How to Write a Marketable Book
A Mother-Daughter Blog Post!
Based on our research of actual book titles, we’ve got the formula: towering intellectual figure + everyday object.
Thoreau’s Laundry, Flaubert’s Parrot, Heidegger’s Glasses, Wittgenstein’s Poker ,Beethoven’s Hair. Easy, right? Ideally the object should be one the Intellectual Figure handles every day, to enhance intimacy and mystery (the mystery of, Why the fuck would anyone write about this?). Writing the book is not really the problem, it’s the title.
So to make it easier on you, the writer-to-be, we’ve created a list: Darwin’s Ladle, Asimov’s Spatula, Sartre’s Springform Pan, Kant’s Whisk, Nietzsche’s Coffee Mug, Picasso’s Toothbrush, Van Gogh’s Multivitamins, Monet’s Smartwool Socks, Hume’s Waxed Floss, Gaudi’s Q-tip, Beckett’s Fingernail Clippers, Freud’s iPad, Shakespeare’s Doorknob, Joan of Arc’s Digital Camera, Queen Elizabeth’s Wireless Mouse, Tolstoy’s Brita Pitcher.
Historical inaccuracy? Why not speculate on what Joan would have photographed if she could have! A hipster self-portrait of herself being burned to death after which she tossed the camera away from the fire… Anyway, remember to add hypersexuality, insanity, and death, plus creamed herring for breakfast or whatever weird thing your Intellectual Figure tucks into his or her mouth. We all have mouths, so we want to know this stuff. Add odd habits, such as walking by the clocktower every day at noon, or always washing the left underarm first, or roasting roadkill to save money. Or building teepees out of sticks and calling them magic caves as the apocalypse arrives (apologies to Von Trier–but we would rather roll up in blankets in a closet and suck down some liquor than sit on an exposed hillside without even a sweater if the world was going to end–though the teepee was more picturesque, we grant).
Whoa–pie break. Miss Spinal Tapped made a chocolate cream pie last night, in a successful effort to get her father to eat carbs. He ate carbs! Unalloyed culinary triumph! Now we must have some pie. Anyway, here’s the end of our first mother-daughter-blog-stravaganza, look out for more in the future!
Love, Kathryn & Cade
