In some ways, I’m an optimist. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, a person doesn’t work on the same book for over a decade without a little glimmer of hope to keep them going.
But it’s more than that, really. I believe that the vast majority of people are good. Not just deep-down good, but good right up on the surface. That’s why I run these fundraisers. I think most people enjoy making the world a better place. All they need is an opportunity, and, occasionally, a little nudge.
But in other ways, I’m a pessimist. For example, I believe that most large corporate entities by their very nature tend to be malignant.
When I say malignant, I’m not saying that Global Corp is going to break into your house and kill you while you sleep. But they will make your pillow out of a fire-retardant chemical that makes you breathe toluene all night. Because they can be sued by a smoker who lights their own pillow on fire, but not by someone who gets cancer when they’re sixty.
What’s my point? Well, my point is that when my account got flagged by Paypal a couple of days ago, I really didn’t have much hope of being able to straighten things out with them.
In fact, I was ready to be all indignant about it. I’ve had a Paypal account since 2001, and I felt a little betrayed. I had all sorts of scathing things I was going to say. Names I was going to call them. Mud I was going to fling. How dare they take a crap on my fundraiser? Especially when it was going so well…
Despite this pessimism, I e-mailed them to straighten things out. I tried to work within the system. I talked to them on the phone.
So imagine my surprise when they were really nice. And today, all the limitations were lifted from my Paypal account. I really wasn’t expecting things to work out so quickly and easily.
The purpose of this blog is twofold.
First, I just wanted to say thanks to Paypal. You guys impressed me.
The second is to update everyone on the status of the name raffle fundraiser thing.
Things are going amazingly well. So far we’ve got about 150 people donating, and we’ve raised over 8000 dollars. Way better than I ever expected.
Because I’m drawing two winners, that means if you buy a ticket, you’ve got about a 1 in 400 chance of winning.
If you donate 50 bucks, which gets you 6 tickets, you’ve got about a 1 in 70 chance.
That beats the hell out of most lotteries, you have to admit. Besides, and all the money is going to a great cause.
(How can you not want be a part of this?) I’m hoping we can finish strong on this. We lost a few days because of the Paypal thing, but if people help spread the word I think we can make up for it.
And one more time, here’s the link to the blog with all the raffle details and the now-functional online donation buttons.
And lastly, if you’re thinking of donating online. You might want to strike now while the iron is hot. A lot of Paypal’s system is automated, and there’s an outside chance it might flag my account again in a week or so. It would be shame if you missed your chance to donate because of that…
Frabjously yours,
pat
Everyone Hates Their Job Sometimes…
Here’s the truth. Sometimes I hate writing this fucking book.
I know this isn’t something most of you want to hear. You want to hear that it’s going well. (Which is it.) You also want to hear that I love every moment of writing it. It’s my baby, right? You have to love your baby…
Well, yes. But technically I’ve been working on this trilogy since 1994. The book is more like a teenager in some ways. You love a teenager too, but you can also be angry with a teenager. And sick of its endless shit.
The problem is this. People want to believe that being a published writer is a beautiful, happily-ever-after, candy mountain place where all your dreams come true.
Unfortunately, that’s bullshit.
This is a part of something I’ve come to think of as The Myth of the Author. I’m not going to get into the details right now. That’s a blog for a whole different day. But the gist of my theory is that, in general, people think of writers as a different sort of person. And by extension, writing is a different sort of work. It’s strange and wonderful. It’s a mystic process. It can’t be quantified. It’s not chemistry, it’s alchemy.
While some of that is true, this belief makes it really difficult for me to bitch about my job.
For example, if a doctor wrote a blog saying. “Fuck! sometimes I hate being a doctor…” People would read it and say, “Yeah man. I can see where you’re coming from. Long hours. Tons of responsibility. People expect a lot out of you. That’s a rough gig.”
On the other hand, if I come on here and bitch about my job. People will be disappointed. Irritated even.
Why would people be irritated? For several reasons.
Reason #1: It’s irritating when people complain about having a simple job.
Of course, writing a novel isn’t simple. Anyone that’s ever tried writing one knows this. The problem is, a lot of people haven’t tried. They assume writing is easy because, technically, anyone can do it.
To illustrate my point: Just as I was getting published, I met one of the big, A-list fantasy authors. (Who will remain nameless here.)
