Give the Gift of Mediocre Writing

“I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas”

(Photo by John M. Flora)

We’re hurtling full speed ahead into the Christmas season. I have a whole month of heartwarming “5 a.m. Stories” planned for you, including one about the birth of a very special baby.

No, not that baby. This is a different one.

Meanwhile, here is what I hope you will do.

1.     Make a list of your ten best friends.

2.     Get each of them a one-year subscription to my “5 a.m. Stories.”

I know, you’re saying, “But Bob, your ‘5 a.m. Stories’ don’t cost anything! What kind of a gift is that?”

You’re right, my stories are free. But your ten best friends don’t have to know that. I mean, all you really need is to find ten people who might actually believe somebody would pay money for this drivel, and you’re off to the races.

Your friends will click on the first story that lands in their mailbox, and they will say, “Whoa, this is pretty lame, but it looks expensive. I guess now we need to buy a gift in return!”

You see how it works? You’ll be getting something for nothing, which I believe is the spirit of Christmas.

Of course, my stories do have some value. My sweat goes into creating these things. I often spend almost fifteen minutes writing one, and then I give it to a sophomore from Shortridge High School to polish it up for me. Shortridge is where Kurt Vonnegut went to school, you know.

I do borrow a few of my “new” stories from old magazines, like “Soldier of Fortune” and “Weekly Reader,” but it takes some effort to cut and paste these things. You may call it plagiarism, but I call it an “homage,” which is classier.

Just speaking for myself, I would LOVE to get a subscription to my “5 a.m. Stories,” but it doesn’t seem as though there would be much point in that. I just can’t see myself asking Barbara, “What do you suppose the new story I just posted five minutes ago will be about?”

If you are balking at my suggestion, let me approach it another way. We have a proud holiday tradition in America, called regifting.

It works like this. Your haberdasher gives you a lightly used CD of Bob Wills singing, “I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas.” You scratch your haberdasher’s name off the gift tag, then you write your own name, and give the CD to your chimney sweep.

This regifting process works perfectly until there’s no room left on the tag. Then, I guess you’re stuck. So, my best holiday advice is, always buy the biggest gift tags you can find.

If regifting doesn’t appeal to you, there is a more sophisticated way to go, adapted from the Donald Trump strategy of appraising things creatively, depending on the audience.

Let me explain, and please keep an open mind. Let’s say some savvy literary agent out there thinks my stories would work well if they were collected and released as a book, and she finds a publisher who agrees. They issue my slick hardcover autobiography entitled, “They Called Me Scoop!” with a photo of me as a bewildered cub reporter on the jacket, and they price it at $24.99.

Now. Suddenly, the friends you gave that online subscription to are saying, “Wow, they’re getting $24.99 for this book, but we don’t have to buy it because we already get this stuff online! We got a pretty sweet deal!”

The thing is, you need to act quickly, because my book is going to wind up on the Barnes and Noble remainder table before the ink is even dry. Once that happens, then you’re only giving your friends a marked-down $4.89 gift, not something worth $24.99.

That means they only feel obligated to buy you a $4.89 present, which brings us full circle, to that lightly used CD of Bob Wills singing, “I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas.”

The one your haberdasher gave you, remember?

So, you will either have to eat the $20 loss on each book, or else – stay with me, here – you can recommend my autobiography to your book club and tell them you can get as many copies as they want, for $24.99 each. If it’s a high-class book club, the members won’t have a clue about the low remainder table price.

Then, you deduct all those $24.99 copies from your taxes in April – I’m pretty sure Christmas presents are deductible, but please double-check – and suddenly, you’re making a fortune!

And so am I, because don’t forget, I’m the author of the book and the publisher is never getting his generous advance back!

Well, that’s it for now. Let me see those subscription numbers rise!

The heartwarming Christmas stuff starts right here, next Sunday, with a story called “Angel Eyes.” Bring your tissues.