Well, I’m ticked off, and I don’t care who knows it. I just wasted a perfectly good weekend and $50.00 to attend a writer’s conference where Mr. Hot-Shot Editor from Major Publishing Company was the featured speaker.
For two long, dreary hours, I listened to that man drone on about what makes a good story, what his company is looking for and the way he expects a manuscript to look when he receives it. He said something about queries and synopses and I’m not sure what all, because I finally just tuned him out. Well, I ask you. When you have a masterpiece of fiction and you absolutely know it will be the biggest thing since Harry Potter, why must you listen to all those rules?
I waited on pins and needles for that scrawny five-minute pitch session I was scheduled for in the afternoon. Why, what do they think I am, a Reader’s Digest Condensed writer? It takes at least thirty minute to tell what my book is about. And he had the nerve to tell me that I should be able to describe it in one or two sentences. I’m telling you, that man is out of his mind.
When I told him I hadn’t actually written the book yet, he said he wasn’t interested. Even when I told him, in a very firm loud voice, that my novel was special, unique and groundbreaking, he insisted he couldn’t offer me a contract.
I’m so mad I could bite a nail in two. Someday I’ll write that masterpiece, then he’ll be sorry he tried to impose his rules on me.