She Writes, I Write, We're The Same!

God. I'm late.

Writing my daily blog post.

What else could I be late for?

I wrote yesterday about how I still yearn to be a writer and you know what? I do know that in some ways, I am. I mean, I write all the damn time. It's just that as I said in one of the comments I have this crazy notion that until I hold a book, a real physical book with bindings and pages and words and my name on it, I'm not really a writer.

Writing the blog is such a joy that it doesn't even seem legal. How can anything that has given me as much pleasure as this be legal? I mean, except for the joy I've experienced with my family and friends this is the most fun I've ever had in my life.

Well, except for maybe that time the bass player for the Neville Brothers sent me out a backstage pass but again, that's a whole other story.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Writing.
And of course it all boils down to this- even if you write, write, write your heart out in words made of blood and rainwater, of lightening bolts and riptides, does it count if you don't get paid?

(Ooh. I had a little Carrie Bradshaw moment there. Didn't you?)

I do not know. All I know is that there is nothing for me like the putting down of words and the sending of them out. Nothing.

And quite frankly, I spend hours every day doing just that.

Perhaps this IS my medium. I think of a favorite author of mine, one who just enchants and delights me with her essays (and if you haven't read Bailey Whites's Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Sleeping At The Starlight Motel then do it. Do it! Just fucking do it!) who, when she wrote a novel, made me sort of want to find her and pat her head and her hand and say, "It's okay, honey. You don't need to write fiction. You grew up in a crazy family in a crazy town and the way you write about them is so much better than fiction that you really don't need to make things up."

Because her novel wasn't so great. Well. I loved it because she wrote it but it couldn't hold a candle to her essays.

Maybe it's like how all comedians want to act in serious roles and how serious actors want to be directors or painters or musicians or how musicians want to be actors. Sometimes the crossovers work. Sometimes they don't.

So what's the fucking difference if people go out and buy a book that I wrote or if they come here, every day by their own volition to read what I wrote?

Money. Acclaim. Stature. A physical thing I can hold in my hand.

And of course, a husband who could quit wondering why I'm always on this computer. If there was a book people could buy...well. That would be- oh what's that popular, trendy word? Not verification. Oh yes, VALIDATION.

So for all you folks who took the time to reassure me yesterday that I am a writer, all I have to say to you is, "Where do I send your check?" Because thank-you from the very bottom of my heart because that was validation right there. And to the tens and tens of you who read but do not comment- I love you too! I swear! Let's date, okay? Let's have a slumber party and tell secrets and roll our hair and do the pony to the Monkees and eat pizza and drink Cokes or if you'd rather, eat sushi and drink sake. Whatever. I just want to hang out!

So. Just to get things straight and sum it all up, the differences between me and oh, say, Carrie Bradshaw (a famous author) are:
1. She seems to get paid a lot to write while I get paid nothing.
2. She writes about sex and I do not. Generally. Because...
3. I have children who read what I write and she does not.
4. She lives in New York City, New York and I live in Lloyd, Florida.
5. She wears wonderfully whimsical and expensive clothes while I wear, uh, other stuff.
6. She is single, although it looks like she may indeed marry Mr. Big while I have been married to Mr. Big for almost 25 years.
7. She wears a bra to bed and the night I wear a bra to bed is the day you need to get those papers signed to put me in the loony bin.
8. She has a tiny waist and I don't have a waist.
9. She uses her oven to store shoes in while I use my oven to cook deer in that my husband shot.
AND
10. She is fiction. I am real.

But besides all of that- yep, me and Carrie, we're just alike.
We both worry about deadlines and boy, am I late on mine. It may be a self-imposed deadline, but I am serious about it.

Anyway, happy Friday, y'all. Go do something you love.

I just did.