I got a new coffee mug! Look at this beauty. It says everything I want to whenever I see people going “meh, close enough” with the English language, like it’s a dart board. It also holds the nectar of life, the bitter black bean water that is so much more than it sounds. Coffee helps me deal with my rage for petty things, like word choice on social media sites.
Which leads me to a few thoughts. I am part of a writing group or two on Facebook and saw an interesting post that made me think of my own professional path. Someone spoke about their experience with a “friend” wanting their self-published book for free and when the author said she couldn’t afford to do that for everyone who asked, the beggar rage quit being her Facebook friend. It’s $2.99 on Kindle, so I have no sympathy for the beggar, not that I would if it were $12.99, but you understand. The author was distressed by this and I was frustrated. Not by the rude beggar because who cares about them, but by the author’s somewhat hurt reaction to them. There are so few professions that require a person to be insanely empathetic, have bulletproof skin, and also be open to evaluating other people’s opinions of the work that took the author years to make and days for the reader to read. It requires you to be, almost quite literally, a crazy person. Totally unbalanced and unstable. Ask my husband.
So why do so many people flock to writing books when they can’t handle the hard parts of the process? Maybe the successful ones keep making it look too easy. I really don’t know. What I do know is, I’d make a terrible psychiatrist. I just want to grab them by their shoulders, give them a shake and yell, “get on with your life!” right in their shocked faces.
Oh well, I’m a terrible person. Fortunately, that makes reading my books more fun for you.