As I might have mentioned, I'm in the process of trying to write something decent, in which I provide a series of Rules (and supporting commentary) for the benefit of guys, who are incapable of figuring things out for themselves. It's fun. Time consuming, and slow going - after spending all day sitting at a computer at work, I generally don't want to spend all evening sitting at a computer at home - but visible progress is being made.
But as I work through the Rules, and especially as I write the associated commentaries, the underlying theme has become increasingly crystal clear. And what it boils down to is this: Woman live their lives at the mercy of their hormones. Men live their lives at the mercy of their own egos.
Guys tend to get pissed off at women for being loopy, flighty, inconsistent, illogical, and occasionally downright bat-shit crazy. One of the Rules (The Lunar Cycle/Lunar Psycho Rule) actually reads: "She will occasionally flip out and do/say/feel crazy fucked up things. She cannot help it, she usually doesn't mean it, and she will get upset if you bring these things up at a later date. Weather the gale or jump ship of your own choice, but accept that there will be those storms." The reason for this, I have come to believe, is the continually fluctuating levels of hormones that she is suffering from. There is no possible way to tell what a woman is thinking, because - aside from a fairly constant buzzing of worrying about pretty much everything that's happening and might happen - women change their mind about whatever it is they're contemplating several times over the course of any given day/hour/minute. They can't help it. It's just the way their electro-chemical programming works.
As for guys, we generally don't have that problem with fluctuation. We spend pretty much our entire lives at fairly high levels of hormonally-induced sexual excitation, on the off chance that a woman might suddenly deign to put out. We need to be ready for that, because god knows it doesn't happen often. But as we don't suffer from the swings, it's hard for us to understand the various mood/mind swings.
Further, being continually amped-up on testosterone means that men are generally oblivious to most of what is happening around us. Male electro-chemical programming results in us perpetually thinking of ourselves as James Bond, or Walker, Texas Ranger (or some other character; I personally consider myself more a Thomas Crown type). Our lives are a movie - starring us, of course - and it is completely inconceivable that the script should call for such things as professional failure, angry girlfriends, or the idea that we are less than spectacular in bed. We're the Star, after all! None of that shit can happen to us! If it looks like that is happening, it must be a mistake, because there's simply NO WAY that the hero in the movie falls victim to that shit.
Most of the problems in our lives, and nearly all our problems with women, stem from the fact that, as guys, we are pretty much incapable of getting over ourselves to the point where we can actually notice what's going on around us. (Of course, all of this only applies to other guys. Not to me. I'm the Star in this flick, after all.)
The battle of the sexes is based on the genetic failings of the participants. That's the sum total of what I've learned from my current recreational writing project (other than blogging, that is). If you want to hear more about this, you'll probably have to read The Rules.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Publication
I wish I could say that the reason that I've been less than diligent about blogging is that I've been devoting my artistically-oriented free time to working on something that might actually be publishable someday. I wish I could say that. And I really have been spending quite a bit of time working on something that might be publishable some day. But the simple fact is that I haven't been updating here very often because the last month has fairly well sucked, and I just haven't been able to work up the energy to sit down and start typing. Which, I'm convinced, is the true key to quality blogging; nobody who reads these things really cares all that much about the subject matter, we just like seeing what's going on in the lives of people we know, and if we can get an occasional laugh (either laughing along with the blogger, or laughing at their expense), so much the better.
Based on this theory, and also based on my recent experiences writing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I've reached the conclusion that the VAST majority of aspiring writers are aiming for the wrong goal. Far too many people dream of coming up with the Next Great American Novel. Goes to show that they haven't thought the matter through. If you can score and score big (and I mean HUGE: think J. K. Rowling), you can come up with characters and storyline that both you and everyone else fall in love with, and spend a decade making it all come together, en route to becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world. Of course, the reason that J. K. Rowling is the only example of that sort of success is that she's the only one who's had that sort of success. Might as well aspire to winning the lottery; you'd probably have better chances of success with Lotto.
In any rate, for the vast rank and file of aspiring writers, that sort of thing will never happen, for a variety of reasons I won't go into right now. Although some writers make their careers on a single storyline (Card's Ender Saga, Jordan's Wheel of Time, Lucas' Star Wars), it's amazingly rare that anyone reaches that level of transcendental success. The hardest part about writing is rendering the storyline (that looks like gold inside your own head) into some concrete written form, and doing it in such a way that the storyline still looks like gold after the translation from loosely-defined ideas into clear text. Suffice to say that writing is hard work, sometimes for no other reason than that, while working on one storyline, you come up with something that strikes you as absolutely brilliant, but will need a storyline all its own. You have to put the shiny new storyline aside for weeks or months and finish up the old, less exciting, but closer to completion tale. Don't think for a second that writing is a cushy job that requires no discipline.
This train of thought has led me to the conclusion that the greatest job in writing is not the novelist. It's the columnist. Dave Barry needs to come up with a few pages of good stuff every week. But he only needs to come up with a few pages of good stuff every week. He can write about any damn thing he wants, so long as it's interesting enough that people are going to read it. Theoretically, he can come up with those pages and email them in to his editors from anywhere with an Internet connection. Since Dave does pretty well, I suspect he can afford a satellite connection, which means he can work from anywhere on the face of the planet, notably including Fiji, Cancun, St. Barts, and other sunny places where they serve fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them. I don't doubt for a second that Dave is an amazingly prolific writer, who at any given moment has 30 to 50 articles in various stages of development, but of publishable quality, so he's got some columns in the bank toward incidents of emergency, such as sudden attacks of overwhelming laziness and/or drunkenness.
The columnist is the ultimate literary profession. Which means that there's a long waiting list for the job. Generally speaking, you don't apply for a get a column. Instead, you make a name for yourself in some way shape or form, and then the job is offered to you on a trial basis. You get to keep the job for as long as people keep reading your stuff. It really is that simple. (The hard part is getting there, I gotta believe.)
