Things To Consider When Writing A Book

In my attempts at writing a book I checked out several "Get yourself published" books. I skimmed them while either enjoying a bubblegum scented bubble bath or allegedly, perhaps between bong hits. I noticed one thing they all had in common in the first chapter (I never read any further), they all said I should know my core audience. "Who's going to read your book?" they all ask. Well that is a good question. Really. It makes me sit back and think, what wacko is reading this book? The books also ask various questions to get you to visualize what kind of an audience you would actually have in the dog-eat-dog, real world of published authors. So naturally I ripped the questionnaires out of each library book and settled down to answer their questions.

"What do they look like?" is the first question asked by all three books. Who cares? What does a person's appearance have to do with their ability to purchase and actually read a book? I'm sure that in this day and age an overly hairy, five-hundred pound woman with a bouffant, toy poodle, and hot pink lacquered nails could put out her cigarette, swivel around her oxygen tank and order my book. She'd even still be able to switch between Yahoo! chat conversations where she's pretending to be a twenty-four year old, blond goddess. She would have the same chance at getting her chubby fingers on my book just like your average red-blooded over-the-top gay man could at the local Barnes & Noble while scoping out the high school boys buying lattes and girly mags. It's not what you look like, but how you go about getting the book. That was the easiest question to answer or avoid, as it were in the long list. Other questions include: Where do they eat? What do they spend money on? What are their hobbies? and Do they smoke crack-cocaine? As you can see the list of questions is quite off, and I felt ridiculous answering most of the questions until I had finished answering them all and discovered what my audience would be, complete with criminal background checks and photocopied eight-by-ten photos.

My imaginary audience is between twenty-one and forty-eight. They are not illiterate and will not put this book down because it isn't full of interesting pictures. They will either be a gay man, a fag-hag or even an estranged wife who recently discovered her writer husband banging the pool boy when she came home early from work. This book's likely readers will most likely be living at home with their parents and work at the mall for mere pennies above minimum wage. According to my questionnaires they will have a fifty percent chance of being clinically depressed. I will be their Sylvia Plath and they will highlight passages in my book in hot pink before slitting their wrists. My audience will be over-weight or at least think they are. I will probably know them from Over-Eaters Anonymous or belly dancing class. They are most likely not a part of my family and if they were, they'd sue. They are either stoners, pill heads or coke mules who enjoy dissecting small animals and the art of taxidermy.

If this is you, congratulations fat ass, it's your lucky day! Put down that razor blade kid because someone actually noticed you for once. I should note here though that you may possibly be a serial killer or maybe even a high-class stalker or prostitute. If you don't match my highly researched, hypothetical profile. You probably aren't wanted by the FBI. Good for you, even mediocre people such as yourself find me interesting. I'm sure I like you either way because you bought this book. You hypothetical, pot induced people from my mind really exist and you made me a star, that is unless you borrowed it from a friend or checked it out from the library - then you suck!

Another reference book from the eighties, complete with a now defunct list of publishers asks the question: What use would your book be to the public? Now that easy to answer. The public needs to know about me, my fifteen minutes of fame and my obsessions with cupcakes and the color pink. I also want to delight and entertain the masses with my comically spun tales of woe and wonder. I'm also sure when this book is published the crowds will go wild and I'll be the center of a tinker-tape parade. I'm also sure the public would see this book as a lovely gift to re wrap and send to the next unlucky bastard or maybe perhaps used as a fancy paperweight. It could even be put under a wobbly table or even be thrown from a speeding car at someone you hate. The public's possible uses of this book are endless. All my fancy reference books also want to know what is so unique about my book. I told each of those books the same thing. There isn't a single book on the market today about me. I am what's unique about my book. It isn't my lack of structure, my point of view or even my clever way of writing mean things about people in a nice way.

Let's face it kids, I was ready to write a book. I had my audience held captive in prisons or locked away in their parents' basement. My book had a use for the public and an interesting hero people could relate to. I was all settled in to prove Joe wrong and write a book. That is until I came across the final question asked by all three books, It's a two-parter. Do you have something to say and if so can you sit down and write it? Well I have something to say, we all do. The probability of me sitting down and writing was slim to none. I'll give it the old college try, I thought. This would be like my brief encounter with vaginal sex. I may not like it, but I'll at least attempt to try something new. I did have uncountable notebooks, journals, and a website or two full of my rants and musings. Besides, a little hard work never killed anyone right?