I know why the cubed bird sings

Well, we were told today that come September 1st we will be blocked from checking non-company email at work. It’s times like these that I feel like a sad little Oompa Loompa and I wonder when I will give up on all this ladder-climbing-making-a-living-business and do something useful.

I went to a little seminar thing over at the 826 Superhero store a while back. Sort of a cheesy thing to do, but I have a cheesy little crush on Dave Eggers and he was going to be there. It was about how to write and publish a novel. The whole second half about publishing was useless for me and the writing part turned out to be something that’s hard to explain. Plus the panel didn’t seem to be too varied in their circumstances. When they started writing they all either passionately hated their lives and quit their jobs to run off to a writer’s colony or they had gone to grad school. The only one who’d ever had a real job while writing was Jonathan Lethem who worked in a bookstore while he wrote on of his first books. He said that while he did this he thought about nothing but the novel, he would scribble away during his 30 minute lunch break and write as soon as he got home.

Needless to say everyone in the audience left feeling defeated.

I thought about it for a while afterward though. There are plenty of people who work and write. It’s not about whether you have a job—it’s about boldness. You have to be cocky and self assured enough to ramble on for two-hundred pages and think people will want to read it. It’s boldness and maybe being kind of obsessive. I keep hoping that maybe being broke and ruled over like a high schooler will make me bold and obsessive. It hasn’t quite come to that yet, so far I’m still just looking forward to my raise.