He told me the story of the time he’d met a doctor at a party. When the author mentioned that he wrote for a living, the doctor said: “Yeah, I was going to write a novel. But I just don’t seem to have the time.”
The author got a irritated just telling me this story. “When you say something like that,” he said. “It’s like saying being a writer doesn’t take any skill. It’s something anyone can do. But only a very slim percentage of the population can write well enough to make a living at it. It’s like going up to a doctor and saying, ‘yeah. My appendix was inflamed. I was going to take it out myself, but I didn’t really have the time.’”
Newbie writer that I was, I simply enjoyed the story, privately thinking that surely *my* readers would never be so foolish to assume that. And even if they did, I wouldn’t mind that much…
Fast forward to earlier this year, when I got the following e-mail:
For those of you who have been reading the blog for a while, this is the letter I was thinking about mocking Waaaay back in May.
Re-reading it now, most of my irritation has faded. But my profound sensation of *What the Fuck* is still as strong as ever.
Let’s not even deal with the first half of the letter. Let’s ignore the fact that this woman isn’t a publicist, an editor, or my personal life-coach. Let’s jump straight to how she explains how I should write my book:
Oh. I need to sit down. I see. I need to know where to END it. I hadn’t thought of that.
And chronological order? Brilliant! Up until this point I’d been arranging all the chapters by length.
I mean seriously. You people do know that I have to make the entire book up, right? I’m not just cribbing it out of Kvothe’s biography, right?
Right?
And I lack the words to express my stupification at the offhand advice that I should just “smooth out the transitions.”
That’s not true. I do have the words. They go like this: “If this is the sort of advice you used to give your students when you were a teacher, thank you for not being a teacher any more.”
I counted yesterday. Do you know book two has eighteen fucking plotlines? Six entirely distinct settings, each with their own casts of characters? How exactly to I smooth that out? Do you think I just go down to the writing store, buy some fucking transition putty, and slather it on?
Okay. I lied. I guess I’m still irritated.
Truth is, I know that this letter comes from a place of love. This person is genuinely trying to help me. Deep in her heart of hearts, this woman believes she knows how to write a novel. The answers are so obvious. It seems simple to her…
This is why some folks will get irritated if I complain about my job. Because they think writing is simple.
But it isn’t. Nobody’s job is as simple as it looks from the outside.
Reason #2: It’s not cool to complain about your dream job.
I’m well aware of the fact that, I’m living the dream. A lot of people want to be published. They want it so bad they can taste it. They’d give anything…
I know this because that’s how I used to feel.
I’m lucky: I got published. What’s more, I’m one of the few writers that gets to write full time. Even better, I’ve gone international, and people all over the world are waiting for the next book.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t hate my job sometimes.
It doesn’t matter what you do for a living. Ron Jeremy probably calls in sick some days because he just can’t stand the thought of getting another blowjob. I don’t doubt that Mike and Jerry over at Penny Arcade occasionally wake up in the morning and think, “Fuck, I’ve got to play more fucking video games today.”
That’s just the way of the world. Everyone hates their own job sometimes. It’s an inalienable right, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.
Reason #3: The Myth of the Author.
People want to believe that the act of creation is a magical thing. When I write, I am like some beardy old-word god, hewing the book from some raw piece of literary firmament. When I write, the muse is like a lithe, naked woman, sitting on my lap with her tongue in my ear.
And you want to know the truth? Sometimes it’s exactly like that. Sometimes when I write, I’m so full of adrenaline that I could lift up a truck. I can feel my my tripartite soul burning in my chest like molten gold.
But sometimes it sucks. Just like any job. I get bored revising the same chapters over and over. My back hurts from hunching over the keyboard. I am so tired of fucking spellcheck. Do you know how long it takes to run spellcheck on 350,000 words?
I’m tired of trying to juggle everything: the plotlines, the character arcs, the realistic depiction of a fantastic world, the pacing, the word choice, the tension, the tone, the stories-within-stories. Half of it would be easy, but getting everything right at once? It’s like trying to play cat’s cradle in n-dimensional space.
The truth is, sometimes I’m so sick of sitting in front of this computer I could shit bile.
There. That’s all. I’m not quitting. I’m not even taking the night off. I just needed to vent.
Thanks for being here. Remember to tip your waitress. I’ll be here all week.
pat