MOVING TO A ROACH BASED ECONOMY
by David FrancisEvery now and then someone will tell me a have a good knack for writing. My immediate response to them, of course, is: "You want to buy some?" Since the answer to this question is always "no" I have decided that they really aren't complimenting my writing, but, in fact, are performing the equivalent of a mother telling her ugly teenage daughter that she has a wonderful personality.
I've always agreed with the great Samuel Johnson who once said: "The only good reason to take up writing is to make money." Many writers don't have such a business-like approach to literature. Many would-be writers think they are very clever and that that alone should be enough to earn them, if not respect and fame, then at least a sizable grant of some kind--even though no one from the general population would currently spend dollar one on any of their work. Writers of this disposition are typically very concerned with the intellectual, sociological, and spiritual aspects of their work, and long to become famous and respected for their particular philosophies.
I, of course, am not nearly so greedy as to want my writing to bring me riches, glory, and fame. I just want the riches. The lofty philosophical aspects of writing are interesting, I suppose, but if these aspects of writing aren't going to drag in a big audience--well, then I will happily leave them to be handled by the better writers.
With a nice strong audience, a writer can live untroubled and care-free like any other parasite in nature. The audience goes to work every day, pins itself down to a 40 hour work week, and then shells out money for your most recent best seller. You then make a lot of money while avoiding a steady job. I can't deny that this sort of lifestyle appeals strongly to me.
But its not really so easy as it sounds. As in nature, there is a limit to the number of parasites a host will allow, and there are so many writers out there already it is almost impossible to make a living as one. Since no one seems willing to pay more than compliments for my work, I don't feel I have the skills to compete in such a limited market. I certainly don't have the drive. If I have to engage in some intense dog- eat-dog competition with other writers in which my spelling, diction, and grammar will be open to scrutiny, I might as well actually go out into the real world and try to make a living.
So my options are pretty obvious. Either give up writing as a career, or somehow find a nice healthy, well-to-do audience from which to leech off of for continued existence.
I have spent the last two weeks trying to come up with some such audience. The answer didn't come to me until last night, and even then only by a stroke of luck. I was sitting at home trying to think of some way in which I could uniquely appeal to children, women, senior citizens, ethnic groups, or ANYBODY, and I was beginning to realize just what a uniquely unappealing person I was. Then, all of a sudden, the answer was staring me in the face. And it really was staring me in the face. A monstrously large roach had crawled up my armchair and was scurrying towards my head. In a spasm of disgust I jumped out of my chair, found a shoe, and smashed the creature to the floor.
Almost simultaneously the realization hit me. What about roaches? No one's writing for them yet. The market is wide open. I took a couple of furtive glances around the apartment to make sure no other roaches had seen my unthinking attack upon my future audience. I saw nothing. As I quickly gathered up the remains, wrapped them in aluminum foil, and proceeded to bury them, my mind was buzzing with excitement for the idea I had hit upon.
There are people making money by writing for humans right now, sure--but for how much longer? They haven't really been around that long in the total history of the planet, and their history hardly guarantees them to improve in the future. Who needs that kind of an audience? I want something with some staying power. Something that I can count on surviving a little nuclear war, world-wide epidemic, or small cosmic collisions. Roaches don't have a lot of disposable income right now, I know, and I have yet to detect a strong literary interest in any of them, but I think it must have been much the same for our ancestors, the early hominids before they started taking the first steps towards civilization. And where would they have been if the dinosaurs hadn't all been conveniently wiped out? Answer: if not extinct, then probably just about where roaches are now.
The financial implications are obvious. One quick disaster of global proportions leading to the near extinction of the human race and suddenly the roaches are in power, and I have the corner on the market of roach literature.
Emotions tend to run high during mass extinctions, and you can bet there's plenty of money to be made from them. If some devastating catastrophe pulls humanity down from its dominate position on this planet, then I figure, during the down-slide to ruin most of the respected writers up to that time are going to try and present the tragic human side of the business until the whole race finally peters out of existence. I, on the other hand, intend to rake in the big bucks grandiosizing the marvelous abilities of the roaches, with novel after novel arguing for the inevitability of their rise to power. I'll pack this literature full of symbolism, imagry, irony--whatever, so long as it reflects fondly on the average roach. Newly dominate species love this kind of stuff.
After things settle down a little bit, I figure I will do some quick research on roach sex and start putting out cheap roach romance novels, and then maybe come up with a series of roach Do-It-Yourself books, or, really, whatever will make me a quick buck. I'll be so far ahead of the competition it won't really matter if I am any good or not. My fame will probably outlast the couple hundred years worth that guys like Shakespeare managed to maintain. Remember, roaches survive nuclear winters. Once they get in power, they're not likely to drop back for a long, long time.
You can see I pretty much have every detail worked out. For now, I'll just get work wherever I can, but rest assured I am already starting my first novel for my new audience, and when that is done I will be only one total catastrophe away from becoming the greatest success story after human history.