Personally, I'm in the process of writing a commentary on male/female interaction, from the angle of rules and guidelines about love and life that guys REALLY need to know, but are not smart enough to reason out on their own. Little things like how to be good in bed: All you have to do is pay attention. When she gasps, moans, or tenses up, that means you did something right. Do it again. Don't do it harder. Don't do it faster. Just do it again. I honestly think that this is the sort of wisdom that guys REALLY need to know. And there's no fucking way a woman is ever going to boil things down into something that simple. So I'm writing The Rules. And incidentally, I'm seeking beta-testers to read the still-under-construction manuscript, so let me know if you're interested.
Now here's the twisted part: While I'm perhaps overly optimistic, I think my book is going to do well, because - while I write nothing but truth - the work as a whole is going to be something that just slightly offends every woman on the face of the planet. This is going to help me. The largest reading demographic in the world is the bored housewife; why do you think romance and self-help books sell so well. If a housewife reads my book, she will call up her friends and say "Oh my God. You're not going to believe what this guy says in this book I'm reading!" Then all her friends go buy my book, too. CHA-CHING!!! Victory is mine! The Holy Grail is where I end up on Oprah, facing down America's Unified Housewife Liberation Front, defending the things that I've dared put in print.
Besides being one HELL of a good time, that's the sort of thing that leads to cushy gigs like writing a column. I mean seriously, if a douche-bag like Adam Corolla can manage a regular social-commentary radio show, I can too. And the writing part is fun, even though I only really come up with a few pages of good stuff every week or so.
Based on this theory, and also based on my recent experiences writing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I've reached the conclusion that the VAST majority of aspiring writers are aiming for the wrong goal. Far too many people dream of coming up with the Next Great American Novel. Goes to show that they haven't thought the matter through. If you can score and score big (and I mean HUGE: think J. K. Rowling), you can come up with characters and storyline that both you and everyone else fall in love with, and spend a decade making it all come together, en route to becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world. Of course, the reason that J. K. Rowling is the only example of that sort of success is that she's the only one who's had that sort of success. Might as well aspire to winning the lottery; you'd probably have better chances of success with Lotto.
In any rate, for the vast rank and file of aspiring writers, that sort of thing will never happen, for a variety of reasons I won't go into right now. Although some writers make their careers on a single storyline (Card's Ender Saga, Jordan's Wheel of Time, Lucas' Star Wars), it's amazingly rare that anyone reaches that level of transcendental success. The hardest part about writing is rendering the storyline (that looks like gold inside your own head) into some concrete written form, and doing it in such a way that the storyline still looks like gold after the translation from loosely-defined ideas into clear text. Suffice to say that writing is hard work, sometimes for no other reason than that, while working on one storyline, you come up with something that strikes you as absolutely brilliant, but will need a storyline all its own. You have to put the shiny new storyline aside for weeks or months and finish up the old, less exciting, but closer to completion tale. Don't think for a second that writing is a cushy job that requires no discipline.
This train of thought has led me to the conclusion that the greatest job in writing is not the novelist. It's the columnist. Dave Barry needs to come up with a few pages of good stuff every week. But he only needs to come up with a few pages of good stuff every week. He can write about any damn thing he wants, so long as it's interesting enough that people are going to read it. Theoretically, he can come up with those pages and email them in to his editors from anywhere with an Internet connection. Since Dave does pretty well, I suspect he can afford a satellite connection, which means he can work from anywhere on the face of the planet, notably including Fiji, Cancun, St. Barts, and other sunny places where they serve fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them. I don't doubt for a second that Dave is an amazingly prolific writer, who at any given moment has 30 to 50 articles in various stages of development, but of publishable quality, so he's got some columns in the bank toward incidents of emergency, such as sudden attacks of overwhelming laziness and/or drunkenness.
The columnist is the ultimate literary profession. Which means that there's a long waiting list for the job. Generally speaking, you don't apply for a get a column. Instead, you make a name for yourself in some way shape or form, and then the job is offered to you on a trial basis. You get to keep the job for as long as people keep reading your stuff. It really is that simple. (The hard part is getting there, I gotta believe.)
Personally, I'm in the process of writing a commentary on male/female interaction, from the angle of rules and guidelines about love and life that guys REALLY need to know, but are not smart enough to reason out on their own. Little things like how to be good in bed: All you have to do is pay attention. When she gasps, moans, or tenses up, that means you did something right. Do it again. Don't do it harder. Don't do it faster. Just do it again. I honestly think that this is the sort of wisdom that guys REALLY need to know. And there's no fucking way a woman is ever going to boil things down into something that simple. So I'm writing The Rules. And incidentally, I'm seeking beta-testers to read the still-under-construction manuscript, so let me know if you're interested.
Now here's the twisted part: While I'm perhaps overly optimistic, I think my book is going to do well, because - while I write nothing but truth - the work as a whole is going to be something that just slightly offends every woman on the face of the planet. This is going to help me. The largest reading demographic in the world is the bored housewife; why do you think romance and self-help books sell so well. If a housewife reads my book, she will call up her friends and say "Oh my God. You're not going to believe what this guy says in this book I'm reading!" Then all her friends go buy my book, too. CHA-CHING!!! Victory is mine! The Holy Grail is where I end up on Oprah, facing down America's Unified Housewife Liberation Front, defending the things that I've dared put in print.
Besides being one HELL of a good time, that's the sort of thing that leads to cushy gigs like writing a column. I mean seriously, if a douche-bag like Adam Corolla can manage a regular social-commentary radio show, I can too. And the writing part is fun, even though I only really come up with a few pages of good stuff every week or so.
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