Being a writer I’m used to rejection and I’ve built up a thick skin, but often with the skill of writing comes the lackluster self-deprecating low self-esteem that for more colorful characters leads to alcoholism. I can’t hold my alcohol so any alcoholism by me would mean ruined furniture and I can’t settle for that with my pre-Fight Club OCD.
The first rule of writing should be to not give a shit, but everyone does. I’ve poured hours into work writing ebooks that didn’t make a dime. The only success I have had is writing an opinion editorial about crowdsourcing legislation in the United States which garnered about 100 shares on social media from Crowdsourcing.org.
The second rule of writing is do not talk about your failures. This is something I’m not quite good at and I always think back to “how could I have made that better?” Often when I write it’s on a whim and I don’t catch my flaws in rhetoric and the rhythm of the story or my personal assessment of situations.
The fact of the matter is when I write an ebook or try to write a novel I hit a barrier at 30 pages. It’s like eating that 60 ounce steak in Amarillo just to prove you can and get a free meal and t-shirt but after about halfway through every bite tastes like failure. That’s me when I’m trying to write a novel.
Overall I believe I’m a damn good writer. Writing is an antiquated medium in the world of new media where people would rather youtube, tweet, or facebook before they wrote anything that creates a dialogue or is controversial. Social media is so limited and so powerful; it helps and it hurts. America needs to get back to the roots of reading and writing before the corporate lemmings tell us it’s okay to be limited to 140 characters.