Fakin' It With the Best

I love CSpan Book TV. I've never had the pleasure of attending the BEA--yet, but I always feel like I have, via CSpan. Last Saturday, I was right on the front row for the most highly touted events. (Not the parties, darn it. But the 'official' events.)

I was amazed--but not really since I've had the conversation with so many other authors in the kinds of private, late night sessions we tend to have toward the end of writer's conferences in some 24 hour coffee shop or over the phone with only the closest of friends--to find that Nick Hornby, and I have a lot in common. We are both not 'really' authors. He also doesn't think 'like an author,' at least not the ones you hear in public.

When he hears an author say, "Write for yourself. Write what YOU want to read," he thinks, "Why would you do that if you want to get published?" What if what you want to write is 400,000 words and what the publishers are buying is 100,000? No one is going to read it. And if you were really writing for yourself, why wouldn't you write 40,000 words. (It would take a lot less time and effort.) Why spend all that time writing background that you already know? Or adding in detail so that someone else can share your vision of the scene. You have the vision. You don't need the detail.

My major catch phrase for feeling like I'm not really an author is "I've always known I would be a writer." (I didn't know until I was almost 30.) And listening to other authors talk about their backgrounds, I'm always sure I'm a really lucky fake. Every other author seems to have at least one traumatic incident that defines them. Some of their childhoods sound like they could be plopped straight into a tragic, tear-jerking novel. (Comparatively, my life has been a heartwarming, occasionally amusing anecdote.)

The surprising part was that Hornby is a man and a bestselling author whose books always hit the Times list, who even started his own genre. (Lad-lit.) It's kinda nice to know the I'm-only-pretending-to-be-an-author phenomenon isn't strictly a female thing, felt only by those of us who aren't household names. Hey, I'm a fake in good company.

In his speech, Hornby expressed a lot of my feelings. This weekend, I'm attending the Virginia Festival of the Book. The Bookish Obsessions panel looks interesting. http://www.booktv.org/schedule/