I've been waiting most of my life to read my mom's novel about a woman who moves in with her mother and sister after discovering that her husband is cheating on her. My parents separated for a short time when I was about 8 years old because my mom believed my dad was cheating on her. But my connection to this novel doesn't stop there. No, my mom would ask me to take 3-mile walks with her. Hours of my life have been devoted to listening to her rave about her own writing and moan about how no one had discovered her yet. If the average person spends one-third of his life sleeping, then my guess is I spent at least a fifth of my childhood listening to my mom talk about her writing.
I believe I was about 12 years old when my mom started telling me about this novel. Eighteen years later I'm still wondering why she thought "puked a river of possum guts" was such a brilliant thing to say.
Yeah.
Seriously. She thinks that's awesome.
So, I got my copy of the novel finally. She self-published on Lulu. I'm about 250 pages into it, and I had to start this blog. Obviously she will never listen to me when I tell her that her novel blows. She firmly believes she is a real writer. A REAL writer. She doesn't want to hear that her writing is "good" or that you liked it. She wants you to get passionate. But I can't lie. But I also can't ask her, "You really think this is good?" It's just too late for her to get a new career.
Why the blog? She will never listen to me, but I have to get this off my chest. There's so much to say. And hopefully someone else can be amused by my rants or avoid a disastrous novel of his own or maybe just be inspired to tell a real writer he knows that she really can't count on making a living as a writer. Or maybe no one will read this. And that's fine, too.
