blame Stephen King

(Originally posted 2/3/2018. I recently attended a Sting concert and after he’d opened with four of his past hits he sat down and said “I’ve got some bad news.” He then went on to say that he was going to play four new songs. Songs he knew nobody wanted to hear. This after allowing his son, Joe Sumner, to open the show for him. Joe Sumner, without a doubt the worst opening act I have ever, or ever will, see. I defy you to find a worse songwriter on the planet. Anyway… my point is, I reeled at the hubris that Sting was showing towards his fans. No respect at all. I’m reminded of this as I get set to depart on vacation. I will be without a computer so I’m going to have to post a very old, very long story to fill the days. Which one? Well… I’ve got some bad news.)

A couple days ago I finished Stephen King’s book On Writing. A huge fan of his (his book of short stories Night Shift was part of the reason that I started writing in the first place), I’d avoided reading it for years because I knew what it contained; the truth.

Simple truths about writing and why I suck at it.

I would like to drag his observations through the mud and do my best to slander his insights but I can’t.

The son of a bitch is right on about everything.

I lack discipline. I lack a work ethic. I can’t even be bothered to read over whatever nonsense I’ve written for my website before posting it.

I am a belligerently bad writer.

So I’m going to try something I’ve never done … write a book.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Years ago I did wrote a horror book called Squirmers but I never bothered to try and do a second draft of it or send it out to anyone to read.

This time I’m going to take Stephen’s advice and try to write 1000 words or so every day that I can.

I am not a writer by trade so there are chunks of time that my real job doesn’t allow me to write but I am going to make an effort to sit down and bang out 1000 words if at all possible.

Even though I currently don’t know what any of those 1000 words might be.

Again taking Mr. King’s advice, I have a premise and I have a few characters and I’m going to let those characters drive the story where they will.

I swear to you I have no idea where this dumb story will go.

I hope some of you loyal readers will join me for this trainwreck of an idea and maybe even enjoy it a little.

One last thing. I already have an idea where the story might take our assembled characters and part of the decision-making involved in these people going there is based on something I saw on TV years ago. A bit of information that may or may not be accurate.

The point being, if I gave a flying crap about you the reader I would simple do some basic research into this so I would know what I was talking about.

Nope.

If you want to hear a story AND learn something then go buy a Dan Brown book. The only promise I will make to you is that if you bother to read this story you will not learn anything. In fact you might end up dumber than when you began the journey.

That is if I don’t abandon the whole thing after a few days.

And to Stephen King and his awesome book On Writing?

Um … sorry Steve.