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Exams (and most post exams parties) are finally done! They may not have been finished with style, or even finished particularly well, but I reckon I passed. We visited the botanical gardens to celebrate, and that's where the photo spam's come from. Flowers are pretty, and it turns out my phone has an actually decent camera. We also went on a bar crawl, all 16 student bars in Durham... it was an interesting night, to be sure.
But now, it's time for finalising the plot, time for beginning the write-up! I'm super excited for it, and I'll tell you about it as I go! But for this post, I've got one brief(ish) rant for the day. I'm going to sound bitter in it, maybe even jealous. I'll admit it right now - I am bitter about this, and you know what? I am jealous. I'd love even half of this to happen to me. But I'll try to explain why I'm frustrated... if you just bear with me.
So, a few days ago, I happened to be browsing some news sites when I noticed a certain article. It attracted my attention, so I clicked on it. Some of you might have seen it. Two of the youngest members of (quite possibly) one of the most tasteless families in the public eye just now were at a press conference to promote their new book.
They'd written a book? Good for them, I thought.
You see, at first I was completely taken aback - these girls are better known for materialism on reality shows and being models. Had they really written a book? It was even a science fiction dystopia; my genre. Fortunately, my question was quickly answered by the subjects themselves. When asked if they wrote it by themselves, they essentially responded "Of course not, there's no way we could write a science fiction novel by ourselves."
They'd got a ghost writer in. I ought to have suspected. And I seethed.
I checked some reviews out for it - basically they all read in a very similar way. Unoriginal, derivative, poorly written, no character development. So it's not even a good book.
It's a bad, unoriginal book, that these girls did not write, and yet they shamelessly promote it under their own names. They had a real press conference to promote it, they got media attention for it, people are buying it, and most of all, it was published in the first place.
I explained it to my basketball-loving boyfriend like this, when he didn't seem to understand why I was cross.
Imagine you loved basketball more than anything, and the dream you had since you were very young was to play on an NBA team (for the non-basketball-literate, it's a super elite league in America or something.) So, you train really hard, for all your spare time, even though you know it's unlikely you'd ever make the cut (after all, aren't there many people just like you working for the same goal?) But then, you see in the news that a member of a famous boy band (let's go for Harry Styles, I don't exactly follow pop bands very much but I know him) woke up one day and decided he wanted to play for an NBA team - maybe your favourite team. And they just let him, because hey, in their defence, it's going to be great for ratings. But here's the kicker. Harry Styles is terrible at basketball - he can't play at all. So in all the games, a body double plays in Harry Styles' place, and he just appears in the post-game interviews taking all the credit. When asked if it's him playing in the games, he says of course not - how could he ever be skilful enough to play at that level?
And no one even questions it.
That's got to hurt, right?
I think it's more the fact that they outright said they weren't talented or driven enough to work and write the book themselves that gets me, because they still have probably attained more success then I ever would as an author. Because their family is famous. Because they can wake up one morning and decide to do whatever they want, and do it, and have it turn out well for them. Because they can succeed in a discipline I desperately want to make my living in because I love it, a discipline I worked for years to get better at and still work to this day, by doing hardly anything at all - just flashing the cash and their famous names. I get it, I really do, it's how the world works - but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.
It doesn't mean I have to think it's fair.
I'd begrudge them it a million times less if they'd written it themselves and it was actually a decent book. I'd have been pleasantly surprised, and even pleased for them. But as it is, they insult every aspiring author everywhere when they swan around with their names plastered on that cover. And they contribute to the current state of the publishing industry, which puts no value on talent and hard work - only who you are, or who your family is. They make it that much harder for someone who actually wants it to succeed. And, you girls, next time you decide you want to be something... either work for it like a normal person, or don't do it at all.
This has been a public service announcement, I suppose? I'll try not to be bitter over it... It's just hard, sometimes. I guess I'll just write some more. Really, that's the only thing I can do.
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