6.30.2008

The Original Whatever


What follows is a brief zygote of an idea. Once a week I will be posting snap shots of my current writing project. All post will be titled “The Original Whatever”.


So I get to be a writer, of sorts, so they tell me, pending government approval of my tax status. This will make a lot of people pretty damn cynical and mad about the current state of writing in this country. Let me give you a list of reasons why I should not be a writer.

1. I am a terrible speller; even with the use of spellchecker I am still dreadfully bad at spelling. A fear of mine is that I actually write a book that people buy and I have to go to book signings and the public discovers that I cannot spell anyone’s name correctly when autographing their copy of my book.

2. “There”, “their” and that third spelling of “they’re” all mean the same thing to me. I toss “their”, “there” and “they’re” anywhere and hope for the best.

3. The use of commas, apostrophes and remembering to add “s” on to the end of plural words remain a mystery to me. Thank goodness for my Editor-at-Large, Elizabeth (my wife who can spell magnificently and totally gets the “their”, there”, “they’re” thing.)

4. My friends who actually want to be writers, who have degrees in writing, who have a trilogy of already completed novels, edited and saved on their computers, will be furious with me that I got published before them. (p.s. these friends are way better at spellchecker and grammar pro combined.) I am always calling them and asking “how do you spell that” and “what’s that wavy ~ symbol used for again”) Yep they will want to kick my ass and I will not even use my superhero powers of Creative Non-Fiction Man to protect myself. I deserved it.