You Should Be A Writer!

It’s no secret that I enjoy typing words that I hope other people will enjoy or laugh at.  I’m doing it right now, and for some reason, you have felt compelled to read them.  I appreciate that.  It’s a gift from you to me that I cannot repay.  By the way, thank you for giving me this gift of reading my thoughts and sharing back to me.  I don’t know why you give me this honor, but I really do appreciate it.

(Oh dear lord, he’s going to write about writing.  Nobody wants to read this.  Why can’t he just write about his experience in Disneyworld or the time he broke a window at the golf course?) 

I’m sorry, this is what needs out of me today.  I’m going to indulge a bit of writing for therapy and you’re welcome to peek inside my head and judge me.  This is your invitation.  If you believe as I do, that this is going to be a rambling mess of self-obsessed gobbledygook (did you know there’s a right and wrong way to spell gobbledygook?), then feel free to pick through some of the other pieces that I may have written earlier.  Okanogan Part 1 and Hit On are kind of fun, but there’s more for you to look through if they don’t catch your fancy.  The rest of you are welcome to come with me on a short excursion through my complicated confidence and self-esteem issues. 

I am terrified.  Not just about snakes and latex balloons (another time), but about many of the things typing brings with it.  You see, I don’t even like the idea of calling myself a writer for fear that an actual writer will tear me apart.  I’m extremely comfortable calling myself a typist though.  But then, I also worry that there are some hardcore, old-school typing pool people who would point and laugh at my 53 words per minute.

I started writing when I was a kid.  At that time I couldn’t type and my handwriting was barely legible, but that didn’t stop me from spending hours writing my crooked, cursive curlycues on the lined paper with my No. 2 pencil.  My friends and I wrote stories together when we were 10, 11 and 12.  The stories were mostly violent battle fantasies about us saving the world from any number of bad guys.  It would be a study of delusions of grandeur.  

The action was paramount to everything else we wrote.  There wasn’t much character development or substance to the stories being told, but they did have a beginning, middle and ending.  They had themes and recurring characters.  Originality was exchanged for impossible amounts of hubris when it came to what our writing was to accomplish.

AT THAT AGE, we were doing these creative writing projects for ourselves on our own time, as a group; sharing ideas and pushing each other to become better writers.  My mom thought the stories were extremely creative at the time, in the mid 1980s.  If those stories were written and found in school today though, “FULL PSYCH EVAL FOR THESE KIDS! My God, we caught it just in time.”

I’ve always had the writing itch, but it’s an itch that is difficult to scratch when you’re going through school trying to find yourself AND you happen to have undiagnosed ADHD.   I’m not saying that ADHD is an excuse for not wanting to pursue writing, but it sure does make English class hard—and if English class isn’t fun, you’re not going to want to play in that sandbox.

As any of you still reading might ascertain, I’m not in the habit of adhering to the rules of grammar and punctuation.  I know of them, I think it is a great idea to understand them, but as with the rules of the road, I tend to bend some of them from time to time, and in some cases, accidently break the rules without being aware, like with U-turns.  Although sometimes I mess with the grammar rules on purpose to make a point or a joke. 

Most of the stuff you’ll read on this blog is first or second draft.  Just look at the second sentence in the paragraph above!  There are six commas.  SIX!  (,,,,,,)   The sentence above has six commas because I’m too lazy to separate the discourse into simpler, more breathable segments.  How does that happen?  Well, about three quarters of the way through the sentence, I realize I haven’t hit the period key for a while.  Then I read what I have written and determine how much more there is to write before I feel a period is worth my poking.  I tell myself to feel free to finish the sentence the way I want to, because A.A. Milne wrote beautifully long sentences when creating the whimsically jaundiced Winnie the Pooh.  Immediately after completing the sentence, the bad man that whispers mean things in my brain reminds me that I’m no A.A. Milne… but my writing is definitely poo.

I do work on the stories later.  I post them early to make sure I’m hitting the deadline I’m setting for myself each week.  But editing is a discipline step that I need to move up in the process order before releasing my ideas to the world beyond this blog.  Unfortunately if I DO go back and edit this piece, then the last two paragraphs won’t make any sense.  The six comma sentence will have become two or three independent sentences.  Then both the jokes about jaundice and poo will neither be setup correctly or make any sense, and I just won’t kill two mediocre jokes.  The point is, I need to be better at polishing this stuff up.

I wrote for a comedy website for a while and enjoyed that until it came to an end.  I wrote pieces for friends and for a podcast and always enjoyed that too.  Why not try to do something you enjoy?  The first reason that pops into my mind is that I might suck at it and lose everything I have.  However, when enough people tell you “You are funny,” or “you should be a writer,” or “you are funny, you should be a writer,” or “You should be a writer, you are funny,” you start to think you can do it.

Well that happened to me.  I suffer from what some may call an extremely supportive environment.  That means I have amazing friends and family that love me and want me to be happy.  This is normally a very positive thing and I’m fortunate to have it.  however, my main issue is separating the genuine, objective truth about my writing from the polite hyperbole used to maintain a friendly relationship with me. 

Here’s an example:   My wife is an excellent technical writer and wicked smart.  She has the letters and grades to prove it.  She tells me that she thinks my writing is very good and that she would support me if I wanted to drop my extremely awesome job and just write.  My wife has told me she didn’t like some of the pieces I have written, but for the most part, she gives me all kinds of praise and support around the things that I write.  BUT…She also thinks I’m handsome.  Immediately her opinions become suspect.  From there, my under-stimulated mind starts buzzing around in the area it knows best, self-doubt.  I start looking for reasons why my very educated and well-read wife would be wrong about my writing.  I think to myself things like, “She’s published in peer-reviewed journals, BUT she also bought the soundtrack to Titanic.” 

Enough people told me they enjoyed my writing that I bought a very benign book about humor writing.  The book wasn’t terribly funny, but it outlined some terrific writing exercises.  I’m still doing some of them and they have unlocked my vision around what I thought I could do.  One of the exercises was to start a blog.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to do that or not… that’s what led to this.

Well, you’ve all been so kind in reading the words that fall out of my fingers that I thought, maybe I need to submit some material and see if I can swim with the bigger fish, fish that write well (I used to say “write good,” but that is incorrect apparently).

I bought some big scary books that had tips on how to get your stories published and literary agent’s contact info (although they list all of their contact info, they would prefer you not contact them).  The books go on to say that if you have decided to pursue becoming a published author, it helps if you are already a well published author.  If you are already a well published author then your chances of publishing something as a NEW author… again… are increased from 0% to 3%, you lucky devil.

After explaining all of this, the books say to not get frustrated with rejection and to “keep trying.”  Understand, these books weren’t even written for me, they were written for people that actually know how to write.

Knowing what you do of my confidence, you will soon come to the conclusion that in order for me to make an attempt at semi-pro writing, I’m going to have to seriously delude myself into thinking I’m awesome—while at the same time, learn how to correct some very un-awesome writing habits.

I won’t write about writing again if I can help it.  Next week’s post will be much more fun, but this is what I needed to write about today.  I’m going to make a run at this writing thing and although it is terrifying and I’m not excited about all the rejection I’m about to receive, I’m glad the six of you that made it to the end of this post are with me, and that’s the Damm truth.