In case you haven't noticed it, I'm prone to melancholy moods. You don't have to be crazy to be a writer, but it sure helps. To begin with you have to convince people that you are a writer, especially family. I mean all those chowderheads who can't compose a grocery list, but they have all the advice on how to write a best seller. If you survive that you can move on to phase two.
You'll never make any money being a writer. It's not in the cards. The house always wins. The best you can ever hope for is to etch out an existence where you pay the bills and then lie to your family. I hate it when someone asks, “How much MONEY have you made?” Nobody asks a plumber that. Think about it. How much? Since when? This year? Since I got out of high school? To the penny? How much money have YOU made, not counting what you borrowed from me!
So why do we do it? There's something about expressing yourself that is therapeutic. When you pour your heart into words your heart doesn't hurt so bad, and just the act of putting it all down explains things to YOU! The public be damned. What to they know. That's why I edit so much. It's not that I screw up, it's that the point I'm trying to make becomes clearer until even I can understand it. Then you publish.
Publish. What a joke. Any thirteen year old school girl can do that now. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, they all hold the promise of instant fame, but the song remains the same; How much MONEY have they made? So, there it is. Why do we do it? We do it because in fifty years, after we stop stinking in the ground, some schoolgirl will read it in some classroom, and while all of her classmates are staring out through the window, waiting on lunch, the muse will land on her shoulders and another writer will be born. She will step quietly into the melancholy world bequeathed to her by those select few cursed to walk with the pen.
You'll never make any money being a writer. It's not in the cards. The house always wins. The best you can ever hope for is to etch out an existence where you pay the bills and then lie to your family. I hate it when someone asks, “How much MONEY have you made?” Nobody asks a plumber that. Think about it. How much? Since when? This year? Since I got out of high school? To the penny? How much money have YOU made, not counting what you borrowed from me!
So why do we do it? There's something about expressing yourself that is therapeutic. When you pour your heart into words your heart doesn't hurt so bad, and just the act of putting it all down explains things to YOU! The public be damned. What to they know. That's why I edit so much. It's not that I screw up, it's that the point I'm trying to make becomes clearer until even I can understand it. Then you publish.
Publish. What a joke. Any thirteen year old school girl can do that now. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, they all hold the promise of instant fame, but the song remains the same; How much MONEY have they made? So, there it is. Why do we do it? We do it because in fifty years, after we stop stinking in the ground, some schoolgirl will read it in some classroom, and while all of her classmates are staring out through the window, waiting on lunch, the muse will land on her shoulders and another writer will be born. She will step quietly into the melancholy world bequeathed to her by those select few cursed to walk with the pen.
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