{"id":3049,"date":"2006-03-21T01:41:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-21T01:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:25:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:25:21","slug":"what-not-to-do-if-youre-aspiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3049","title":{"rendered":"What NOT to do if you&#8217;re an aspiring author&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=5290926\">this NPR piece<\/a> today on the closing arguments of the Da Vinci Code trial, and my ear was caught by a passing mention of some of the stranger denizens of the courtroom circus. (Warning: I&#8217;m about to change metaphors with the speed and grace of a passing freight train.)<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, not only is the court liberally laced with opinionated conspiracy theorists, there&#8217;s also a fair sprinkling of would-be thriller authors brandishing copies of their manuscripts in the hopes that one of the many publisher&#8217;s representatives called to testify will agree to take on their work. I can&#8217;t imagine what predatory yet completely delusional state of mind someone must be in to think this is a good idea, but it certainly put a most amusing image in my head. <\/p>\n<p>It also made me feel a little better. After all, I would never stoop that low (and I give you permission to smack me upside the head if I ever start talking about it). In fact, I actually feel pretty confident that I can eventually get a book published the usual way. I breathed a sigh of relief that I&#8217;m not yet at the point where I feel driven to prostrate myself in a totally inappropriate setting just to avail myself of a -50% chance to get some publisher&#8217;s attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to this NPR piece today on the closing arguments of the Da Vinci Code trial, and my ear was caught by&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,10],"class_list":["post-3049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3488,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions\/3488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}