Novel Swallows Author
They are greedy, these books that are not books, manuscripts, publishing’s dirty little secret, the incubation of the finished product, the handheld novel bound between two covers because as long as humans have thumbs they might as well use them. Novels in manuscript form are unruly, wilfull, hard to wrangle; individuals who shall remain nameless enjoy making notes on manuscripts, or putting blue ink through harmless paragraphs. Strangled by rubber bands they are sent on long journeys in shoe boxes.
Now we have the e-manuscript. With the press of a button hundreds of pages slip through the ozone. That’s not progress, not really. There are rubber bands lying around with little or nothing to do; they talk among themselves, rejoicing when emails go astray. They know their days are numbered. As for shoe boxes, well, those so inclined can always put their shoes in shoe boxes, although I don’t know why anyone would. Shoes are passive. They just sit and wait.
No more trips to the “lucky” post office, the one where manuscripts are flung into large sacks organized by zip code. Sure the rubber band might break or the buff colored envelope might get scrunched. These are acceptable risks. Sending your novel via email is more fraught with peril, especially when Mrs. Enid Braithewaite of the Outer Hebrides deletes you as spam. Don’t trust this new technology. Enid doesn’t. The American Rubber Band Society doesn’t either.
March 12th, 2006 at 6:39 am
Yes, you are right. Enid lives just up the road here on Berneray in the Outer Hebrides and has been getting a lot of dodgy emails recently. So she’s being more stricter on what gets read - and what gets deleted. Best make your email look less like spam in the future.
Mr Braithwaite sends his regards.