Authors Anonymous

Today my friend Nickie came over for a visit. A while ago we discovered a movie titled Authors Anonymous. Since Kris, Nickie, and I all like to write we decided to give the movie a shot. When we first discovered it, we realized Kaley Cuoco (Penny from The Big Bang Theory) was in it. So, how bad could it be? As we watched the movie we recognized a few other people we knew as well. It just recently came onto Netflix, so we made a lunch date to watch it together. Well, it has two out of five stars on Netflix and it has 4.4 out of ten stars on IMDB. We figured we’d give it a try anyway and at the very least we could all have a good laugh making fun of it if we didn’t actually enjoy the movie.

You can look it up yourself, but basically the movie is about a group of five unpublished writers who get together once a week for a writing group to share and critique their work. One of them gets signed by an agent and then all hell breaks loose. Jealousy grows in a few of the other group members and everything spirals out of control from there.

The movie was alright. I can’t exactly say I “recommend” it. The movie itself and even some of the acting was “blech.” However, there were some great lessons to be learned from the movie.

There was the one who got signed by an agent because she actually sat down at her computer and wrote. She did the work and put her heart and soul into writing.

Then there was the one who was the “pretend writer.” He edited as he wrote and wanted nothing more than perfection.

There was the “idea” guy who only came up with ideas, but never actually wrote anything. He was a pretty good character, though.

There was the two most jealous ones in the group once the other member got signed. One self-published without any research; therefore, none of his books sold as he never advertised and some things in his novel got messed up. The other one personally went up to agents and basically said, “I’m a great writer! Publish my book!” as she tried to speed up the process.

Then there was the good guy who, like the published one in the group, did everything right; however, he claimed he always had “writer’s block” because he was so focused on everything else going on in his life and… well, maybe he was a bit nervous, too. He had a whole wall with rejection letters taped to it.

That description lacks and is probably a bit confusing, but I don’t want to say too much just in case any of you will actually want to watch the movie. If you do, it’ll be a long hour and a half. But… as you can see, the characters vary when it comes to different kinds of writers. In that sense, the movie was good. If anything, it shows you what not to do when it comes to writing.

Oh, and how not to act when one of your writer friends gets published before you.