Step 90: More Babbling

So I was just sitting here and thinking about what I ought to post today, since I'm still a vastly uninteresing person, but I did...sort of...commit to this blog, and somehow my thoughts wandered to Someday When I'm a Famous Author, and I'll be required to give speeches about my writings.

This morphed into me making up a speech as I went along, while blinking through crappy high school stage lights and trying to distinguish between the faces of the teenagers who are mostly only glad they got out of fourth period to hear this whozit blather at them.

The speech I was giving in my mind had nothing to do with any of my stories, and had instead to do with the fact that I was giving a speech, and how it really didn't seem to match up with who I am. A transcript of this speech, more or less:

See, the thing you need to remember about writers is that we are a deeply introverted people. Our lives literally consist of spending hours, alone, observing the goings on of the characters in our heads. Even in our imaginations we're prone to people watching rather than joining in (unless we're writing in first person, which doesn't count, because then we aren't ourselves, we're someone else). So, for me to stand up here and try to talk to all of you...at once...alone...is a little uncomfortable.

I mean, I was a thespian in high school, I see you giggling jocks, I said THESPIAN with a T-H and a P, not an L and a B. So, as a th--member...participant in my school's speech and theater team, I got used to having to speak like this, but it still feels unnatural.

I have learned, however, that the trick is to just keep forming words and vomiting them out. Verbal diarrhea is a good thing, in a public speaking environment. It's also important to remember that anyone younger than you is considered a "kid" and kids think words like "vomit" and "diarrhea" are funny, so you should try to use them in your speech as well. More than once, if you can. Vomit and diarrhea.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about with the writing. Writing is one of those things that is fun when you think you're doing a great job, but stressful when you think you're doing a terrible job. Writers are a little masochistic, because most of the time you're going to be absolutely certain that you're doing a terrible job. And also most of the time, everyone is going to agree with you. Especially if they intend to make money off you. They're going to want your goth character to wear a pink tank top and white short shorts, because everyone wants the goth kid to turn mainstream just once. They're going to want the bitchy, popular despite her being a jackass cheerleader to fall on her face, tear her skirt and flash the whole school, because complete humiliation is the only thing that brings those girls down a notch. And they aren't going to care that your goth character isn't secretly dreaming of the day she can don Barbie's wardrobe. They aren't going to care that your cheerleader, in your mind anyway, is a thinking, feeling human being and that her outward asshattery has more to do with a volatile home life than with some innate jerk gene.

And sometimes, despite your best arguments, you're going to have to give the publishers what they want. And it will hurt. But you'll keep writing. Because, as I said, you have to be sort of masochistic to be a writer.

I should note that it's also a good idea to throw a few mild swears into any speech you give to teenagers, because it shocks them a little, and sometimes makes them pay attention to you, instead of to the time and whether the speech they aren't listening to will also get them out of fifth period History. Vomit and diarrhea.

...SO YEAH. That's the speech I gave in my head, at least up to the point where I decided I'd blog it instead of keep wandering back and forth across an imaginary stage.

I imagine it would have continued in that vein, ending with the pre-established inside joke, "Vomit and diarrhea." Then they'd all clap, and there would be a question and answer session that involved mainly questions from the teachers, and perhaps a couple from the overachievers. The bookish kids would be dying to ask me something brilliant, but their introversion would keep them silently in their seats hoping and praying a teacher would read their mind and ask for them. (They wouldn't.) And then there'd be the special treat of everyone who wanted one getting a signed copy of my book, if they'd just line up. And pretty much everyone would want a signed copy, because either they liked me, or they liked my book (which their English teacher will have ordered them to read the week before my speech), or they wanted to cut into 5th period History class a little more.

Right. This post was aptly titled, I think. And I'll be shutting up now. kthxbye.

Ten, nada, zip.