My half nickel divided by 1.25

Today our writing group got a little bit smaller. Our leader had to ask one member to leave and the other volunteered to leave due to things being stressful.

I’m sorry to see them leave but I also don’t care. In a world with starving children and diseases killing babies I’m not going to waste my emotional energy on something they had a part in doing. I know they could have influenced the events towards another end should they have elected to do so.

To plagiarize and twist Yoda’s words, “Either you do or you do not.” Their lives are in their control.

Recently I had the pleasure(?) of making somebody cry over a review I provided on their writing work. It wasn’t intentional, the making her cry part, as I was just pointing out things that didn’t make sense to me. Isn’t that what a reviewer is supposed to do? Are we not supposed to point out inconsistencies? What is the point of sharing/publishing if you don’t want to make it the best you can. Yes, I also get that people are fearful of having their stories, their inner thoughts, their true inner being, exposed and picked apart. I really do get it. That’s why I don’t write porn or romance novels, or anything of any real substance… anyway…

If you are not ready to have that happen then you are not ready to be an author. Writers make mistakes and not all of it turns out in your favor. You have to own what you can and bury the rest in a shallow grave deep in the woods as you can.

Here is a piece of honesty. This might sound dark and twisted but its the honest truth. I wasn’t truly ready to share my first pieces of work, which were pieces of shit, until I read other peoples own pieces of shit and saw just how bad they were. I am going to say this again. It took me seeing just how bad other peoples (amateurs) stuff was for me to feel confident enough in knowing that my stuff was on par with the shit they were producing.

I equate it to watching that show that Bob Saget used to host, America’s Funniest Crotch Shots or some other name that doesn’t describe it as well as I just did. I needed to see (on paper) all of the testicle squeezing anguished that they called a story. I needed to see them fall over so my own falling over wouldn’t seem so out of place. I was just as dumb(er)er as the best of them. I needed to see that perfection doesn’t exist and my voice, as mispelked as it is, has a place of its own. Granted for most people that might end up being the garbage can. I can accept that because I know that of all the crap I read from other people, most of it isn’t my cup of tea either.

Now that isn’t to say that all of it is crap. Some of it I truly enjoy. Some of it is darn good. Unfortunately one of those people just chose to exit our writing group.

I wish them well. I hold no ill will. In life there are rarely second chances. Them quitting now isn’t the end all of endings but it is another self-created road block that didn’t need to be there in the first place.

I think what I’m trying to say that life is short and people need to stop Sageting themselves.