Category Archives: Writing

Aug 17 2012
46 Comments
Humorous, Three minute read, Writing

Sage Advice for Young Writers and Bloggers

Renee of Life in the Boomer Lane is a former hula hoop champion and a writer that keeps a hilarious blog, one of those blogs vampire blogs wish they could suck dry. Recently I asked her to write something for Snotting Black on the advice she would give to a 23-year-old wanting to be a writer or a blogger. She graciously agreed and sent me a really beautiful piece that I found touching, informative, and jealousy-inducing because of its depth and wittiness. May it invoke similarly complicated responses in all of you.

I’m not worthy.

Sage Advice for Young Writers and Bloggers

The first thing I did when Emily asked me to guest write a post for her blog was to be amazed that anyone would want to take such a risk.  The second was to look at the topic: what I would tell a 23-year-old who wanted to be a writer or a blogger.  I did a quick calculation and discovered that in the intervening decades between age 23 and where I am now, I have lost approximately  239 lbs and gained approximately 259. My hair has changed color and style 41 times, and my bra size has gone from 34B to 34D. My shoe size and hat size have remained constant, but my height has decreased by 1.5 inches.  Two husbands appeared, but not at the same time. Small beings in my immediate vicinity have appeared, gotten larger, and eventually disappeared. One has now produced two small beings of her own, thereby assuring me that in the distant future, after I am gone, someone will look at photos of me and wonder why people looked so funny back then.

Writingwise, the decades have contained fiction and non-fiction, some self-published, some published by others.  A couple contests were won. A short story was read on NPR.  Many rejections were collected. A blog was started a little over two years ago.  None of my writing has made me famous, and very little of it has made me any money at all.  All of it seemed of value when originally written, but not all of it withstood the test of time.

So, back to the topic: What would I tell a 23-year-old now, about wanting to be a writer and/or a blogger?

The good news is that you are coming of age at a time in which anyone has easy access to self-publishing.  The bad news is that you are coming of age at a time in which anyone has easy access to self-publishing.  Chances are overwhelming that the only way you will see your work in print will be because you put it there, not because you are discovered.  Chances are also overwhelming that you won’t get paid for what you write.  There are way too many writers out there, really good writers, happily giving their words away.

Most people who are currently successful in publishing are online.  Print magazine subscriptions are plummeting, while Huff/Post is thriving.  The Kindle has passed the vibrator as the #1 sex toy for women.  So throw out your dildos, and whatever you do, do it online.

Just because you have a passion to write doesn’t mean that the world is waiting for your words. They are too busy stockpiling water for the Armageddon or watching Bachelor Pad 2 or standing in line for the next iPhone.  Whether you have a publisher or not, the only person who will market your book is you. If you don’t create a demand for your book, there will be none.

The easiest way for a literary agent to assess the quality of your work is to ignore it.  Literary agencies throw unread manuscripts into large boxes and anyone who has time on their hands can take free reading home.  Few people do. If you want someone to actually read what you submit, you are going to have to be very creative and very diligent. In other words, you are going to have to do more than send out query letters.

Like book writing, people aren’t waiting for your blog posts, either. Building up a blog readership can be ridiculously time consuming, and, just when you are patting yourself on the back over having 1000 followers, you discover someone who has 10,000 or 100,000 followers and they aren’t famous, either.

Freshly Pressed is like a one night stand.  A hot one night stand, yes.  A one night stand that will make you shriek and rock you to your toes and back again. But it won’t last longer than that.  You won’t be able to take it home to introduce it to your parents.  It might ask you out again for more one night stands, but on subsequent romps, no matter how spectacular, some part of you will know the deal.  You will know that in the morning, you’ll be alone again, and Freshly Pressed will be gone, off to fondle another blogger.

The bottom line is that you won’t listen to any of this because you really, really believe in the depths of your soul that you have what it takes to be a writer.  You believe that what you write will be the next Big Thing.  You believe that the world will take a texting break in order to read what you have written.  And thank goodness for that.  Because after the marriage and the mortgage and the mayhem of child rearing, you might set the writing aside, in favor of more pedestrian pursuits.  And that would be a shame.  Because you might have been the one to beat the system.

P.S. from Snotting Black: Isn’t she great? Visit her blog! Give her a high-five!

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Aug 08 2012
44 Comments
Humorous, Job hunting, Three minute read, Writing

“Spit in My Mouth and I’ll Tell You”

Try me. Just try me.

So I’m at a party, in line for the bathroom or staring out the window wondering what it would be like to be free and somehow I get talking to a stranger. We exchange pleasantries, place our palms together and grip firmly, and then as the banter inevitably dies down and we’re breathing out the tail end of our last haha, one of us reaches for the easiest conversation topic possible:

So…what do you do?

The “do” question is innocent, merely an attempt to understand the other person better, or maybe even form a connection, “Oh you do that? I do that too! Do you know her? I know her too! Wasn’t that one thing crazy!?” And so on and so forth.

But the question can be problematic. What if, for example, I currently spend most of my time making money doing something I hate? Should I put this forward as the best summary of my person, that I’m someone willing to subject themselves to mental torture day in and day out for a couple of bucks?

What if I’m unemployed, but doing everything from hiking the Sierra Nevada to creating a large-scale bronze sculpture Gumby, to compulsively poking people on facebook?

Or what if the things I do to make money are unrelated to how I define myself? What if they’re only a way to make money? What if, in theory, I make money by babysitting and working at a restaurant, but what I really want to do is write and be an incredibly successful author read and loved by the masses? What should my response be to the “what do you do?” question? I can’t tell the truth because the other person will have no idea what to do with me and try to leave and I’ll be forced to follow them. But if I say I’m a writer, I open up a whole other can of worms.

