Like Meg

Why I love Meg Cabot:

Whenever people ask, “What’s a typical day like for you?” I know they don’t want to hear the truth. They want to hear that I sit around drinking margaritas all day, then dash off a paragraph or two in my spare time, like Ernest Hemingway. So that’s what I tell them.

But actually a typical day for most authors is REALLY spent freaking out that every reference to the word “booger” in the UK pass pages of her latest middle-grade manuscript got changed to “bogey,” and how could this have happened, since the characters in her book are living in the US, and in the US, no one says bogey, except Tom Cruise in Top Gun when he’s referring to incoming enemy fighter jets?

Then the copy-editor says, kids in the UK don’t know what a booger is.

But kids in the US understand that a “lift” is an elevator in British books. So surely kids in the UK will get that a booger is a bogey. Won’t they?

But then the author becomes tortured with self-doubt, thinking maybe UK kids don’t know what a booger is, and she should just let them change it to bogey. But then is she not remaining true to her artistic vision? Does she even have an artistic vision? We’re talking about a book with boogers in it. That’s when she starts drinking margaritas in an attempt to forget she even had this conversation.

So that’s why the final pass pages are often late. And why I lie when people ask me what a typical day in an author’s life is like. 

Read her blog here. 

P.S. Either Thursday or sooner I am going to post this really excellent short story I am currently working on. It's over the top and sure to keep you interested.