Just because everyone these days is a writer doesn't mean they are CUT OUT to be one. It's like how Keanu Reeves is an actor, or how Delaware is a state.
To determine if you're cut out to be a writer, read through the list below. If you identify/agree with more than a handful of the items, we're going to need you to put your hands up and step away from your keyboard or notepad.
1) You're perfectly willing to let little things like funerals, weddings and the birth of your children interfere with your writing days.
2) You wish you could write the next Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey installment.
3) You ARE writing the next Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey installment.
4) You have a panic attack every time you receive a rejection notification.
5) You DON'T have a panic attack every time you lose a great story idea or sentence before writing it down.
6) As far as your concerned, their is nothing wrong with this sentence – its perfect.
7) You not only feel it's okay to use numbers to spell words, you think it's gr8.
8) Your plan is to take the proceeds you earn from your writing and use them to buy an island, or...
9) Your plan is to take the proceeds you earn from your writing and use them to buy a house, or...
10) Your plan is to take the proceeds you earn from your writing and use them to pay your portion of the rent.
11) The title of your novel is misspelled.
12) You think your work is done on a book once you type the final word.
13) Your muse has a restraining order against you.
14) You think all fonts are created equal.
15) Everyone finds you delightful.
16) Your house is on fire and the first thing you save isn't your manuscript.
17) You've never been diagnosed with a mood disorder.
18) Whenever a friend tells you something horrible that happened to them, your first thought is to console them, not "Hey, that would make a great book!"
19) You rarely if ever hear voices in your head. When you do, it concerns you.
20) The first person you see in the morning and the last person you see at night is not your protagonist.
21) You allowed this list to make you seriously question whether or not you are cut out to be a writer.
Time for you to get in on the action. Share some of your “signs” in the comments section below. Go ahead, don’t be shy – sometimes you need to be a little pretentious and/or self-deprecating just to know you’re alive.
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The most fascinating people I know are dead writers I’ve never met.
I often fantasize about dining and drinking with famed dead authors, poets and playwrights. I think about what we would talk about, what we would order, if they’d like my writing, and, most importantly, who’d pick up the tab.
I had a devil of a time narrowing down the list, but here are the ten dead writers with whom I’d most like to stuff my face, get drunk and have a chat:
1) William Shakespeare. Due to how much the English language has changed over the past four hundred fifty years, I’m sure Mr. Shakespeare would struggle to understand ninety percent of what I was saying, so we’d be even. I would take him to an English pub, ply him with wine, ask him if he really wrote all the plays that are attributed to him, or if the likes of Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon had a hand in any of them. Then I’d challenge him to a rap-off. I would also be sure to let him know he became one of the most famous and revered writers of all time following his death, though is still greatly despised by eighth- and ninth-graders across the U.S. In addition, I’d point out that the modern day Anne Hathaway is much hotter than his wife of the same name. If he argued, I’d introduce him to Google Images, Wikipedia and IMDb. Finally, I’d blog about the whole experience—in iambic pentameter—featuring a selfie of Shakes and me each knocking back a Jager Bomb. 2) Ernest Hemingway. What writer wouldn’t want to dine and drink with Papa? What an honor it would be to have this iconic literary legend personally insult me for sipping vodka instead of absinthe. What a privilege to have him punch me in the face for ordering a salad instead of a steak. And how thrilling to have him point a shotgun at me for using more than a single adjective in a paragraph. During our dinner, I’d tell Hemingway that A Farewell to Arms was the first novel I truly loved in high school, and then I’d quickly duck as he swung at me while accusing me of kissing up to him. I’d also tell him I occasionally post his quotes on Twitter and on my Facebook author page. I’d then spend the next hour showing him what Twitter and Facebook are, and the next hour in the emergency room having my iPhone surgically removed from my rectum.