The first thing they ask is: what do you write?

I’ve been asked this God knows how many times and I still don’t have a good answer. My shortest response time is slightly over a minute. Somewhere, an Olympian just ran a quarter of a mile and I’m still fumbling around trying to explain what I write. I end up blabbing about the blog and humor writing and exploring different writing styles and it’s very boring for the other person and just plain stressful for me because then I’m like, “Oh my God. Am I even a writer? What are all those words I typed out yesterday? Why didn’t they fit into something I could describe to this guy without sounding like someone who might steal his wallet when he leans over to look at the event brochure on the coffee table?

So the next time someone asks me what I do, I’m going to assume they mean, “What would you do if you could do anything?” and I’m going to tell them I’m a writer, and then when they ask me what kind of writer I am, I’m going to ask them to spit in my mouth.

What, they’ll say.

Yeah, just go ahead and spit in my mouth and I’ll tell you what I write.

They won’t do it, I won’t have to figure out and then tell them what I write, and we’ll both leave the party with interesting stories. Win win.

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Aug 06 2012
21 Comments
Food, Humorous, Writing

Please Let Me Watch You Eat

A million donuts? Two? When would they be satisfied?

The Olympics is a nationalistic meathead’s dream. Every four years, thousands of top athletes from all over the globe gather and bodily compete with one another, determining the greatest countries through sheer sweat and muscle, swimming, rowing, clawing, and back-flipping to the top of the doggy pile and victory dancing on the bodies of lesser countries. Thousands of pounds (kilos) of muscle writhing with one another in a city famous for tea and stony-faced soldiers: what fun!

Regardless of which Olympic event I’m watching, my reaction is always the same.  “Whoaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……………they’re so fast.” If I were an Olympic broadcaster, my narrative would go something like, “This woman is very fast, Bill, very fast. Did you see how fast she’s going? You know what, they’re all really fast. They should all get medals. Bill, the last time I ran, my knee started hurting after about five minutes so I stopped and went home. I’m 23, Bill. That woman is 39 and she is going very fast. Let’s go get her a medal.”

After going gaga over the sheer speed and athleticism, the fact most of these people could outrun various wild beasts and then spear them and carry their carcasses to the nearest hibachi grill at full sprint, I immediately move to the next logical topic of rumination: how much they eat. Seriously, how much food could a team of male gymnasts consume? Or female swimmers? What about the long-distance runners when they’re gearing up for a race? These “humans” are made entirely of muscle and work out for 90% of the time. Their caloric intake must be huuuuuge.

My Olympic dream is something quite simple: I want to go to an Italian restaurant with a group of Olympians, male and female, from all different sports. I want to point to the menu, say “We’ll have everything.” Minutes later, the entire staff of the restaurant emerges carrying silver platters loaded with mountains of pasta. And then I would watch, in awe, as the hungriest people in the world ate.

What would it be like? Would people lose limbs and wear protective goggles to prevent eye injury? Would they be civil but determined? How fast would it take to demolish the food on the table? When would they be hungry again? I have so many questions burning inside of me. Each time I turn on the television, they strike me again with the force of a discus. I see a man running, I wonder what he ate that day. I see a woman playing water polo, I imagine her going to town on eight big macs for breakfast. I MUST KNOW THE TRUTH.

We all know that the only true benefit of exercising is being able to eat more without gaining weight. Is the whole “Olympic” thing just a way to mask these people’s food addictions? And is there enough food in London for them to feed hordes of hungry Olympians? How much pasta would it take to satiate their appetites?

I exhaust myself with questioning. Perhaps I will never know. I turn to my oatmeal, and eat quietly.

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Jul 30 2012
13 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read, Writing

When Idioms Collide You Roll with the Cookie Crumbs

These tasted about as good as they looked, which wasn’t great.

Let me ask you this, if the cookie crumbled in a certain way and I end up having to roll with the punches, could I also roll in the cookie crumbs? Could I perhaps eat some of the larger cookie crumbles providing they didn’t fall on the ground anywhere gross, like in the kitchen sink? What kind of cookie is it, because I was really craving a white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie earlier and that’d be perfect. Oh it’s just a sugar cookie. I guess that’s okay. So I’ll roll here then? Okay cool, see you later. Sorry the cookie crumbled like this.

Wait!

And if I, by accident, killed two birds with one stone, could I then stitch them up in order to save nine others? I am aware that stitching them up won’t do anything at all, that they’re completely dead because I knocked them out of the sky with a big ‘ol rock, and that they died of massive internal and external injuries, but I thought maybe if I just kind of did the stitch-up thing then I could help out some other critters.  I don’t even know how I hit them—it was really weird. I think that was the literally the first time I’d ever hit anything I aimed at. I only did it in the first place because I was really confident I wouldn’t actually get them.

When they both ended up dying I felt so awful. I had a moment of crisis, like what am I, some kind of tweetie murderer? Is my life so pathetic that I’ve got to take out my angst on a couple of dumb creatures gifted with the beauty of flight? But then I thought maybe there’s a loophole—wait so what did you say, can I stitch them up in order to save nine other bird lives? How were these other birds going to die anyways? Could I save any other kind of animal if I stitch these up? What about cats? I really like cats—no go? Wait, you’re saying that stitching the birds up won’t do anything at all? Not even save the other birds? Well that’s a bummer…

I have one more question–you probably know where I’m going with this, but my dad just got me this pony. Oh you have to go….well will you be here tomorrow?

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