First of all, I want to report that as I was looking up "niche" just to be sure that I'm spelling it correctly (I was pretty sure, but overconfidence in my "command" of the English language can be the bane of my existence if I'm not careful.), I came across the word, "nipplewort." Now, because I apparently have a 13-year-old boy lodged in my brain somewhere, my eyes always lock upon anything that might be even vaguely smutty in the dictionary. As it turns out, "nipplewort" is a plant. It was used in "folk medicine" to cure breast tumors. Practitioners of folk medicine are/were concerned with breast tumors? Interesting. Anyway, I digress.
Secondly, I want to commend this blog thingy for being so easy to use. A monkey could make this thing work. Hey, I'm doing it, and that says something.
Thirdly . . . Oh, yes, first things last. What was I doing here, anyway? Oh, yes. I want to whine about being a "writer." That should be riveting. If you're still reading, you must either be my mom or someone who's just too damned nice. I have no problem with the latter. I'll exploit your altruism for all it's worth. Keep reading.
Stop. Mental tangent: I just wonder, because I just can't help but wonder, when did I stop being interesting to one of my very favorite people in the whole, wide world? I wish I knew the precise moment. It would be fascinating, in a sad kind of way, to note the very time and the very place that such a transition occured. Suddenly, I, myself, am not fascinating. I am not precious, nor a thing of even remote lovliness. I just started to be annoying, and I get more "annoying" every day, even though I'm the same person who once "deserved" undeserved attention. Does familiarity really breed contempt? Am I only good in very small doses? The world may never know, and I don't know if I want to know. Yes. Yes, I do. I'm just that masochistic.
Anyway, here's with the niche thing. I want to write. That much has been firmly established. Okay, great. What precisely do I intend to write? Well, I like to construct these humorous little essays about my own life that I find funny, and I have these quixotic hopes that others will find them funny as well. Yeah, I know, I'm not David Sedaris, and he seems to have this particulr "niche" all sorted out. On the other hand, I'm NOT David Sedaris, so what I have to say might be interesting in ways that differ from the ways that his stuff is interesting, so maybe there's room in the niche. Maybe I'm looking for a niche that's similar to his niche, but not entirely the same. Hmm.
I'm also hacking endlessly away at my poor, entirely unsolicited fiction. Now, here's the problem with this particular enterprise, I want to write popular fiction, but I don't usually read popular fiction, so would I even begin to know what readers of popular fiction might want? The last thing that I read that qualifies as "popular fiction" is a novel by Max Brooks called World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, and it's bloody brilliant. I want to shout from the rooftops, "Please, please, for the sake of whatever Entity makes you feel guilty on any given morning, Sunday or otherwise, please read this book! It's amazing, and your life will be better for having let your eyes feast upon these pages! So, yeah, there's obviously some good stuff being written these days. Will my stuff rank among the good, the bad, or the just plain ugly? Hard to say. I would like to think that what I sweat over possesses at least a modicum of merit, but what do I know? Like I said, I generally don't read the stuff on the lists . . . Any of the lists. I should probably start doing that, but that would take away good writing time, and, some place that you might have aspirations towards getting to when you die knows that I'm not getting any younger.
So, anyway . . . I write. I hope for an audience. I hope extra hard for the mental fortitude to finish the things that I've started, simply trusting seemingly beyond the limits of trust that these things have merit and will be received well by people who actually still care about the printed word. It's a tall order, I know. Sometimes I wish that I had developed a fervent desire to be a civil engineer at a very young age. Wouldn't my life be lovely?
2 comments:
Well, you could always aim for being a demolition expert. Pays good and there's always demand for destruction and new buildings.
Wow. I don't know who you are, but you much possess magical, golden insight. Did my college "counselors" have their heads up their asses? I'm great at knocking shit down! Spend two seconds in my company, and I'll probably send some unsuspecting whatnot, book, or piece of furniture flying and crashing. I might even knock you down. It's been known to happen. I don't mean to. It's just my natural gift. All these years I've been led to suspect that I'm just "clumsy." Poppycock. I'm a superhero with awesome powers of destruction in the guise of a mere mortal. Imagine what I could do with the right machinery . . . The proper explosives? These thoughts bring tears to my eyes. And, I could get business cards proclaiming my new, awesome status, "Demolition Expert," or, even better, "Champion of Destruction." How about "Goddess of Destruction?" No. I think Shiva's already got that one locked it. Can I claim to be "Demolicious?" No. People will assume that I have a much bigger ass than I do, and I'll get sued for false advertisement. Anyway. I'll have to think about it. The possibilities are endless here. And, wait . . . You say there's not only payment involved, but good bread to be made? This is a dream come true. Stop. They won't expect me to actually build stuff too, will they. That would ruin everything. I'm shamefully inept at putting anything together. Hannah had this little "robot sculpture" the other day. It was just one of these "insert tab A into slot B" kinds of deals, and it was completely beyond me. It made me disgusted with myself, so I had to destroy it. See? There I go again. Saddle up the ponies, kids. Mama's going to demolition school!
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