For the struggling artist, even after you see a few successes the most daunting task is not the creation or the editing, the painful process of submitting, the rejection, rejection, rejection. It's not choosing a font or a cover letter. It's that darn bio.
Let me explain: most publishers or potential publishers want a concise little summation of your entire writing career that you compose for yourself in the third person. In the early days these sound hopeless and pathetic. "Jim Smith is a writer who really wants someone other than his mom to say so. He composes grocery lists in iambic pentameter and throws poems together while one the jon at work."
As success comes, you have to be picky about what you put in, more specific. For one publisher you send them one set of details, for another you alter your choices to suit.
So, I was thinking what it would be like for some very famous names, and how their bios would look if we were, y'know, honest.
Chuck Palahniuk wrote that movie you saw that you didn't realize was a book.
J.R.R. Tolkien is probably not to be blamed for how far it all went.
J.K. Rowling is actually deserving of how much she makes.
Alice Munro is that writer you read to get over feeling guilty about being Canadian.
James Joyce is pretty much just a name drop now.
Margaret Atwood is MARGARET EFFING ATWOOD!
Stephen King is hoping to die soon and finally get a little appreciation.
Ernest Hemingway is drunk.
William Shakespeare is hated for more reasons than Jesus, and just as undeservedly.
C.S. Lewis is really, really NOT an atheist any more. Really. Like he REALLY loves church and all.
Ayn Rand is who you would be if you went from starvation to buffet and had a thesaurus.
Leo Tolstoy is in desperate need of an editor.
Cormac McCarthy is in desperate need of a hug.
Margaret Laurence is not at risk of misinterpretation.
Geoffrey Chaucer is actually a really big fan of every job in society.
Frank Herbert is WAY smarter than you.
Mary Shelley is responsible for the "my eyes are up here" of literature, and wishes you'd see beyond it.
Yann Martel is still in Saskatoon.
Linden McIntyre knows what time the liquor stores close in Toronto.
Edward Rutherfurd is reading the encyclopaedia.
O. Henry is going to murder Alanis Morisette in a way that'll make you think.
Michael Ondaatje is cutting some of the plot.
Hunter S. Thompson is being liquefied and injected into Black Ops.
Edgar Allen Poe is not responsible for Stephanie Meyer.
Emily Dickinson is unaware that anyone's been reading her stuff.
Lynne Truss is reading this with a blue pen.
E.L. James is the reason you can watch football.
