I always have these strange, confused feelings when I finish a book. I wonder if I’ve put in everything that should be there. I wonder if I’ve put in too many things that shouldn’t. It’s a strange craft, writing.
A few minutes ago I finished the last words of They All Cum at Carlisle’s, which will be the latest installment in my “autobiography.” I put that in quotes for obvious reasons. I may be exaggerating a bit here and there. Okay, a lot. I’m not saying I didn’t spend the summer teaching a writing class at a nudist camp, and I’m not saying there wasn’t some sex going on. It’s just that, being a fiction writer, I might not be entirely accurate about who was having it with whom. (No, that’s not me in the picture, and it’s not me in the other one, either. They’re models.)
This can become an issue when you write stories about “loving families” and other kinky stuff. People wonder if you really did that. And I really can’t help feeding the fantasy, making the stories about myself, suggesting that it’s all real. If you want to think it is, well, I can’t stop you. But if anyone decided to investigate very thoroughly, I’m afraid they’d be disappointed. There are certain things that literary Lauren did, and can do, that real Lauren didn’t and can’t.
For this book, the next step is to email the manuscript to my editor. If you’re thinking of writing anything, erotica, or a guidebook to raising tulips, have it edited before you send it to the publisher. If you’re one of those people who are busily adding to the pile of self-published books at Amazon, definitely send it to an editor. You have to pay them, but it’s worth it if you get back a manuscript with the spelling errors fixed, punctuation where it belongs, and all the characters keeping the same name all the way through the book.
Inattention to details like that is how Bruce Banner found himself transformed into David Banner in an old comic book, and eventually compromising on being David Bruce Banner a few issues later. One of my uncles has all of those old comics. He pointed that out as something to be careful about, once he was convinced I was serious about writing for a living.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. Take a couple days off, I suppose, though that’s a questionable tactic for the self-employed. I don’t get paid for taking a vacation. If people don’t buy books, I don’t get paid for anything, which is why I’m on Twitter all the time plugging away.
If you’re considering writing the Great American Novel, or the next piece of Great American Erotica, and you need a good editor, drop me an email at the address on the website and I’ll hook you up with mine. He prefers to remain anonymous here, and since he lives several states away, I can’t bribe him with blowjobs the way I can my IT guy, but he’s fast, and he’s good, and more I really couldn’t hope for. If you want him to edit your book, obviously, he’ll tell you who he is, if only when he sends the bill. Editors get paid. How much depends on how long the book is, since he charges by the word.
What’s next? After the brief vacation, I mean. I remember when I was a teenager, hanging around with the other cheerleaders, diligently studying our Bibles. It was a Christian high school, so we were expected to do that sort of thing. Of course, being the teenaged heathens that we were, we spent most of our time looking for the dirty parts, and discussing it in between the naked daisy chains (after we were 18, obviously). The Old Testament is loaded with sex, mixed in with the incest, murder, genocide, and general silliness. Maybe I’ll write something biblical. Adam and Eve, perhaps? If she was made from his rib, that would make her genetically identical to him, apart from not having the “Y” chromosome, which would technically make her his sister, so it appears the whole basis of religion starts with incest.
As for now. I’ve got that email to send with the manuscript, though I suspect the old geezer is probably asleep by now. Then I think I’ll just go masturbate myself into a stupor.