All The Words Are Gonna Bleed From Me
I know, it’s a blogging no-no to leave gaps this wide between posts. Well, tough shit. And I mean that in the nicest possible way, for all three people who read this (crossposted – not even on the site itself).
It’s not that I haven’t been writing; it’s just that I haven’t been writing here.
My love of the written word, of reading, writing, and of storytelling goes back a long way. Probably because writing is the ultimate way to monopolize the conversation. Blogging (for me) is simply a way to keep flexing that muscle, even if I don’t have anything interesting to say. And let’s face it; that’s a lot of the time. If I was that pithy and intriguing, I’d be getting paid for this because people were reading it, and advertisers would want to sell to those people. (You may now remove tongue from cheek.)
Occasionally, I feel like I do have something to say, and being the selfish bastard that I am for the purposes of this sentence, I keep those to myself. Not by choice, of course.
I write fiction, because (to paraphrase that legendary asshole, Harlan Ellison) I can’t not write fiction. And over the years, I have reached the stage wherein I, the unpublished writer, look aghast at what passes for popular literature and say, “I can do better than that.”
I may not be the next Shakespeare, the next Mark Twain, or even the next William Gibson, but can write circles around William Shatner’s ghost writer. For that matter, if the dumpster-full of formulaic vampire chick-porn authors are anything to go by, I should already be in Stephen King territory (speaking of formulaic…).
Arrogant? Yes. But true. It’s bad out there, kids.
For the past few weeks, I have been touching up a trilogy I’m currently in the middle of. Times have been a-changin’ faster than I can crank out this story, considering that the whole enchilada, in toto, will weigh in around a half a million words, about three-fifths of which has already been committed. That’s one and a half novels in the can.
Of course, I still have to get somebody to read the damn thing(s). And by “somebody”, I mean someone who doesn’t finish the first book and say, “It’s really good. You should get it published.” An agent, for instance.
If there’s anything comedy has taught me, it that getting a decent agent is almost 75% luck. If you’re not picky or smart, getting an agent isn’t actually all that hard. I’ve had offers as a comic, and turned them all down.
Why? Because not a one of them could open a door that I could not have opened by myself. Also, at least one of them was a predator. Which you also get in the literary world. For every earnest, honest, hard-working agent, there are a hundred earnest, dishonest, hard-working agents looking to bleed as many people of a few bucks as they can before everyone catches on.
Not to mention the sad, equally predatory, and ruinous world of “vanity” (or self) publishing. Sure, if you’re a minor celebrity who can’t be taken seriously by the literary world because you were once the annoying kid on a hit television show, and you have a flair for the thing (*cough*wilwheaton*cough*), you could do well by self-publishing. But for the rest of us, it’s just a pathetic exercise in self-delusion. Your book will go nowhere. Actually, even if it were published by a reputable publishing house, the odds are still good that your book is going nowhere.
And currently, neither is mine.
Thus, I have been sequestered; hunkered down with my laptop, sifting through hundreds of thousands of words in order to make sure my protagonist has heard of Wi Fi, and doesn’t make Clara Peller references. Occasionally, I find a typo, and it really pisses me off. Every second I spend reviewing material is a second I’m not creating new material. Unfortunately, it is the artist’s curse that they eventually become sick unto death of their creation, be it jokes, stories, songs, paintings, ad infinitum.
But however much I become frustrated or bored with the tedium, it pales in comparison to how much I dislike what comes next. Because if not for my crippling lack of acumen when it comes to self-promotion, I’d have more than a just handful of people noticing when I haven’t posted, and more than a handful of dubious credits to my name. And that translates all-too-well to pimping my book, or prostituting myself to that end, or some other mixed metaphor. Put simply, I suck hard at drawing the right kind of attention to myself.
But draw I must.
Otherwise, I’m might as well be blogging with myself.
Until I go blind.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 9:36 PM and is filed under Miscellaneous, Road Dog Diaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.