If I Was Sure, I Wouldn’t Be Asking

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.   

Tom Lehrer   

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Now, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been doing this for a while, now, this writing thing.  I think I do it pretty well.  Hell, I’m down to one major writing  mistake  per article after 965 columns here.  I think that’s a pretty damn big achievement after starting out writing literally every other word capitalized, writing 500 word paragraphs and run on sentences that were a hundred plus words long.   

I mean, it’s nice and all, if you like to hurt your eyeballs and hate the language, but it isn’t what you’d call readable.   I’ve changed up my style a fair bit as time has gone on as well, from that god forsaken crap to a more conversational tone, and that’s really what I am for here.  To write out one side of a conversation, in hopes that it will help create the other side of that conversation.    

On most nights it doesn’t, and to be honest I don’t really mind.  Part of this is also to let me poke and prod my own mind, to find out where I stand in relation to the stories I read, to the people involved, to the world. And to speak how I feel about a great many things, but you knew that.  As the low man on the totem pole in this world, I like the fact that this venue gives me a voice that I would not otherwise have.  It allows me to speak on thoughts that without this place, I would simply not express.  I watch the news and the world, politics, business with more interest, to write about it here, to learn about the way the world works for everyone else.   

I know how it works for me.  Well.  It has it’s own things to do, and isn’t much interested in me, and that’s OK, it’s a big world, billions of people out there, living their lives, trying to figure things out just like I am, going on with the business of living, they don’t need to take interest in me.   

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Viddy of the day:  a promo for a documentary called Bad Writing, which is something that happens a lot here.  Maybe I’m in it and don’t even know it.  I hope not… That would… suck.  😛   

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From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.   

Groucho Marx   

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Translation: and on the 11th day God created Worcestershire sauce, and he was vaguely annoyed by it

 

I say that to say this.  I am trying for the life of me  to figure out what to do with my writing, and I want your help.  I want to write a book, but with so many things going on out there in this big, beautiful world out there, I am honestly not sure what to write about.  Or how to go about writing it, to be truthful with you.   

Have you ever looked at a book outline, a serious book outline? Me either, and I’ve looked for the damn things.  How the hell would I go about writing a book if I can’t get the skeleton of the damn thing together properly? Now I’d write about politics, but have you seen the glut of writers writing about THAT subject?  I want to, but, in a world of  Harvard educated Rhodes scholars, and jaded veteran journalists, what the hell is a guy with a GED and an attitude problem gonna write about that anyone will listen to?  Music maybe?  Again, no College education, who’d listen to an uneducated unrecorded musician write about music?  Economics… please.    

Hmmmm, maybe they would listen.  I dunno.  I just want advice on which way to go on this.  What do I do best as a writer? An honest critique is what I seek.  What do I need to seriously work on? I won’t know if no one tells me.    

So go through some of my stuff, tell me what you like and what you don’t.    

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Have a good night, America, I’ll write to you tomorrow.