The Write Stuff

“Do you like mysteries?”

The voice greeting me upon my entrance belongs to a woman more than twice my age. It belongs to an author doing a signing at Barnes and Noble. No one is there for her, and she has to hock her book literally one by one. And this makes me think, “Do I really want to be a writer?”

I just felt so sad for this woman. Here she is, clearly well past retirement age, gallantly pushing her book in some bumblefuck B&N. Good lord, could that ever be me? How would I hock my book? “Hi, do you like short, mildly humorous essays about such various topics as unemployment, Hallowmas and the Maury Povich show? I use the word ‘fuck ‘ a lot. O, I’m sorry, I didn’t see your three year old there.”

I mean, I feel bad for her. I am pretty sure she wasn’t expecting a mad rush of people, but, still. I can kind of sympathize with her; no one’s asked me to sign a single damn copy of my Wildwood story. Heartless motherfuckers. My list of people to piss on when I mysteriously have a ton of money and power grows daily.

It’s an illusion that just because you get a book published, you have it ‘made’. For every Steven King and Janet Evanovich, there are folks like this geriatric slaving away with no money or recognition. I blame people like John Grogan. Grogan wrote Marley & Me. Before he wrote that book, he was a columnist. I read some of his early stuff, and it bounded between the sappy to feebly humorous. Marley is by far his best work, and one of my top 5 books of all time. Maybe when I read a sixth book, that will change. Since then, Marley has turned into a cottage industry for Grogan. There’s a whole line of Marley books out now. I can’t begrudge him. But, all because of just one book, he can live comfortably the rest of his life. And isn’t that what we all want?

But is this really the life I want? I mean, if millions of people want to read about Fred Hadayia and Mandy Moore peeing (by far, the 2 Klogs that drive people here), well then maybe I should expand those topics. Perhaps a Roger and Me like search for the illusive Fred. Maybe tales of chasing down Mandy’s husband, Ryan Adams, outside one of his gigs and cornering him. “C’mon, Ryan, I am sure you’ve seen her shit, too.”

Any bookstore is filled with thousands of books by ‘normal people’, books that never make their money back, books that no one reads. It’s frighteningly like the music biz. It’s not that I want to write a book; I don’t. But I am on the eve of submitting another piece to the same Wildwood paper that might get published. (Yes, this should be another Klog, but there’s only so much multi-tasking I can do, a’ight?) And even if I did write a book, what the hell would it be about?

I can’t imagine writing a book. That’s got to be incredibly tough. And, to be clear, by book, I mean a real deal book. Not some vanity book, written by such literary heavyweights as Jenny McCarthy and Monica Lewinsky. But if I did write a book, what could it possibly be about? Below are the only topics I feel I know enough about to maybe fill a whole book:

Unemployed and not bleeding

How I kept my organs off of eBay

All the people who didn’t hire me are racists

Things you can make with dog hair

The occasional alcoholic

Hockey is for men, baseball is for fairies

Reviews of 500 albums you’ve never heard of

Places I got into because I look like the signer from Nickelback

But who am I to judge? I am a poor reader at best. The older you get, the harder it is to find good books that have lots of pictures. Is it my fault I am a visual guy? I have no appreciation for the literary ‘giants’. Haven’t we given this Shakespeare guy enough play already? Kindles and Nooks and iPads are great and all, but if you’re using those to read Chaucer, clearly, you don’t deserve the technology. I mean, let’s focus on some writers who don’t wear questionable dress. I personally nominate Uncle John from the oft ignored Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series. That guy makes me laugh. And he doesn’t use the king’s fucking English.