Category: humor

The Problem With Getting Published

It occurs to me the main problem with getting published – the paid kind of published, mind you – lies in all of the work you have to do that’s not writing. Selling is what I’m talking about. I don’t like selling; I’m bad at it. I’d prefer to sit down and write whatever catches my fancy, then have people come knock at my door. No, wait, my house is a mess, so I don’t want them knocking on my door.  Here’s what I want: for people to email me on a regular basis asking if I have any writing available for sale, anything at all.  

“Yeah, I got some poems I could let you have for, say $50 each.”  I’d reply. I’m not greedy, after all.

Then I would email them the poetry and they would drop money in my bank account. That way I could focus on the writing itself. And boy howdy, would it ever boost my productivity!

Not Doing the Math

I’ve been reading the new Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers. He says there’s a consistent pattern to the lives of the wildly successful. They’ve each put in 10,000 hours before reaching the pinnacle of whatever they’ve reached the pinnacle of. The Beatles – 10,000 hours playing music together. Bill Gates – 10,000 hours programming. Mozart, thanks to his father, had his 10,000 in by the age of 21.

I wonder how many hours I’ve spent writing. I imagine it’s far short of 10,000.  I wrote a lot in school. I chose college courses that required many lengthy papers. I have written creatively, off and on, since I was in grade school.  But the off periods really add up, I suspect.

Here’s how my not writing has gone today.  I have a theoretical Monday, one that works in the computer model. On my hypothetical Monday, I send my daughter off to Jr. High, drive my son to grade school, and report in for a three hour shift at work, getting off at noon.  I then come home, eat lunch, and have an hour all to myself to use for writing (real writing, the kind that requires me to concentrate and can’t be done with the kids in the house) before doing a quick chore or two and starting my afternoon drive around town picking up the kids from their schools. After that, it’s dinner and back in to work for another three hours while my husband is home with the kids. A somewhat hectic day, but I’ve put in one of those 10,000 hours.

My real Monday usually goes more like today. The schools are out for a snow day.  My husband stays home while I work in the morning. I come home & he goes to work.  My daughter announces that I need to drive her to a friend’s house at 1:00.  After my son and I drop her off, he realizes it’s almost Christmas and he hasn’t bought anything for anyone. I pause to appreciate having a generous kid before pouting over how I’m not at home writing. I take him shopping at WalGreen. We come home and I have to help him find the wrapping paper, scissors, gift tags, tape, etc. so he can wrap the gifts himself. Almost time to go pick up my daughter again before cooking dinner, and rushing back off to work. Not enough time for me to get into any deep writing, but I can hammer out a blog post.

Getting in my 10,000 hours 15 minutes at a time.  And no, I don’t want to know how long it will take to get there. I have no intention of doing the math.

Hello and the Death of Blogs

For the most part, I intend to write about writing on this blog.  The process, the struggle to get the words out when life is taking up all of my time, my writing inspirations, and whatever else my wandering mind considers blog-worthy.

But for my first post: a warning. The fact that I have finally started a blog most likely signals the beginning of the end for blogging. Whenever I become attached to a breakfast cereal, the grocery store stops carrying it. When my husband and I married, he owned a lot of vinyl LPs, and nothing on which to play them. I finally bought him a record player about the time everyone started switching to CDs. I own one of the last Chevy Venture minivans ever manufactured. It’s how things seem to go for me.

So, hello blogging world. Have fun producing your vlogs. I’ll catch with you there in a bit, long enough to say “Hey” before everyone leaves for the next adventure.

the damari