How is writing a letter like a conversation? If you make journals into letter writing, does that make them just letters to your future self? If no one reads your journal entries, what are they then?
Am I any good at this? Probably not.
And the more and more you start to wonder how much beside the point that is. To be "good" at a thing. Goodness doesn't matter.
But those things. On my to do list. What happens if I *do* finish all of them? Like, what happens if I wrote down things that are entirely *finishable* for today?
That's never happened before. Am I growing up?
I lunched with a friend today. He's seriously pursuing writing. He's got some 9,000* words of himself that he's readying to send to publishers, to editors. To be read and parsed and edited and, hopefully, published. I'm really excited for him. I want to be able to make it happen, but I can't make things happen for people. I have enough trouble making things happen for myself.
We talked about books, what makes a bad one, and writing and working and recognition. Is it enough to be recognized as a writer? How much of recognition is titles and raises and more stock option grants, and how much of it is something simple like deference of questions and latitude and being given a team or someone to mentor. I wonder about these things.
Two quick story ideas :
- A survey of bacon sides at brunch establishments. Based on meatiness (thickness), crunch, flavor (mesquite?), hot or cold when it arrived?, quantity provided. fat to meat ratio, appearance/plating, slice width, price, weight of the portion (note to self: bring your electronic scale).
- Scathing review of Jonathan Franzen's book (and the book that he reviewed and you subsequently read, A Hundred Brothers). A double review? A review of a review? Like the meta book review, that both investigates how we, as book consumers find and appreciate books, and lambasting J Franzen for not only his terrible taste, but also replicating that terrible taste into a short book of memoirs.
I leave you with this poem:
I
I am terrible.
I am also drunk.
Caffeine is a wonder drug.
This martini has sugar in it.
* 9,000 words? Dear god. Nine thousand words!**
** Before*** this comment, this blog post was 388 words.
*** Including this comment, this blog post is 408 words.
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