Kids

When I was about 10 years old, I begin work on my very first book. It was a science fiction novel about the harvesting of aliens, and a child who was made to serve as an incubator for what his people felt were a superior species. Somewhere over the course of writing, I was told that being a writer was a real job and that dream fell the wayside.

Being told that I couldn’t be a writer, I didn’t much think about it even though I still like doing it. Now here we are some 25 years later, and I’m calling myself a writer. It seems to me that my believing someone else and their concept of what a “real job” is cost me a lot of time over the last few decades.

Now, I have children of my own. I tell them they can be an do anything. There is no limit, there is no real world verses dream world – they can be anything.

You too, you sexy mother fuckers.

You can be whatever you want even now. Just be realistic in your expectations. Personally, I don’t have any. I just like to write, it makes me feel good. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing about how I dislike myself, or how I think that I am the shit. If I’m writing teenage dick jokes, or killing would-be gods in the world that I made up, it just doesn’t matter as long as I push forward.

Oh, there is one more thing on the subject of not giving up, and that is criticism. You are going to get it, I know that I do. It is what you do with that criticism that matters. If you say, “yeah you’re right I do suck I better stop doing this right now,” then your critics have already won.

I have advice about that, it is really easy to remember. The next time someone confront you until you cannot succeed at what you would like to do, remember these three words:

Fuck that guy.

Happy Friday.