Congratulations on Being Published!

As an aspiring writer there’s been only one goal in your mind for the last few years, aside from a shallow grave: publication! For many people it’s simply a matter of sending out their flowery, wondrous manuscript about growing up Puerto Rican in Alaska and watching the cash fly in, but you’re a white dude from New Jersey so it’s been a tougher journey for you.

No one would buy that “from the streets” crap, since you’re a skinny guy from Hoboken. You’re slightly less physically intimidating than Ruth Bader Ginsburg and can’t go through a conversation without referencing your favorite pretentious books, most of them Russian translations.

That left documenting your struggle and your triumph with an invented drug problem, but then that Frey cunt had to ruin that one by beating you two it. You thought about making an even edgier “memoir” about rehab, but it eventually devolved into a novelization of the film Saw as you considered various ways that people could be tortured into no longer doing heroin.

No one accepted the manuscript.

That left an “edgy” crime drama about vampires having sex with teens while solving murders and a three hundred page diatribe about modern politics centering around a small town in upstate New York and its slow descent into collective madness. You decided to write the crime drama and Putnam ate it up.

So tomorrow you’ll be sitting at the release party when George Saunders arrives. You’ll leap out of your seat to shake his hand but before you reach him he’ll have his fist in a ball and you’ll be laid out on your ass. He’ll then depart your book release in his traditional mix of style and poise and return home to write some more books of actual value.

His actions will generate a whirlwind of press around your title and lead to record breaking sales. Since your book is terrible this isn’t a good thing, and after an overwhelmingly negative critical response you’ll publish a second, considerably less successful book before becoming the pariah of the creative community.

Congratulations on Being Published!