People find out I'm a writer and they tell me about their great ideas and what they'd write if they found the time, the money, etc...

Today, reading John Scalzi's blog www.scalzi.com/whatever (He's the author of Old Man's War - a truly inspired Heinleinesque Sci-Fi novel), I came across this bit of brilliance.

. . . writers don't write because someone dropped a fat wad of cash in front of them, they write because if they didn't they'd go absolutely and completely bongo-striking insane.

Conversely, if I had a million dollars, I would slap it all down on the table in front of any jackass that said they could write a fabulous book if only they had a big fat advance, and tell them they could have every single penny if they could bang out a genuinely salable book in six months (which is about the amount of time writing a book is assumed to take by various publishers I've known). And the reason I would slap down that cash would be that it could not possibly be any more safe than if I tied it up in T-bills, because your basic loudmouth non-writer is no more capable of writing a salable book than I am of piloting a 747, and roughly for the same reason -- it's a skill you have to learn, baby, and one generally learns the writing skill by writing most days of your life (and generally -- alas -- you'll be doing that for little if any pay). The only way a non-writer is likely to produce a genuinely publishable manuscript is if he takes some of the advance money and hires a ghostwriter, but that's not really the same.

Anyway, people who say they can write a book if only they had a fat advance don't bother me; publishers don't go around offering fat advances to random passersby just for a happy chuckle. You generally have to guzzle some famous person's sexual organ first, and most people aren't good looking enough to do that on a regular basis (and those that are have other ways to get their scratch than to pester a publisher). Honestly, the best response to these would-be writers would be to say, "And if someone gave me money for no good reason, I would study the dark ninja ways" with as straight a face as one possibly can. If the non-writer has any brains at all, he'd recognize that you are mocking him and why you are doing it; if not, well, then, I guess you can talk about ninjas. Either way, one shouldn't waste too many brain cycles on it.
www.scalzi.com/whatever/0...ml#comments