Help, I'm a bookish underachiever

I have to say that im insulted, not only as a woman but as a writer. Okay well I'm not a writer because everyone who is a writer by defintion has to have had something published. If not, then we're all writers and I hate be the person who goes around at cocktail parties eating canapes cooing "oh yes, i'm a writer."

It doesn't, however, stop me from having what i have deemed "bitter writer syndrome." When reading about kavvaya a long time ago I remember automatically hating her. a sophomore harvard student with a book deal. Right. I've been slaving over a book for the past three years and haven't even gotten an agent, but Kaavya was able to get a hefty book deal for what is after all, chick lit, and not just any chick lit, plagarized chick lit. This, by definition means you're not a writer.

This NYT article by Whitney Otto struck a chord with me because it seems as though she dislikes Kavaaya as well - and what self-respecting writer wouldnt. There are a lot of things I have written and looking back on them later I squint my eyes in overall disgust saying, what was I thinking? It's what any writer goes through, you work on it, and it takes time, it takes age (Otto is 68) to really get a grasp on life and what you're writing. Kaavya decided to bypass that difficult stage, the endless rounds of editing, the writer's block, the time it takes to really write something worthwhile and just opt to take it away from someone else and pass it off as her own.

I work on doing what Otto says, drinking heavily (yes) and lazily listening in on other people's lives. If there's one thing I took away from my creative writing classes in college (aside from other peoples seriously freakish stories) is that listening is the key to any writer's success, add non-stop vodka sodas to the mix and I'm pretty sure I've found my calling.

And anyway, according to Kavaaya's school of writing I can just plagarize The Sun Also Rises because yes, I feel like that is a book I could have written - if only I had the chance to write it before Hemingway