3) Fyodor Dostoevsky. An existential literary pioneer with a gambling addiction who once faced a firing squad and did some serious prison time? DAMN STRAIGHT I want to hang with Fyodor! He being Russian, our meal would be infused with the finest vodka on offer, and thanks to that big beard of his we’d have no problem getting a seat and near-friendly service at any of the hot hipster establishments in town. I’d tell him how I cut my teeth on his novella Notes from Underground (112 pages) before tackling Crime and Punishment (448 pages) and The Brothers Karamazov (824 pages), and that his work had a profound impact on me as a reader and a writer. And he’d be all, “I no speak English. Shut up, drink!”
4) Anaïs Nin. Most remember Ms. Nin for the groundbreaking erotica she wrote—highly stylized, eloquent and sensual works that mesmerized men and women alike—but it's important to realize she also wrote a lot of other ... sorry, I can't stop thinking about her erotica. During my dinner with Ms. Nin (which I'd invite my wife to in order to eliminate any feelings of jealousy and to open the door for a ménage a trois that Ms. Nin might decide to immortalize beautifully in writing), I'd ask her about her bohemian days in Paris with Henry Miller. I’d also ask her if it's true she had a physical relationship with Miller's wife, June, and, if so, what they were wearing and if a pillow fight was involved. At some point in the evening I'd show Ms. Nin a copy of what's passing for erotica these days, after which I'd accompany her to London to egg E.L. James’ house.
5) Oscar Wilde. I could sit and listen to Wilde's unparalleled wit and brilliant observations all evening long, particularly if he's springing for the reckless extravagance of cucumber sandwiches he'd no doubt insist we eat. I'd let him know his is the only Irish writing I can stomach from his era, and how close I've come to getting one or more of his sardonic quotes about life and art tattooed on my daughter. In addition, I'd tell him how heartbroken I was after learning all about his trial and imprisonment, and that I even mentioned it in my first novel, which I'd have him read in front of me on a Kindle over dessert.
6) Mark Twain. Having dinner with the greatest American humorist would be a little intimidating, but I'm sure Mr. Twain would soon relax and realize I'm quite approachable. We'd feast on oysters and steamed mussels, which were his favorite foods as far as Wikipedia knows. I'd tell Mr. Twain how reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn woke me up to great literature at age eleven and even made me miss Saturday morning cartoons once. Adhering to good etiquette, I'd wait until he'd had at least three or four whiskey cocktails before I informed him that his famous quote "The report of my death is an exaggeration" no longer was an exaggeration. Being sober when finding out you've been deceased for more than a century can ruin a perfectly enjoyable evening.
7) Sylvia Plath. Most people would assume that someone as deeply depressed and as successfully suicidal as Ms. Plath would make a miserable dining companion, but most people don't think they know Sylvia the way I think I know her. After all, her ghost figured prominently in my debut novel—a fact I'd be sure to point out to her during our meal while keeping her away from any cutlery and the kitchen. I’d let her know her words—particularly all the white-hot ones she wrote in Ariel just before she spun off the planet—sparked a fire in me and compelled me to stop watching so many goddamn episodes of Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond.
8) William S. Burroughs. I being born with tongue firmly in cheek, it would be crazy cool to break bread and bottles with the man Jack Kerouac called the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift." (I thought about adding Swift to this list, but he, unlike Burroughs, was never addicted to heroine and didn't kill any wives William Tell style, and thus I feared he might be a bit of a bore.) While dining with Burroughs, I wouldn’t ask or say much. I’d just sit there and listen. That’s what you do when you’re with a Harvard grad who helped build the Beat Generation and the 1960s counterculture, and who inspired not only some of the greatest writers of his time and ours but also such musicians as Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Tom Waits and Kurt Cobain. Even if he ended up speaking in sentences and fragments that were totally out of sequence, like in his masterpiece Naked Lunch, I'd shut the hell up and just smile and wave.
