The failures of great writers to comfort a novice colleague of theirs. Twitter is that magical place where a mere mortal who lives his days in the most absolute monotony can send his message to the end of the world so that, perhaps, it can also happen that it reaches a famous person who replies, abolishing any type of barrier. It happened to a rookie writer, who entrusted her outburst to Twitter after a terrible day, which culminated in her practically deserted signing. She probably never expected what happened instead.
The story of Chelsea Banning and her Twitter outburst
Chelsea Banning, on Twitter “Chelsea Banning Author“, is a young American author who recently published a fantasy novel entitled “Of Crown adn legends”. The writer is participating in her first signing after the release of her book, which took place on 22 August. Unfortunately, not everything always goes as hoped, and Chelsea’s signing of copies was, according to the young woman, a real disaster: about forty people had confirmed their presence, and Chelsea was already discouraged by these small numbers. Then, only two guests showed up at the event.
It goes without saying that Chelsea Banning experienced moments of discouragement, which then resulted in an outburst entrusted precisely to Twitter: the girl told how only two people participated in her signing, and how frustrating it was for her to realize this failure after months of hard work.
A few hours later, the first consolation tweets arrived for Chelsea Banning, who could never have imagined such a huge response, and above all that the answers to her outburst would come from great writers and personalities of the caliber of Neil Gaiman, Margareth Atwood and Stephen King.
The failures of the beginnings of the great writers
What we will tell you are just some of the many tweets that arrived to Chelsea Banning on the day she entrusted her regret to Twitter. The famous writers who responded to the young author underlined that a “failed” signing is not a symptom of a career that hasn’t taken off, or of a non-existent talent. Failures happen to everyone, and indeed they represent an excellent point from which to start again and to work on in order to obtain ever more satisfactory results.
So Stephen King told of the first signing of “Salem’s Nights”, when to comply there was only a “chubby boy” who was not even remotely interested in his book. If possible, the story that Margaret Atwood told is even more incredible: the writer, who today enjoys immense success, wrote to Chelsea Banning that at one of her signers there was not a soul alive, just a “type who was looking for duct tape” and thought Atwood was a shop assistant.
Jonathan Coe also responded to the young author’s outburst on Twitter, and told of when he was invited to a Crime festival. On that occasion, the famous writer was supposed to hold a conference together with other personalities. No one showed up for him, except one man whom Coe gratefully thanked. The funny twist? When asked, the man replied that he was there because he was supposed to present Jonathan Coe’s speech.
Neil Gaiman also told of one of his failures, and it seems impossible, but it concerns “Good Omens”, one of his greatest hits.
Stories with happy endings
In short, we can only draw inspiration from this beautiful story: we must never give up when something does not go as we would have expected. After all, when does life happen to go as expected? Almost never, yet it is in these unexpected events that its beauty is hidden. And this is even more true for Chelsea Banning, who since she told her defeat of her on Twitter, has gained many followers and sold as many copies of her book.
