Celebrating Independent Authors
Dearest Digital Gawd, now available as gif, jpeg, or bit map,
Give me this day a couple uninterrupted hours,
As I swore to myself I would have this chapter done Tuesday, and now it is Thursday.
No wait, it’s Friday. How did I lose a whole day and this thing still isn’t done? Continue reading “Ed’s Casual Friday: An Indie Prayer”
I took double my medication this morning by accident. What does this mean for you? I have no idea. What I do know is that I am very, very sleepy. And a little bit too intrigued by the wall paper. God, it’s pretty. Why am I crying? I just love you all so much. You know that, right? I don’t say it enough. I’ll try and do better from now on.
What was I just doing? Oh yes, writing. About something. I need something to write about. See writing, man, it’s like words and punctuation marks. God, they’re funny. Little squiggles like tiny amoebas on my screen…why are they moving? Man, I’m thirsty.
I used to write about sports. When I was 14 or 15. I had a press pass, and I got to go to all the Chargers games. And Padres. Etc. I think I got paid $4.16 an hour. That seems right. There was a full bar in the press room. And a buffet. I availed myself of both depending on who was tending bar.
God, my neighbors are arguing. I wish they’d shut up. It’s really distracting. I wonder what they think I do all day. I never leave the apartment. Hmmm…. Continue reading “That’s the Stuff”
How many times have we all heard that old saw “write what you know”? What does that even mean?
Many take this as advice to write only about our areas of expertise, what we have studied, where we have been. The implication is that if we are not well versed in our subject matter that we will slip up somehow and that our ignorance cannot help but be revealed.
Modern society is vastly complex and so hyper-specialized that very few of us are in a position to be able to see the effect of our daily work processes rendered into an actual outcome. I have spent many a day in a cubicle in a fluorescent-lit hell, worrying whether I remembered to attach the cover sheet to my TPS report.
It is pretty much the same all over. Very few people are in a position to really be responsible for a product from conception to fruition. Most of the world just doesn’t work that way anymore.
One of the exceptions is farming. Farmers are intimately connected with their work and their product. They are in the rare position of being able to literally see the fruits of their labors. They till the soil, plant the crop, fertilize the crop, fight weeds and pests as best they are able. At the end of it all they harvest and sell what they wrought from the earth by the sweat of their own brows. They feed the world. Continue reading “Book Farmer”