The Art Of Writing

Somebody once told me I should write a book.

That same person also thought Murder She Wrote was a real-life fly-on-the-wall documentary and believed that Elton John was a "rocker".

I actually thought that Murder She Wrote would make a great reality show. All we need to do is find some ageing crime author, dip her head in a trough-like bath of auburn perma-color, and then hook her up with a couple of detectives. If you think about it, the police don't have a great track record of catching criminals so why not let novelists have a crack at solving the case?

If i was planning to commit a crime, i'd quite enjoy being interrogated by Stephen King or John Grisham. "Yes Mr. King, I was told to steal the 40 year old bottle of single malt from Ali's Discount Liquor Mart by a half-human half spider demonic creature that was dressed as a clown. And he growled at me from under the drain."

Let's pause for a second. Police forces have been known to let THIS WOMAN loose on murder investigations. What makes law enforcement think that psychics are any more qualified to catch killers than people who spend their entire lives researching criminals for the novels they write. Ahh, i'm not going to dwell on this one. Humans love to put faith before facts. I'll return to this subject when I actually discover that I have something interesting to say on it, which may be a long time coming.

And don't get me started on Elton John. He should be banned from entering civilized life just on the basis that he subjected the world to candle in the wind for endless painful months after Diana's death. Forget the royal family, I was in mourning for the producers of the music compilations that were obliged to include that track based on its temple-squeezing popularity.
"Hey Kids, come and buy Now That's What I Call Music 78. The first track is a dreary piano ballad about some dead princess that a bloke with a hair weave wrote. Excellent!"


But enough of that. This person that told me I should write a book had only the very best of intentions at heart. The suggestion was based on my apparent writing skills, and i was flattered by the praise. But I quickly realized that i'm never going to write a book because i'm lazier than a mating panda. So this is the next best thing. I can kid myself that I'm doing something creative, then i can kid myself further that people are actually going to be interested in what i'm writing, and then when I see the endless stream of 0 comments under each posting I can convince myself that it's only a matter of time before my blog explodes into the public consciousness.

Some call it vanity publishing. Vanity publishing?? To me it's like The Elephant Man sending his picture into America's Top Model. We do stuff because we can, not because we should. That's the price we pay for freedom, being subjected to other people's mediocre output simply because we've given them the freedom, and the means to express themselves.

Don't miss tomorrow, where I recount a vaguely un-interesting tale of a how a close friend of mine did something not that exciting. And there's a cat involved. I can sense you all moistening as i type.