The aptitude test my high school guidance counselor gave me yielded a long, singularly unappealing list of careers, including lumberjack and rodeo clown.
"So what is it you want to do?" she asked.
At 17, what I wanted to do was to have sex with Krissy Caperson, but I didn't see my guidance counselor helping with that. "I'll figure it out in college," I said.
I didn't. I hustled my way through Notre Dame — did you know you can sell blood plasma every week? — then hitchhiked out to beautiful Santa Barbara. Where I could just barely afford to live on the beach. Not in a house on the beach. On the beach. With the sand and the seagulls.
Three hours into a truly excremental job — standing on a roof in the rain, holding the frayed cord of a toilet de-rooter — I finally came up with a career plan. I'd simply write a bestselling, critically acclaimed novel. Think "Harry Potter" meets "Hamlet," if Ophelia was oversexed, homicidal and undead.
Turns out reading novels — or in the case of "Moby Dick" and "Ulysses," claiming to have read them — is easier than writing one. My novel, "Legend," took two years. Then I couldn't get a single agent to read it. Apparently a degree in literature means nothing to literary agents. Nobody even asked about my grade-point average. (Actually, nobody anywhere has ever asked about my grade-point average. That would have been valuable info to get from my high school guidance counselor.)
After years of submitting the manuscript to publishers — none of whom had Krissy Caperson's gift for speedy rejection — it ended up in the clutches of an aging book packager. Promising me "wealth, fame and beautiful lovers," he tied the book up until — eventually — to keep me from regaining the rights, he published it under his own microscopic imprint. No fanfare and a world-class ugly cover that misspelled the word "hindrance."
Then he died. I swear I was 3,000 miles away at the time. I have witnesses.
His imprint was absorbed by a not-quite-so-tiny publisher. In a cloud of purple whale manure about movie deals ("we're thinking Michelle Pfeiffer as Ophelia"), they brought out the highly unanticipated second edition of my novel. Nobody noticed.
Then, miraculously, "Legend" made a UPI "Ten Most Underrated" list, just seven places below a Meryl Streep movie about a dingo that ate a baby. I got an agent. For 28 days. Then she also died. Buried and everything — I checked.
Her surviving partner talked me into doing a business book. Which he sold. You wouldn't believe me if I said he died, too. So I won't.
But he did. This writing business had a considerably higher mortality rate than I'd expected. It was like "Dawn of the Dead" out there.
But the book was published, and The Wall Street Journal called. And TIME magazine. A trade association asked me to speak — for a fee so large I was astonished that afterward they didn't demand their money back. They were actually pleased.
From that point on, I talked for a living — writing the occasional book — my clients largely generated by coverage in everything from "the "Today" show to The London Times to Funeral Service Insider. I became a mini-celebrity or a quasi-celebrity or a B.S. celebrity, I'm not sure which. If you're thinking that you've never heard of me, that's the difference between a make-believe celebrity and, say, Taylor Swift or Tom Hanks or Jack the Ripper.
And that's how I can afford to live in Santa Barbara. I'm someone reporters quote when Tom Hanks or Jack the Ripper isn't available. My mother would be so proud.
To find out more about Barry Maher and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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