The Writer, Righter - Comic poem no 202

 

A writer is a wronger

Who sits up half the night

And bleary eyed or teary eyed

Helped by spellcheck, sets the whole world right

Some have a drive to be the best

First, in New York Times, or just a club

Be on TV, cruise on high seas

Launch in Michelin bars! Or BYO grub - in a  pub 

Their Facebook page gushes daily wins

"My darling publisher sent me these gorgeous roses!"

For new movies or rail crashes

They're out, with their book, striking poses

The most successful authors

Are everywhere you look

And every day, in every way

They find a way to show their book

Jealous writers stare aghast,

"That so-and-so is everywhere

My bare bikini days are past

Sequins, at dawn? And purple hair!"

She's the one with singing dogs

A mishap when her skirt fell off

And t-shirts with advertising frogs

She's making money, please don't scoff

The majority of writers

Are working at a loss

Earning less than the cleaner

No wonder they are cross

Pretending they're successful

For free books, hold out hands

Only the taxman sees their debts

I'm sure he understands

Who reads the first line of Jane Austen

Old English teacher in bifocals

While chicklit author's dancin' on the table

With the male voice choir and locals -  

Old Mildred tut-tuts, shake her head, "Jane's lost it." 

Jane retorts, "She's living in the past!?"

"That line between us, decency, she's crossed it!"

"I'm in the best seller list - at last!"

Jane repeats each reader's word of praise

And rants if there's a critic

We should do that! Why don't we?

We should be glad.  And copy. Not say, "I'm sick of it!"

Stop successful writers, ask their secret 

They're not crazy optimists, nor fools

They admit, "You win some - and you lose some."

Praise them, ask them, they'll share their rules

Whether you're writing crime

Or romance or history

Academic, advertising, poetry

Selling is not a mystery

If you write crime or romance

Look the part, and  wear the look

Know the title, publisher and price -

And show the cover of your book!

If they don't want to buy your book

But talk of their dead Dad

Then listen and sympathize

A novel plot is to be had! 

Maybe, in a year, or two

When you write about surviving bereavement

That dear, sweet soul will think of you

Wondering where her book money should be spent 

And if you are kind to everyone

One day when you are dead

Whether you die rich or poor

Your precious good books will still be read.

-ends-

Copyright Angela Lansbury (aka Hazel Nutter) July 26 Wed 2023

The author dancing on the table was the late Jane Wenham Jones in Wales at Writers' Holiday, which alas is no more, but Writers' Summer School, which inspired Writer's' Holiday, is still going strong.

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Flying Home See 'Si' Sea

Flying Home (Singapore to London)

by Angela Lansbury

See - the sky’s blue; the sunshine’s gold

The clouds look soft, fluffy, bright white.

Watched comic films, dramas, warm, coldI

Yet slept sound, upright, half the night

Cross new Europe, Poland, not Spain

“Si!” Languages ‘oui’ understand

Back to face bills, take pills again -

Rain waters rose, pines, waved wheat land

Water glasses clink like di’monds

Omelette, like perfume, wafts through air

Smilers wheel breakfast, offer choice

Shut eyes, dream, rest - stretch - soon be there!

Houses like toys, stand in neat rows

Cute cars race past puffed tiny trains

Drop down! Below, maybe hail, snows

Who cares - clunk, bump - we’re home again!

Angela Lansbury

May 2016

Poet’s notes: 

Inspired by a Facebook post enthusing about flying back to London.

I wrote the poem about flying over Spain, then a member of my family said that you don't fly over France or Spain from Singapore but over Poland.

Puns on sea and si, oui and we.

I changed roses to rose to save a syllable, which leaves the word rose ambiguous between a noun and the past tense of a verb, no longer meaning roses in English gardens but evoking flood water from the river or sea which rises or rose.

I changed cute cars which is alliterative to allow an extra syllable for puffed tiny trains which is both visual, puffing train, and ambiguous, the puffed or exhausted train, stops to let cars overtake. 

The scenes in the films are serious and comic, warm and cold. So is the temperature change in the plane from warm when boarding in Singapore to cold when arriving in London, England.Then I reinserted cute and deleted small, since I already had toys and tiny to convey the idea of small.  I thought of ‘houses like toy teeth, tombstones,’ or ‘neat milk teeth rows’ but I left the sentence unchanged to flow. The clunk is the dropping of the undercarriage; the bump is the plane landing.

In May when we flew back reports in the BBC news were of snow in Scotland the Midlands and even London, where snow did not settle but hailstones fell. Previous weeks had seen a heatwave in London. At the time of writing, May 10 2016, another heatwave.

Waved wheat land. Land is a bit dull. What you see from windows above as you fly over England (or travel by train) is undulating land (unlike the miles of flat land in Holland or what I saw for several days in central America in the nineteen sixties when I took a Greyhound bus) and in England you see leaves and trees and crops waving in the wind