A Hierarchy of Authors, Part Five

The bowels of Hell are dark, miserable, and densely populated with the lonely souls of people who betrayed the very concept of creativity by calling themselves authors. We've passed beyond the levels where the term has any real meaning - here there be liars.

The Unfinished - The Unfinished are "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" in the morning, and "I woke up and it was all a dream" in the afternoon. They wake up with a Great Idea For A Novel, start writing after the coffee kicks in, and burn out after ten pages of meandering backstory that wouldn't survive to the second draft, if they ever got that far. They believe their talent is a wellspring that will spontaneously pour forth onto the page, unfiltered by anything as unnatural as thinking about plot, character or theme. When the spring runs dry, they find themselves having to think - about the next Great Idea For A Novel.

The Unfinished sometimes get pretty good at beginnings, but their endings suck - mainly because the end comes when the middle runs out of steam. They find no joy in the experience of writing - the idea doesn't translate perfectly into words, and inspiration rapidly becomes work. The result just doesn't live up to the rough-cut movie running in their head, so they try writing screenplays. (I'd point out that the odds of selling a screenplay make writing novels seem like an even bet - but they are the Unfinished, and so won't ever find out that the footprints of famous filmstars outside Mann's Theatre are set in cement made with the powdered bones of bad writers who tried to shop a spec script to Darryl Zanuck.)

They call the stillborn results of their failed ideas fragments, in the hope that some morning they'll wake up with a Great Idea For An Experimental Novel. The fragments accumulate, eventually creating a simulacrum of a Bottom Drawer - which to the Unfinished, feels like achievement.

The Wannabe - Also known as the Bullshit Artist, which appropriately describes their position relative to Satan. The Wannabe seems harmless enough, because the ones you notice are office workers who had "an idea for a story" years ago and waste one lunchtime a month talking to someone about how they'll "take up writing" when they retire. Or that stoner friend of a friend who thinks that they could outwrite Kafka if only they could get the mix of acid and window cleaner just right, and could figure out how to operate a ballpoint pen inside their skull.

The harmless ones are easy to spot: just listen for the phrase "I've always wanted to be a writer." They think the job of being a writer must be easy, because that famous guy does it, and they could do it so much better than that guy, if only some telepathic publishing magnate would stop them on the street and offer them a lifetime job as a bestseller. They're harmless because it never occurs to them that writing is a verb.

But the dangerous Wannabes are the ones you don't immediately recognise. They think they are writers. They're the ones who carry notepads and interrupt someone's after dinner anecdote with "That's witty/hauntingly truthful/emotionally black, can I just write that down." They emulate the speech, mannerisms, and public activities of the writer, well enough to convince Slushdwellers, Bottom Drawers and The Unfinished that they've found a kindred spirit. They can be found wherever writers gather: conventions, signings, bookstores, community colleges and unemployment offices. They wax lyrical about theme and metaphor, bemoan the state of the industry, and demonstrate an encyclopedic recall of misunderstood writer's quotations and bogus literary criticism. They consider their advice on writing so profound, they organise critique groups or teach writing classes in order to dispense it.

The one thing they don't do, ever, is actually write something.

And therein lies the secret to spotting them: ask to read something they've written. Even the Unfinished will offer to dedicate their novel to you if you would just read the ten pages they've written so far. Like that hot chick with the adam's apple who keeps making excuses why she'll give you a hummer but won't let you handle the junk, the Wannabe will find some eloquently bullshit excuse, about maintaining the purity of the work in progress, or not wanting to spoil you for other writers. Keep pressing. Ask for details of their latest opus, where they've submitted in the past. Track their progress as the lies expand. It is the only way to get them to stop (pretending to be) writing.

Why? Because they make writing look easy. They feed the fantasies that lead others into the perpetual disappointment of a lifetime spent writing badly. They perpetuate the myth that anyone can do it, that the only difference between Shakespeare and an accidental rhyme scrawled on a blank Christmas card is a few "lucky breaks". The would like nothing better than to see writing reduced to a pastime, where only the activity matters, and no-one judges the result. Only then will they feel secure enough to start writing. God help us all if that happens.

We've reached the very bottom, the Thirteenth circle of Writer's Hell, directly below Satan's anus, encrusted with rejected manuscripts and ever-ready to deliver a steaming pile of slush and false inspiration. There is no path to Publishing Purgatory from here, no Untold Secret of Writing that will lead us back.

The only way out is to stop writing.