fashionista_35

So, many of my writer's loops are a'twitter of the storyline unfolding this week in the wildly successful comic strip, For Better or For Worse. For those who are unfamiliar, this is a strip by cartoonist Lynn Johnston following the Patterson family of suburban Toronto. The thing that always set this cartoon series apart was that it followed, in relatively real time, the evolution of this family, the highs and lows, often tackling difficult subjects, but not in that soap-opera style of say, Mary Worth.

This latest storyline involves Michael Patterson, the oldest son, who, throughout the course of the strip, has evolved from eight year old boy to responsible family man. Michael's an editor of a local magazine and aspiring novelist (of course he is) with a young family of his own. On Christmas Eve, two major events happened in Michael's life-- he completed his first novel and the apartment building where he and his family live caught fire. After making certain his family was safe, Michael risked his life to go back to retrieve his freshly printed manuscript. A little dramatic license there, since, if he's a responsible writer, he would have already had it on his laptop that he'd already taken outside and burned to a disk and sent to a web-based email account that he could access from any computer, but I'll let that one slide.

Anyhow, amidst the chaos of the holidays, salvaging things from their ruined apartment and basically trying to get their lives together, MIchael somehow found the time to submit his manuscript to a publisher. (I honestly can't remember if he queried first and received a submissions request-- so we're going to assume it was a blind submission for the time being.)

And now's when it starts getting fun. Wednesday's strip had Michael receiving a package from a publisher. In it, a contract offering a twenty-five thousand dollar advance and right of first refusal for his second novel.

Okay. So presumably less than a month after submitting, during the holidays, no less, he receives a letter with a generous offer. I'm not going to say ridiculous, because while $25K is a generous sum for a first book, it's not Kaavya Viswanathan (allegedly $500K). I was willing to let that slide too, because you know what? It's just illustrating the dream that we all have. We all want to hear Right! Now! that our book is fabulous and to be pulled fom the slush pile and that we're going to be getting a great advance and that an editor loves it enough to want to buy it, Right! Now!

Strangely enough, it was today's strip that finally made me go, "Whoa, hold up, this is going beyond unrealistic into absurd." The letter from the editor where it read, "Dear Michael Patterson, I opened your package and from the first page of your manuscript, I could not put it down. I rarely say things like this, but you have crafted a superbly compelling, intensely emotional story. With a few adjustments, we can include your book in our fall line up."

*coughhackbullshithackcoughsplutter*

I mean really. It's *looks at calendar* February second. (Hey, has Punxatawney Phil seen his shadow or not?) Fall line up. Ohhhhh-kay, that stretches the bounds of where I'm willing to go, but I also understand that the percentage of people who understand just how slowly publishing moves is relatively small.

Which is why I sympathize with my writer friends who don't have families as willing as mine to listen and try to understand how very bizarre the publishing industry is. Who are going to now be inundated with questions as to why they're not published yet and why haven't they received $25K advances and why they've had to write multiple books and they're still not published and most of all, what's taking sooooo long?

If it had been a strip like Shoe for example, the same exact storyline could've played out, in exactly the same way, and I don't think anyone would've raised an eyebrow, because it was so farcical. Shoe probably would've woken up after a bender and realized the whole thing was a huge dream. Or even if it had happened in a strip like Doonesbury because Trudeau has had a history of going for the absurdist jugular and would've no doubt found a way to poke fun at the whole industry-- (imagine Duke writing his memoirs for a huge advance and being exposed for a fraud, for example). Or Bloom County in its heyday.

I think the biggest problem here is that throughout the years, For Better or For Worse really has maintained a fairly realistic approach. We feel as if these characters are real and we know them and their problems and triumphs speak to us because they so closely echo what we go through. And because Johnston has rarely shied away from the hard truths. She's tackled teenagers coming out and failed relationships and aging and illness and death of a spouse/parent and done so in a way that's so completely relatable. So for her to be cutting so many corners with this storyline I think feels like a betrayal, especially when she, of all people, probably knows how the industry operates. I would have preferred seeing MIchael getting a few rejections first, maybe starting work on another novel or a children's book, to help his kids cope with the loss of their home and having that be what sold.

I'm not really trying to cast judgment here, just sort of trying to wrap my brain around the whole thing. And wondering where Johnston's going to go with this.

Writers and non-writers alike-- I'd love to hear your take on this.