If our author is a loser, what are we?

Tess:  So obviously nobody would want to read a blog written by McGinn.  What has he sold, like about 200 books in his entire life?

Leanne: Surely more than that; 210 maybe?

Tess: [Laughs] Good one. But I mean, seriously? There could be this reverse psychology I suppose, like, here is what I did, so don't do this, young writers.

Leanne: But what would that look like? Don't do what? It's not like he drank himself into the bottom of a bottle. F. Scott Fitzgerald did that, didn't he?  He sold a few books. And McGinn didn't relocate some of his brains outside his head, like Hemingway.  He sold some stuff too.  So what did he do, or not do, that writer could learn from? McGinn, I mean, not Hemingway.

Tess: Well, he didn't try all that hard, did he? Didn't rewrite his books a million times, didn't write like a bazillion cover letters to literary agents, didn't write about vampires or the end of the world, didn't inflict his own past and his dysfunctional family on readers through fictional versions of his family.

Leanne: No, he inflicted us on them instead.

Tess: That's where he went wrong!

[Both laugh]

Leanne: But seriously, girlfriend. Surely writers can't learn how to be successful from an unsuccessful writer.  You learn about success from someone who has achieved it.  They made some of the same mistakes losers like McGinn made, but they overcame tyhem and learned from them.

Tess: Whoa, way harsh girl. This loser created me, after all. That makes him a winner in my book. Literally. Ha! And who gets to define success, anyway? Is it writing vaguely the same bestseller over and over again, with slightly different plots and dialogue, keeping the readers from going off and reading something new and original? That's success?  Maybe the obscure, undiscovered, true to their art type artists are the successful ones.  They get to keep their creations as is, rather than dumbing it down using a bestselling formula in exchange for filthy lucre.

Leanne: [doubt in her voice]  You think so?

Tess: [Shrugs] I guess. But what do I know? I'm a fictional character languishing at #915,264 in sales on Amazon.

Leanne: Literally one in a million

Tess: [Claps hands] Exactly! And not even a real book, mind you. A fictional character in an unsold, unprinted hyperspace novel. If McGinn is a loser, what am I? Now if someone else had written me…

Leanne: Or stolen you?

Tess: What?

Leanne: Well, what if someone plagiarized us for their own book and it became like this massive bestseller? Made into a movie, the whole package deal. Would that make us better characters?

Tess: [Sarcastically] Oh wow, Lee, that's deep. Where's my shovel?

Leanne: [Shrugs] I'm just saying. Being successful  doesn't make you better; it just makes you wealthier.

Tess: My Dad would say being successful does make you better.

Leanne: And suddenly you believe everything your father has told you?

Tess: Ouch. Good point. 

Leanne: Rule number one, girlfriend. Never quote your father if you want to be cool in a young adult novel.

Tess: We're not in a novel now. We're in a blog.

Leanne: Same rule applies.

Tess: [After a pause] I was thinking. Why did he send me to a Maine island anyway?

Leanne: As she gracefully changes the subject.

Tess: No, really. What's up with that? An author could think of like a bazillion or even a kajillion interesting places to send a misbehaving but oh so cool and hip teenaged girl for her sins, and he sends her to a village off the coast of Maine like totally and unrealistically frozen in time. Seriously?  And you want to redefine success, presumably to include McGinn? Do you perhaps want to rethink that?

Leanne: Maybe success is the wrong word.

Tess: You think? Does that bring us back to "Loser" maybe?

Leanne: That island worked, didn't it? If you had been dropped into some mind boggling fascinating utopia, populated by eccentric, luminous characters, would you have stood out  from the masses to be the star of the book?

[Silence]

Tess: Still… Maine?

Leanne: It worked for Stephen King.

Tess: Then why aren't his characters writing this blog?

Leanne: They're all dead, I guess, or suffering from PTSD. Or maybe they won't work for Union Scale, like we do.

Tess: Are we getting that much then?

Leanne: Dunno. I made that up, or rather, McGinn did. Maybe we're getting a percentage of his profits.

Tess: Oh. Not a cent, then.

[Both laugh]

Leanne: But listen. He writes because he enjoys it - I mean, totally because he enjoys it. Not for money or fame. So we exist because he loves us, not because we are money machines.  How can he, or for that matter we, not be more fulfilled as characters than a large dog with a bloody hand sticking out of its mouth?

Tess: Well, when you put it like that, I can see your point. It is a lovely perspective, something to hang my hat on, as Dad would say. It is magic, poetic even.

Leanne: And almost total crap.

Tess: Exactly. So I just have one question.

Leanne: Yes?

Tess: Do blogs have sequels?

Leanne: No idea. Maybe not with us in it. Hey, before we go, did I ever say that I loved you in the book, or did it get edited out?

Tess: I don't remember. But I kind of got it, whether you said it or not.

Leanne: Cool. Well, back to obscurity we go.

Tess: That statement seems to imply that we left obscurity for like, even one millisecond.

[Both laugh]