The People I Blame For Me Becoming A Writer

I’ve been surrounded by loving and supportive family members, friends and teachers all my life. I blame all of them for what has happened.

Me becoming a writer.

These people really have no excuse – they could have steered me toward a more lucrative profession where poor hygiene and substance abuse is frowned upon. But no, they chose to encourage me to explore my natural talents, to put my words on paper and on computer screens and on blogs. They chose to let me continue down the dark and lonely path of an author of fiction, just because they saw how happy it made me.

The bastards.

It would take me days to name EVERYONE responsible for me becoming a writer. So, in the interest of time and space, here’s a list of just the main culprits:    

My parents. Oh sure, my mother may have hinted at me becoming a doctor or a lawyer when I was a child, but we’re Jewish, so she was just following the rules. Doesn’t count. Her big mistake was not insisting I become a doctor or lawyer. Instead, she and my father would read wonderful stories to me at bedtime, buy me amazing books to read myself, pat me on the back and say “Great work!” when they’d read my book reports and other writing projects for school. They paid for me to get a liberal arts education in college, and afterward bought me my first PC so I could easily write and save all my essays, poems and stories. I’m not sure if I’ll ever forgive them. Unless my novels start hitting the bestseller list.

Dr. Seuss. Theodor Geisel, you son of a bitch. Why did you have to make words and stories so enchanting and strange and fun? I was hooked from the very first time I opened Horton Hears A Who, and I’ve never looked back. I can only imagine how many other lives you’ve ruined.  

All my English teachers and professors. Some people are fortunate enough to get assigned to English teachers who are burnt out and bitter, who inspire no one and who ensure that students quickly lose interest in reading and writing. Not me. I was cursed with one passionate and supportive English teacher after another, all the way up through college. They introduced me to the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Nabokov and Chekhov and Whitman and Plath.  Buy the time I graduated, it was too late to reverse all the damage that had been done. I was condemned to live a life of creativity, self-expression and bathing only occasionally.

Woody Allen. Woody’s been accused of a lot of things, but what I blame him for most is inspiring me to write comedic prose with an existential bent. (Big future in that.) I discovered his books of hilarious short stories (Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Getting Even) my senior year of college, and realized I had a similar voice inside me. Once I started writing humorously absurd tales, I couldn’t stop – even when my friends and the editors at The New Yorker and The Atlantic begged me to. Turns out it’s a lifelong affliction. Lucky for everyone.

Gordon MacPherson. Gordon was my boss at my first real job (as an editor/writer for a trade publication) and the one person who really had a chance to dash my silly writing dreams soon after college. But no, he instead praised my efforts and potential, bought me books on writing better, paid a writing coach to help me thrive, and even gave me my own humor column in the company’s publication. I hope you’re proud of yourself, Gordon. I’ll see you in Hell.       

Chuck Palahniuk. While Woody Allen is to blame for my desire to keep things light, Chuck Palahniuk is to blame for my desire to make things dark. Their combined influence is the reason why I insist on writing comedies about stuff like terminal illness, euthanasia, murder and sex trafficking. I blame Chuck more than I blame Woody. Woody merely got me addicted to making people die laughing; Chuck got me addicted to making people die, period. Plus, Chuck’s an enabler – twice he’s liked something I’ve tweeted; Woody, on the other hand, has ignored all my letters, emails, calls and faxes.    

My wife. My wife, Miranda, isn’t to blame for me becoming a writer. She’s to blame for me continuing to be one. That’s worse. To get me to stop, all she has to do is belittle me for my laughable royalties, tell me real men don’t sit around in their pajamas playing with imaginary friends, and withhold sex. But noooo, she instead wholeheartedly believes in my so-called talent, tells me to keep writing and to be patient, insists I’m on the brink of something big with my literary career, and, for whatever reason, still sleeps with me (though, in her defense, only after she’s had multiple glasses of wine). I mean, come on – what kind of woman WANTS her husband to be a writer?

I don’t know what YOU’RE giggling about; you, too, are partially to blame for all this. After all, you just read my blog post all the way to the end. Don’t you know that only encourages me?