What We Didn’t Do on our Not-a-Vacation

In order to pursue the betterment of person kind and to assure our place in the annals of history, the wife and I went to Denver for a few days. This is why there was no blog post on Monday and Tuesday. If you’re an avid reader of “...Other” then I do apologize for the lapse. Hopefully you found other entertainment. Your sock drawer, for example-- surely it is now well arranged?

I can’t tell you what we were doing in Mile High City, but I will say this: the Seahawks are 10 and 1, while the Broncos are 9 and 1 so far… and they won’t be playing each other unless they both go to the Superbowl. That’s all I’m saying. I mean, those facts have nothing to do with why we were there, but, well… that’s all I’m saying.

While we were there, in addition to not writing blog posts, I struggled to even get my daily NaNoWriMo words done. I managed by smashing a keyboard for a few hours on the two plane rides. I was using a little iPad mini and Zagg bluetooth keyboard. Monday morning I just typed into an email and sent it to myself. Tuesday evening I wrote 16 100-word paragraphs. It was grueling.

In between I noticed something that I’ve been doing for a while-- talking out loud to myself. Little innocuous things, like “should I get this shirt or this one?” Not deep philosophical questions, to say the least.

But then I saw this article about our inner voices. Its mostly about inner voices, but it starts off with a little description of Virginia Woolf talking out loud to herself. And of course, I started thinking (without saying it out loud because I’m in a small office with a coworker) “Hey, she’s a writer, and I’m a writer, so… like maybe writing a lot makes people talk out loud to themselves more!”

That’s not what the article’s about and there’s no evidence of this anyway. But I want to think it. I want to think that in the last month, since my daily word output has sky-rocketed, my brain must be changing. For the better, I hope.

Or not. This might just be the latest foster parent in my brain’s visitation schedule. From March to about June this year I was playing a lot of WoW. Then from June to September I was reading a novel almost every day. And now it’s a writing jag. Maybe in December I’ll be into collecting Lego minifigures.

Too Much Writing, Not Enough Writing

Add this to the moan n’ groan department. I can’t keep up with all my (self-imposed) writing assignments. Not to mention everything else I have to do.

Woe is me, I know. At least I get to eat (well, not today, I’m on a juice cleanse. Apparently that means I drink things with lots of cayenne pepper in them. Got it at Costco, on a whim, but I might be shooting myself in the foot because that Costco Mac n Cheese we had last weekend blocked me up good. Sorry for being graphic, but hey, you’re not even supposed to be reading this, you’re supposed to be reading those other darn blogs and earn me some darn AdSense money, darn it).

At least I have a roof over my head (except today when I was walking to the bus stop in the rain. It wasn’t a down pour, but I’d decided to leave my coat at home because it’s too heavy for the weather we’ve been having lately, and I’m tired of sweating up and down all those darn stairs. I should take the elevator, but who has time to wait for elevators? And I need to burn the calories! Yes, I’m walking contradiction, sue me).

At least I have a loving, caring wife (except in the mornings when she’s on her feet and walking to the shower but somehow still has her head on the pillow. I don’t know how she does it. But I have learned my lesson—being bright and chirpy in the morning will get me a deep bite mark on my arm, which I’d better appreciate for the way it distracts me from being throttled by angry, sleepy hands. Just kidding. I love you honey. Why are YOU reading this stupid blog).

Still, whatever my privileges, I feel like it is my duty as a middle aged middle class white hetero married man with a Kia and two mortgages to complain, so I’m going to complain. Woe is me. Too much writing to do, way behind on NaNoWriMo. Struggling to find content for this blog AND the brain one AND the zombie one. Have to write a weekly blog for work. Have to write emails to people. And did I mention: laundry, dishes, cleaning the garage, cleaning the gutters, getting the house ready for an 18th-month-old, the new World of Warcraft expansion, Desktop Dungeons, Grand Theft Auto V, PvZ2, keeping up with Facebook, keeping up with Tumblr, keeping up with Reddit, and my notes! I have SOOOOO many daily notes to process.

I tell you what, it’s this job, it’s having a job, its going to a job every day and working. I shouldn’t complain, I know, I should be grateful. And I am. I love this job, I will gladly sacrifice any of those other things to keep this job. Especially cleaning the gutters. But I am being stretched thin, here.

All my own fault of course. But at least moaning about it got me five-hundred or so words to put on this darn blog.

It’s Not Complicated

The sister of a famous website’s founder has a new book out*, and I want to go on the record about it. I do not in the least begrudge her her success. Why would I begrudge her? Because the book is only doing well because she’s famous. I write books, and I am not famous, and my books are not successful. But seriously, I don’t for a second feel as if her success is undeserved in the slightest.

This is not irony or sarcasm or anything of the like. This maybe a touch of cynicism, or would be if I was trying to suggest her success is undeserved. I have not read this book. I might—I know people who are close to people who are… well, there’s a degrees of separation here, but few enough that this book will be in my social circle.

But I haven’t read the book yet. But I have been in the world of words for a long time. I have logged my Gladwellian 10,000 hours. I have learned from professors, I have taught to students, and I can assure you—most people can write. So I have no doubt that this book was written by someone who can write.

Writing requires desire, writing well requires practice, and writing success requires luck. And on that last one, I do mean random luck. Of course, that luck could be either a publisher happened to read and like your manuscript out of the thousands she sees each year, and then when it was published it happened to catch the eye of a few people, one of who was influential enough to suggest it to more people… none of that will occur by hard work. I don’t care how much sweat you put into it—you will not be able to work harder than the people Oprah “discovers” are lucky.

Or in the case of the book I’m talking about, you lucky enough to be related to someone who was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to ride a social phenomenon right up to the stratosphere.

I need to make this point: none of this is sour grapes. I call myself a writer not because I hope to get lucky, or because of my years and years of practice, but because of that desire. That desire exists in every single other person who writes. And to say one book is better than another is to say one person is better than another. I refuse to say such a thing. Shakespeare was not a better person than Stephenie Mayer. If you like one book more than another, that’s all good, but that’s you.

So why say any of this? Like I said, I want to go on the record. I won’t be the only one pointing out that the book’s only successful because of who she is, not what she wrote. And I want to remind everyone: this is a how it is FOR ALL BOOKS.

Just read it, or don’t. Provenance isn’t really that interesting.

*yes, I know the book is only one part of a larger entity, namely her own website and all it has to offer. My thesis stands: value doesn’t guarantee success.