Why I No Longer Care If I Ever Make The NYT Best Seller List

Despite my persistent writer’s block and overall lack of creativity due to the ongoing stress of big changes in my life (including but not limited to my health and impending divorce) today I cannot just sit here. Today, I have something to say.

Ye be warned: strong opinion to follow.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I just don't get things that 'most people' do.

Could be. If you’ve read here before, you know that I’m not really big on ‘mainstream successes’.

I bailed from Facebook in May and am grateful for the clarity, understanding, and truth doing so has brought into my life. When times are rough, you find out who your real friends are right quick. (One more quick thing on that- I did smile when I read that apparently about seven million other people got fed up with FB about the same time and bailed in May too so I guess it wasn't just me.)

You also know that thanks to Snooki and the Kardashians I no longer have any feelings of inferiority as a writer when it comes to the fact that my life’s work as a storyteller may never be deemed marketable enough to be printed by one of the big houses. I'm not worried about finding an agent. I don't need industry validation of my art. It is what it is, and it's mine.

As of today I no longer care if my work ever finds a large, mass-market audience. Granted, that wasn’t a big concern of mine to begin with- but now it means even less. Now, when it comes to being a bestselling author, I have completely and officially stopped caring.

Why?

Because if this is what's selling, what is popular, and what is considered funny or cool, then I don't want anything to do with it.

I saw an opinion piece on CNN.com today that made me look not once, not twice, but fifty times at least, eyes impossibly wide, jaw hanging open. In that sickening, heartbreaking moment I saw just how low people now go as far as what they believe constitutes a humorous book worth buying.

I speak of a new, "hilarious" (not my word for it certainly but I have several others...) storybook parody basically written by a disgruntled parent for other disgruntled parents: the title of which I will not even say here for fear of giving the thing more press.

To me this is so vile, so evil, so absolutely disgusting I am seeing red. I have this reaction as a woman who, as a child, was aware every day of her life that her parents often wished she’d evaporate and knew if she didn’t stay out of their way she would feel the sting of that sentiment physically without reason and without warning.

It also disgusts me as a parent who has never, EVER, no matter how tired, how sick, how weary, or how upset with my child’s refusal to lie down and cooperate with bedtime proceedings would ever THINK let alone WRITE DOWN a sentence as demeaning, at worst dangerous and at best passively-aggressively violent, as the one that makes up not only the ‘poetry’ in this book but also its unfortunate title.

Think I’m upset about this? You’d be right.

I was determined to find out who published this...thing...ready to make another snarky comment on the taste of the major publishers. My bad for jumping to conclusions. After looking it up, I found out it is an independent publisher (and I again will not use the name because they deserve no more attention for this unless it's a warning to writers that if they go with these people the 'author' of this book will be one of their contemporaries.)

I feel I not only have to bow down with gratitude to those I know out there who are running respectable, quality small publishing houses for passing on this but also forgive (just a teensy bit) the Big Guys for the Kardashians and Snooki ‘cause damn, people, even they had the sense not to publish this horrible book.

I had hoped that the only person foolish enough to actually release something this toxic into the world might be the person who wrote it thinking it was funny to begin with (and 'they' say that self-publishing authors are unprofessional…) but nope.

Someone else actually looked at this, considered it amusing enough to publish and now, the thing is at the top of the most prestigious bestseller list there is.

What is the world of writing coming to?

I don’t know. However I do know this.

If you think this book is so funny, would you still think so if your child found it, mistaking it for a real storybook, read it aloud one broken word at a time in those halting, new-reader sentences, and then looked up at you and realized that at some point you’d felt so much hostility toward them that you’d actually spent money to buy it?

If you can answer yes to that, then I truly pity your children. And wish you’d been more responsible about your birth control choices because anyone who can look at their kid and think such thoughts toward them really shouldn’t have had any to begin with.

As far as the actor that has apparently narrated the audio version (if I’m reading the news right…) don’t even get me started.

People really should think a little about the affect of their thoughts on their behavior, and what that behavior can do to their children.

Parents who foster such deep resentment even beneath the surface may really believe that the kids don't know it, but you’d be surprised. Kids are perceptive, you can't bullshit them. They're way too smart.

Someday, parents that have so little patience and that much resentment in dealing with their children just being children may find that there is a ‘book’ written for them too by their adult kids: “Mom and Dad's New Life at the Nursing Home”. Count on it.

Some may call this book ‘honest’.

Honestly, if you feel that close to the end of your rope in dealing with your kids- get help. Now. Before you say or do something that you can’t take back.

Because once your child realizes this is how you feel they will never, ever, look at you the same.

Trust me on this.

I never did.