A Page a Day

For years now, the writerly advice that I’ve always received is “just write a page a day.”  I’ve been hearing that since high school.  “Within a year, you’ll have a finished book!”

Of course, in the publishing world, that’s no good.  You have to be nose to the grindstone 9-5 and churn out a book every nine months if you want to make money.  And do that for 20 years if you really want to make money.  And also not suck.

But I’ve never really considered myself a writer, though friends and colleagues often push me in that direction.  Probably because I write the ongoing adventures of Jerry the Flying Club-like Penis here on the GS front page all the time.

Really, folks, 90% of the stuff I post here is done so while under the influence of a crippling amount of alcohol.  Or waffles.  Or, right now, that 365 raspberry soda from Whole Foods which is made from pure cane sugar and proudly advertises that it “contains 0% juice”.  I think there should be huge ads screaming:  “Get 0% of what’s good for you RIGHT HERE!”

I buy it on the rare occasion I have enough money to go into Whole Foods because I miss soda with sugar in it.  There is a difference.  Ask any of the goy who flock to the Jewish stores for Passover Coke.  My grandmother used to cane Jews to load up with real sugar Coke at the local Jewish market in Wheaton.  Then we’d all gather around and worship the old Coke.  Taste it the way it used to taste before 1985 and the high fructose boom.

I’ll always associate Passover Coke – and shoving old Jewish women to the ground – with my grandmother.

So, anyway, enough people have hounded me the last couple of months, ever since The Dreaded Article, to write my life story.  These people now hounding me are of the sort who can turn my writing into cash which, really, is what writing is about.  You shouldn’t write for the dream, or to answer the call of art, or anything high brow like that.  You should write so you can quit your motherfucking job and stop dealing with idiot shitheads all fucking day.  And, if writing is what you must do, then it’s worth any sacrifice to get to the point where it pays off… Or else you should stop trying.

Here in my mid-30’s, I’m approaching that sort of outlook on life.  I don’t really write anymore, except for idiot blog entries, because writing wasn’t making me money.  I don’t deal with crazy women anymore because there’s no payoff.  I don’t stay out till 2am because it’s all pointless when you can get drunk in the afternoon and fuck before sunset.  Or…whatever.

I now understand the esteemed advice of my great-grandfather:  If you don’t get any pussy by midnight, then kick her out and go to bed.
When my grandfather first passed that quote on, while I was partying hard in my first year of college, I was all, whatever, old man!  But now, yes, god, it’s absolutely true.  Women aren’t worth losing sleep over.

So writing, despite making me a small amount of money in the heady internet boom days of the 90’s, hasn’t really been worth much to me in the old 21st.

But this time, it’s not friends telling me to write the story, it’s those slimy agent types.  The ones who say, hey, we can sell this shit.  Like, really.  Like, let’s meet for dinner.  So…okay.  Back to writing for cash.  Because people are suckers for memoirs, right?  Or something.  I don’t know.  I’ll throw in little sex-craved, bloodthirsty blue elves…which is something my paternal grandfather constantly complained about.  The blue elves showed up when he was 45 and stayed for the rest of his life.  He even set up exotic homemade traps for them throughout the upstairs offices at our company business.

That was probably one of the first signs that something was amiss in my family.