Acknowledgments

According to Degree of Difficulty, it’s right up there with the first sentence of your novel, the query/love letter to your agent-crush, and the recommendation letter for that former employee who slept with your husband but really is a damn good accountant and shouldn’t be denied a job just because she’s a horrible waste of skin.

I’m talking about the dreaded Acknowledgments page.

I’m here to save you some pain. Because that’s what the courts tell me I have to do in order to compensate for all the damage I do as editor. (It was either this, or work at a morgue. But I’m afraid of…wait for it…Lindsay Lohan.)

The Acknowledgments page may be the greatest work of fiction you’ll ever write. To make it easier for you, I’ve provided a template below. Simply replace the bracketed descriptions with the appropriate info, then send this to your publisher mere minutes before your book goes to press. You don’t want to send it too early because at least three people you’ve thought about listing will say something stupid and lose their thank-worthiness between the deadline your editor gives you and the last possible moment you can actually turn it in (which is just after the publisher says, “We’re going with ‘I’d like to thank Kanye West and God’ if you don’t send the information in the next five minutes”).

So, here. And you’re welcome. And please sign my time sheet so I can count this toward my community service.

Acknowledgments

Wow, what a ride. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for all the help I got from the great team at [name of publisher], including [list of people you don’t know personally who apparently had something to do with the production of the book, like the cover artist, copyeditor, proofreader, coffee monkey, that creepy guy with the blue goatee  from the marketing department]. Gosh, guys – you’re all the best!

I really wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my [mother; father; spermbank; alien host]. Thanks for [birthing me; empowering me; locking me in a closet for seventeen years so I’d have plenty to write about]. I’m proud to be called your [son; daughter; demon spawn; alleged murderer].

Thanks also to my writing group friends, [list only those people who said nice things about your book and not that woman who said it was like Twilight only not as well-written]. Your [hard work; encouragement; hopelessness as writers] inspires me.

This book would be [marginally readable; ten times as good; like Twilight only not as well-written] if it weren’t for the tireless work of my editor, [editor’s name goes here]. I still think you’re wrong about [deleting the prologue; changing the POV; re-writing the entire novel in your voice]. Just kidding. All your advice was brilliant. You deserve a [raise; vacation; bloodletting].

What can I say about my agent, [agent’s name goes here]? No really, what can I say [that captures the magnitude of thanks I owe him/her; that is defensible in court]? Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then, of course, there is the one person who not only believed in me, but also endured my [late nights; whining; lack of personal hygiene; constant swearing]. I’m talking, of course, about my [spouse; significant other; puppet-master; imaginary childhood friend]. You are [the yin to my yang; the moon and a million stars; the reason I wake up in the morning; the reason I drink]. This book is for you.

To all my readers – past, present and future – I love all of you more than [Downton Abbey; Nutella; the Downton Abbey episode where everyone was eating Nutella; Rob Lowe; that feeling you get when you’re about to be stabbed].

Above all, thanks be to [God, Buddha, Aslan, Kanye West, my cleverly-named dog Hemingway].