Writers too hung up on being published

The ironic thing about my comments yesterday is that until recently I never entertained thoughts of publishing anything. Who am I to consider such things, I thought. I wrote for my own pleasure, for therapeutic reasons, to exorcise my demons, whatever. I had some notion; I've had lots of notions, but for once I had some time on my hands, and so I just wrote my notion down, fearfully, because I knew I was not a writer and my story would stink. Yet like a passerby who finds a lump of red clay lying on the ground, and contrary to good sense, normal behavior and the desire to keep one's clothes clean, picks up the clay and plunges into it thinking he will make a replica of Michaelangelo's David, but instead makes Mr. Bill, I wrote down my notion.

Perhaps this shows in my entry on the 18th which reveals how childish I can be. And, of course, I was somewhat putting on a character for the sake of writing, so dont think I am succumbing to the overweening dreams so many writers, who simply HAVE to make it big.

American Idol contestants often seem the same way. I have been forced to watch a couple of episodes - the backstage interviews of contestants awaiting their turn...appalling. They just drove in from Toledo in their '89 Sierra, they've just barley wiped the Arby's off their face, wearing clothes that other high school juniors in their town of 15,000 are wearing - undersized 90's sexy fashion a la Mariah Carey, or gangsta baggy heavy wool with hoods, primadonna waif dressed like Stevie Nicks, or guy-liner metrosexual jeans and a stylish shirt. These people talk as if their only desire in life, nay, the very hinge upon which their fate turns is getting picked to be the Next American Idol. They have dropped out of school to go to New York and stand in the contestant line. They have sold the farm, cashed in all their chips, borrowed money from Grandma, who will be watching. They are convinced that they've got what it takes, their potbelly notwithstanding. They are crying, jumping, hugging, praying like Mother Theresa to be picked. 98% of them parade forth in a veritable carnivale of mediocrity at best.

Anyway, that's not what kind of writer I want to be. So if I never get published, I'll just continue to polish doorknobs and admire good novelists.