9) Maya Angelou. During my dinner with Ms. Angelou, I’d say even less and listen even more than during my dinner with Burroughs. It seems every word—hell, every burp—that ever left this lady’s mouth was a beautiful and courageous poem. (Speaking of poems, she recited a pretty phenomenal one—“On the Pulse of Morning”—at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration in 1993, making her the first poet to do so since Robert Frost at JFK’s inauguration in 1961. Not too shabby for someone who once worked as a fry cook and as a prostitute.) Just to be sure I kept quiet during my dinner with the honorable Ms. Angelou, I’d order a very chewy steak and/or a huge peanut butter sandwich, and then just bask in the light and the eloquence and the power her syllables. Naturally, though, I’d live-Tweet the whole experience.
10) Theodor Seuss Geisel (a.k.a., Dr. Seuss). Upon greeting the Great Doctor for the first time, it would take all the power I could muster to not ask, "Is that a wocket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" After overcoming that ridiculous urge, I'd spend too much of the evening fawning over the writer who taught me at a tender age to fully embrace all the beauty and wonder and absurdity of the human experience, and to be open to trying odd-colored breakfast foods on a boat or with a goat. As for the actual meal, I'd recommend we bounce around to different restaurants and sample little plates at each locale in hopes of inspiring Seuss to write a book called Oh The Places You'll Go To Dinner.
What dead writers do you think would make intriguing dining companions? Feel free to share in the comments section below.
While I like to think that most of what I dream up in my pretty little head is pure literary gold or at least a good idea for a new cocktail, I must acknowledge sometimes I miss the mark. I’m my own worst critic – I really must commend myself for that.
Following are the tentative titles and brief descriptions of five novels I came dangerously close to writing before good sense and common decency kicked in.
1) LMAO – A Novel. A dystopian tale set in the year 2080, a time when, due to decades of excessive text-based communication, only a few humans on the planet still have a functioning larynx and thus are able to speak. The story follows a disgruntled homeless speech pathologist who kidnaps teenagers and holds them captive until they’ve learned to gossip about and bully one another using only their voice.
2)There’s Some Place Like Home. This dark satire of American homogeneity tells the story of a man who mistakenly drives to a house in a suburb that looks just like his house/suburb, and who lives there for an entire weekend before he or anyone in the house (his wife who isn’t his wife, and his kids who aren’t his kids) notices something’s amiss. Everything seems like life as usual until the man, while on his way out to golf that Sunday, realizes (to his absolute horror) the golf clubs in the closet aren’t his – they belong to the wife’s actual husband, who all weekend long has been getting drunk and watching sports at a 24-hour Hooters.
3) # –A Novel.In this sequel to LMAO, spoken language has all but completely disappeared from Earth and nobody even texts in full sentences anymore – they just use a series of descriptive hashtags to communicate. The speech pathologist from the first book eventually gives up and decides to end it all, getting one of his teenage kidnap victims to write his suicide note in the style of the day: #GoodbyeCruelWorld #Whatever #YOLO
4) The Hangry Games. The tale of a sadistic television producer who creates a new reality TV show that takes America by storm. Each week on “The Hangry Games,” ten men and women who’ve been kept in holding cells without food for an entire day are released into a stadium, where they fight to the death for a single Snickers bar. A bunch of pacifist nutritionists who are dead-set on getting the show cancelled lead protests across the nation, but end up getting captured by the TV network’s henchmen and are forced to compete against one another in the show’s final episode. The episode draws five billion viewers, including a high percentage of people who usually only watch "Downton Abbey" or listen to NPR.
5) Flight Club. Fed up with the ever-increasing inconvenience and inhumanity of air travel, a group of passengers starts an underground movement – in the sky.Participants of the movement, called “Flight Club,” meet in airplane restrooms and take out all their frustrations with flying coach by pummeling one another in the cramped quarters. The first rule of Flight Club is you don’t talk about Flight Club. The second rule of Flight Club is you must stop fighting and return to your seat immediately if the captain turns on the ‘Fasten Seatbelt’ sign.
