gives a jiggling jar of koala cock about that? Crap is\u00a0<em>frequently\u00a0<\/em>popular. (See earlier joke: Ronald McDonald.) It takes nothing away from your work\u00a0<em>or<\/em> your chance of producing that work either on your own or when working with a strong and friendly publisher.<\/p>\n<p>That one series of books is a lone floater in a very big pool of water.<\/p>\n<p>Lift your gaze.<\/p>\n<p>Look at your bookshelves.<\/p>\n<p>I look at <em>my<\/em> shelves, I see books from years past\u00a0and\u00a0from this year\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>I see books that haven&#8217;t even been published yet (&#8217;cause I&#8217;m lucky like that) and you know what? They&#8217;re incredible! Great authors are producing great content and publishers are fucking publishing it. Who cares about some other book series? Books don&#8217;t really compete against one another. The 70 jizzillion people who bought the\u00a0<strong>Fifty Shades<\/strong> books weren&#8217;t likely to buy your books anyway and if they do, great, yay, confetti, applause, puppies, ponies and\u00a0popsicles for all.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing in those books takes anything away from you.<\/p>\n<p>Keep writing. Eyes forward. The popular kids are always gonna do what the popular kids are always gonna do. It&#8217;s a big world. Lot of readers. An infinite Internet.\u00a0<em>Keep writing<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>To conclude? A point made by a very wise man who would&#8217;ve been 61-years-old today:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>DON&#8217;T PANIC.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the news Fifty\u00a0Shades of Grey\u00a0author E.L. James was publishing a writing guide, I tweeted the following because I am at\u00a0at least a little bit of a dick: A writing guide by the 50 SHADES OF GREY author is like a cookbook written by Ronald McDonald. bostonherald.com\/entertainment\/\u2026 \u2014 Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) March 11, 2013 And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-4CJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17777"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17791,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17777\/revisions\/17791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}