Sure, we big-time writers have a lot of manuscripts in our drawers that never took flight. Heck, we have a lot of things in our drawers! Paper clips, for one thing. (Don't judge me.) But I think it's safe to say every author has some books that seemed good in conception but never really got going on the page.
Sometimes it's not just our own ideas that were faulty. Oftentimes someone will suggest a project that sounds solid, but turns out to be a bad fit. This can mean hours of work wasted on something that winds up as useful as a dead cockatoo in a diving bell.
Here are some of the fiction and nonfiction projects I've started on that wound up in the drawers of doom. And if you've ever put on drawers of doom, you'll know how unpleasant that is.
Here I Sit, Broken Hearted: A Treasury of Great Public Bathroom Poetry
Cooking the Easter Island Way
Make Big Money with Macramé
Candace Sets Her Cheese on Fire: A Novel
101 Fart Jokes for Every Occasion
Bang Gunly and the Varmints from Varmintville (with Mike Flangepart)
Bobbing for Durian and Other Party Games
The Crafty Schmafty Guide to Home Shoemaking
War and Peace II: More War, A Little Peace
Great Fight Songs of the Peloponnesian War
A Pound of Butter: The Shopping Lists of J. R. R. Tolkien
Scent in the Wind (a romance novel about a plucky woman and a trash collector with srs abs)
Lose Ten Pounds a Day--Look Great for Your Friends and Pallbearers
Howitzer Cozies and Other Ordnance Knitting Patterns
It Hurts When I Do This: Report from the 39th World Health Organisation Conference
Nuclear Armaments for Nitwits
Zero Whiskey Tango 4-Niner (never knew what it was about but there were guns and targets and men silhouetted on the cover; supposed to be written under the pseudonym Clom Tancy)
The Cat Who Was a Goldfish: Trans-Pets in America
A History of Indicia
I Have a Red Pencil Box: Important Foreign Phrases
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So you see, I could have had a lot more books out for sale if I had stuck to it with these ideas. Alas, they were not meant to be. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm running up on the deadline for my next novel, How Green Was My Focaccia.
I Have a Red Pencil Box: Important Foreign Phrases
ReplyDeleteI remember that one, & its sequel: "Yes, I Would Like a Second Helping". ;>
Here's something that might be worth a full blog post: How do you pronounce "drawers"? There is a YouTuber in North Carolina who calls his pet monkeys' shorts "drawz". All my life, I have been referring to pull-out storage compartments as "droors". The tall cabinet in the bed room is the "chestadroors". People get hung up on names for soft drinks or plumbing for potable water but I have never seen anything about drawers.
ReplyDeleteStiiv Johnson is right!
ReplyDeleteAs for you, FM, I pronounce drawers the same way -- dr-OR-ers. Rhymes with doors. I still can't figure out how people put an R in washing machine (warshing machine).
I read Larry and the Mascots this summer. How about a sequel with Whitewall and Cricket?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ruffin! I would love to; will post in the usual spot if there are any developments.
ReplyDelete