Just because these are among the worst book ideas I or anyone else has ever had doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be huge international best sellers. If you let me know which one is your favorite in the “Comments” area below, I’ll have my ghostwriter start working on the book immediately.
Few things satisfy me more than fiction writing – immersing myself in a world I've created, playing with imaginary people prone to deviant behavior. Fiction writing fuels me. It fills me with a sense (read: delusions) of grandeur. It brings me to the brink of euphoria and sometimes beyond.
It also makes me really stupid and irresponsible... at least when it comes to life in the "real" world. I get so wrapped up in whatever story I'm working on, so engrossed in the lives of my characters, that I sometimes forget to do little things like feed my cats, bathe, change my clothes, eat, make friends, pay bills, accelerate when the light turns green, stop when the light turns red, kiss my wife, ground my daughter, or look for a good therapist.
Fictionally, I'm an omniscient force. In reality, I'm an inattentive idiot. Not surprisingly, this has taken its toll on my social life. It's hard for me to stay present in conversations with people talking about their jobs and their kids and their pets when I'm so used to spending time with fictional assassins, vigilantes and sociopaths. Just as I'm sure it's hard for people to stay present in conversations with me when I haven't bathed in three days and keep trying to steer the conversation toward effective murder methods.
If I continue to write fiction, I likely won't live past 55 or 60. I mean, one can only daydream so much near busy intersections before one’s luck runs out. Even if I manage not to get creamed on the roadway, my wife, Miranda, will probably leave me due to my lack of attentiveness, and thus I won't have anyone to remind me to take the pills I'll be prescribed for the heart and/or liver condition I'll undoubtedly develop after years of sitting on my ass writing and drinking.
You may be thinking, "Why don't you just quit writing, Greg? It's not like you're all that great at it." First of all, that's a very insensitive and rude thing to think. And impractical, too. You wouldn't expect bees to quit stinging even though it often results in their death. You wouldn't expect male black widow spiders to stop having sex even though their female mate tries to kill and eat them immediately afterward. So you shouldn’t expect a writer to give up writing just because it's going to cause him to die prematurely and probably alone. Writing is woven into my DNA. I simply don't know any better.
To be clear, sympathy is not what I'm seeking. The fact is I'm very fortunate to have found something besides vodka that I'm truly passionate about, and to be able to (almost) make a living doing that thing. Sure, I'll likely end up friendless, penniless, divorced and dead, but hey, you can't write about your cake and eat it, too.
So, I ask not for pity. I merely ask for a little understanding. If we are ever engaged in conversation and you sense my attention drifting, or I start talking about the best way to kill yourself or someone else, or you notice an unpleasant odor coming from my direction, please try not to be offended, frightened or repulsed. Try instead to simply remember I am a fiction writer, and that there's no known cure.
I’ve always been a big fan of HBO. I remember when my father first subscribed to it in the early 1980s. It instantly transformed me into a popular kid in my neighborhood and gave me the opportunity to see bare breasts without having to sprint to my friend Eric’s house for a peek at his dad’s Playboy mags. Life-changing stuff.
Well, HBO may soon change my life AGAIN. The premium cable/satellite TV network just optioned my novel, The Exit Man, to develop it into a series. (Allow me to pause here and pinch myself – for the 100th time.) Now, before you pull into my driveway armed with champagne, this doesn’t guarantee the show will get off the ground. Novels often get optioned for film or TV but never reach the large or the small screen. That said, there’s a fair chance my novel will at least be adapted for a pilot episode and, with any luck, become a full-fledged TV series. On HBO. HBO! (Insert internal reminder to myself to relax and act like I’ve been here before.) While I’ve always found optimism to be an awful endeavor, I’m going to imagine that everything goes off without a hitch and The Exit Man gets the final green light. Here is a list of my demands (read: polite suggestions, prayers) for HBO to help ensure my novel becomes a huge TV hit:
THEME SONG: “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. While most songs about death are too damn depressing, this song is rather soothing and ethereal – yet dark and haunting enough to let viewers know they aren’t about to see an episode of Gilmore Girls.
