Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Book in progress

Knock on wood, I've written a book. It isn't finished but it's done, I mean I know what I'm going to do with it and have actual words to go with it and an ending and a beginning and a middle.
Now what?
It would be easy except there are all kinds of obstacles like no computer and that's like no way Jose, I mean I have a pc just no internet but I do have a warranty but no way to travel the one hundred miles to the store and have it repaired. So I feel like holding a sign up at any intersection begging for money to have my pc repaired as this book is singing in my brain and I've always wanted to do this, by God, and there should be a way, the Red Sea shall part, money will fall from heaven or heaven help me I can find a job. No one in the family understands nor will they lend money while they buy bigger & more impressive phones, that this is a burning lifetime desire and nor do they understand that while in the past I have been sort of talking about & never doing anything about writing now I have, really, really done it because when I talk about my writing their eyes glaze over or they act like they smell an unmentionable smell and manners too good to mention it.
Holly Lisle says on her site to never expect any help or support from family. It's true. Unbelievable but true. Writing is never thought much of until it brings in actual cash and until it does it's a pipe dream, a fantasy of crazy people like you. You're nuts.
Polite society acts like you've seen UFO's and been abducted many times, people think you're trying to act like you're better than they are and by God, you put your pants on one leg at a time just like they do, (My Dad said this koan constantly, like it was impressive and I felt that my intelligent father talking about pants and pant's leg meant something else entirely and I was too stupid to get it because talking about how people put their pants on and whether they do it like you do is incredibly stupid) and why don't you do something you're actually capable of doing like working at the EZ Mart because you are ordinary just like them, you grew up right in their neighborhood by God and writer's are people who went to college.
In fact, I believed that writers were like experts and authorities and what they wrote was the absolute truth just because someone printed it on paper and put in between cardboard covers with a title and everything. I remember when I discovered that the author of "Flowers for Algernon" wasn't a shrink and was in fact in therapy himself. Some of that stuff he just made up. Stephen King says people typically believe that fiction is real and that non-fiction is false. I believe everything I read while I'm reading it, which is just me I guess.
In fact some of us have to do something when people say we can't do it, stubbornly and stupidly. Like me. I wrote a book, sort of. Just need a few more polishes 'till it shines.

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