101 Reasons to Stop Writing

68AD: Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, amidst the controversy over the publication of his memoir of the Great Fire of Rome, entitled If I Did It.

1860: The first dime novel was published to a public sick to death of paying retail for hardcovers. Most of the early dime novels were reprints of stories serialised in newspapers, so the authors wouldn’t have even seen a dime from them.

1870: Charles Dickens was crushed to death by the weight of his immense popularity, and the great expectations.

Born on this day:

• Charles Webb, author of The Graduate, who didn’t even get a kiss before he got fscked over the film rights. There are rumours that a sequel will be published this month, but if the lack of news is any indication …
• Joe Haldeman, statue-collecting SF writer, one of the first to get paid for writing Star Trek fan fiction.
• Patricia Cornwell, uber-successful crime fiction author and the current holder of the Worst Jack The Ripper Theory award. (Seriously, Portrait of a Killer is so bad it almost works as a parody of Ripper theories. It makes Alan Moore’s From Hell seem plausible.)
• Aaron Sorkin, playwright and screenwriter, who for the first few years of this century allowed us to entertain the fantasy of an intelligent, moral President. Like Brian de Palma, his best work is on cocaine.