The song actually popped into my head on several occasions while I was writing The Exit Man – you know, whenever I’d lose focus and start fantasizing about my manuscript becoming a movie and me hanging out with Megan Fox in the bathroom at a Hollywood party. Other songs that often invaded my brain while writing include Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” which is a bit too heaven-y for a dark comedy, and Johnny Cash’s “I Hurt Myself Today,” but that was only because I frequently banged my head against my writing desk when struggling with the story.
One other song I might consider is “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo, which was featured in the 1985 Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School and made it such a cinematic tour de force.
MAIN CHARACTER (ELI): Jake Johnson. You may know him as Nick the ne’er-do-well bartender in the sitcom New Girl (or from his starring roles in the feature films Drinking Buddies and, regrettably, Let’s Be Cops). Mr. Johnson is perfect for the part of Eli, who is also a ne’er-do-well but who, instead of running a bar, runs a party supply store in addition to leading a secret life as a mercy killer. Johnson, with his sad eyes and comic chops, is built for black humor… the kind featuring terminal illness and death, not the kind in which he co-stars with Damon Wayans, Jr.
In the event Nick Johnson isn’t available for the role, or if for some strange reason he decides he doesn’t want to star in a series based on a book written by nobody he’s ever heard of, other actors who might shine as Eli include Michael C. Hall of Dexter and Six Feet Under fame, Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad (he played Jessie), or Bob the cartoon dad from Bob’s Burgers (I’d want the actual animated character, not the actor who does the voice).
FEMALE LEAD (ZOE): Emma Stone. She has starred in various movies, including Superbad and Zombieland, and in a few of my dreams that I cannot describe here without risking a divorce. And while she may not be a TV actress, and her hair may not be quite as red as I described in my book, Ms. Stone would do a spectacular job as Eli’s sultry and suicidal ginger girlfriend. She has yet to return any of my texts, tweets, Facebook messages, emails, phone calls, letters, faxes or telegrams, but I think if HBO were to get involved she might be a little more receptive.
The only other actress I’d be happy with is any actress who looks and sounds exactly like Emma Stone. I guess I could also be convinced to consider Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), but only if she agreed to get a boob reduction, or not.
SUPPORTING CAST: There are many minor characters in The Exit Man – most of them are Eli’s terminally ill clients who end up not sticking around too long. Thus, for casting purposes I’m really only interested in actors and actresses who already look like they’re dying before their time. Viable candidates include Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Hunt, Ed Harris, Laura Dern, and any of the extras from Walking Dead.
MY CAMEO: Stephen King almost always has a cameo appearance in the movies and shows based on his books, so why shouldn’t I? I’m not asking to play a key character or to have any kind of real impact on the action; I merely want to show up on screen at some point in the pilot episode, preferably as Zoe’s masseuse or gynecologist.
FONT FOR THE TITLE, CAST AND CREDITS: Helvetica Neue Medium. This one is pretty much non-negotiable. If I find out HBO plans on using any other font for the show, so help me God I'll pretend there is actually something I can do about it.
Before I go and pinch myself some more, I just want to send out a very special thank you to:
Ilene Staple, the wonderful TV producer who first approached me regarding the TV/film rights to The Exit Man and who had a huge hand in selling the show idea to HBO;
Adam Berkowitz, the amazing agent and co-head of Television for Creative Artists Agency (CAA) who sealed my option deal with HBO;
Brian Buckner, the extremely talented television writer who is currently working on the show outline and the pilot script for The Exit Man.
Were it not for these people, right now I’d be working on another blasé blog piece about being a writer rather than fantasizing about what to wear to the Emmys and the Golden Globes.
Oh, and if you’d like to learn more about the book version of The Exit Man, you can do so HERE.
