Cautionary Advice to Overanxious Genius Writers

Genuine letter to authentic client. Reproduced here for you artists who've come to recognize, if only through impatience with almost everything you read, that you're heads above the stampeding herds and wonder if there's something wrong with you for it.

You know, Medhavi,

Knowing your caliber, I would be a little disappointed if you hadn't thoughts of suicide, or dying one way or another, from time to time. Not at all would it indicate emotional or mental unbalance.

The most balanced of minds, with the highest inner potential, would be crazy not to notice what a wasteland the upper reaches of humanity have been making of themselves. Often those who could do the most good toward righting the situation block their own intentions out of anxiety and jealousy and fear and self-pity and even greed. Why, sir, would one of the finest capabilities want to live in such a world?

BECAUSE, that's why. And so here you are.

Now here is my cautionary note. A few days ago Our chief, Aunt Pody, told me the story of a client she once had, named --------- --------. She'd sold a few novels. She became despondent about the rejection of her latest novel so committed suicide.

The novel was called THE TITANIC. A few years after her death, THE TITANIC was one of the biggest box office hits in Hollywood history.

So, as your literary agent, I strongly advise against committing suicide, getting hit by a car, caught in a rebellion, inadvertently assassinated by fanatics, struck by lightning, contracting leprosy or AIDS or a panoply of terminal diseases, reaching into your cupboard in the middle of a dark night, feeling around for the sugar and unintentionally putting rat poison in your tea, slipping in the bathtub and hitting the back of your head very hard on a metal spigot, dropping an electric radio into your bathtub while you are bathing, gaining too much weight and getting stuck in your bathtub for days, being found dead in an unholy soup of bathwater and human effluvia only because neighbors had complained about the odor, accidentally pouring rat poison into your bathtub instead of bubble bath, falling asleep in your bathtub and drowning, or any number of ways to meet death in a bathtub.

When you get out of your bathtub, as your literary agent I recommend against slipping on your wet bathroom floor and falling headfirst through a window, breaking the glass and allowing sharp slivers of glass to penetrate your neck or any other part of your body, drying off with a towel that has been accidentally sprinkled with rat poison, shaving with an electric razor that has frayed wires while you are still wet, dropping it accidentally in the toilet and unthinkingly reaching in to retrieve it while it is still plugged in, accidentally brushing your teeth with rat poison, unmindfully locking yourself in the bathroom because of a faulty door handle, being found dead because the window had long been painted shut and no neighbors could hear your calls but did complain about the odor a month later, and by now it's hardly 7:30 a.m. and the means of an unintended demise are myriad even before you put your clothes on. But you are bright enough to understand this, so I feel that enumerating a few examples will suffice to spark your imagination in the many ways that a simple slipup could prevent you from harvesting the fruits of your hard-got work.

I have read this statement aloud to my colleague, Literary Agent and Author's Representative, AAR, and she has concurred. Do not die for any reason while we are gainfully employed in the active pursuit of procuring a publisher and making you famous. She has also advised, especially, do not die of impatience! It has happened before. Remember THE TITANIC.

PS he got a contract.