Skip to main content

No Secrets

It's pretty obvious that I like to write; if I didn't, you would be reading something else because I wouldn't have anything for you. (if you wanna take a minute to think about how you wouldn't know that I didn't write because you just never would have experienced it, and then let your mind wander down that road, I don't blame you - that's what I'm doing.)

But whenever I tell people that I like to write, they invariably ask what I mean, what I want to write, and it always leads to the same thing. It's foolproof, someone will always say "write a book."

Maybe I'm just a bundle of hate, but that always sort of bothers me. Perhaps it's because I've thought about writing books and partially realized just how much goes into it. Or maybe it's because I don't say things to engineers like "Hey, build me something."
The point is that, in order to write a book, you have to somehow come up with over 100,000 words based on one coherent storyline. You need characters that are relatable, believable (in a way, at least, as Harry Potter's wizardry isn't realistic, but his character traits are), and either likable or intriguingly dislikable. You need people to check over your work and tell you how bad it is, people to tell you how great it is, people to tell you that you should throw it all out, and people to tell you that you can't write to save your life (if anyone from WG is reading this, Mrs. Dingman, 8th grade english, told me I could never be a writer). Also, you need people to make the production of the book happen, long after it has been written. And of course, before they'd be willing to publish a book, you need their people to tell you how bad it is, what needs to be fixed, and what needs to stay.
In addition to all of the background BS (the production/publishing), you need to somehow maintain the faith that your idea is really, truly good.

So yeah, I'll try writing a book, why the hell not? It may not be anything you're interested in, but it doesn't matter, because if I want it published, I'll have to edit it until you love it. Ironic, no?
I've been told that you're supposed to write to form; stock story-lines and styles for various demographics, and if you don't do this, you're extremely unlikely to get those ideas sold. Pretty sad. I may write more about that later.

This post feels angst-ridden. I'd like to lighten things up...so here's a fun fact: I have a twitter handle (twitter.com/kevinPnye) but I decided it'd be much funnier to reserve the rights to TheRealKevinNye, since, you know famous people do that.
The twist is that since I've already had the one account, I had to register "The Real Kevin Nye" under my dad's email address.
What a loser!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Vienna Christmas, part 1

When I last left you, the two Koniecznys were about to arrive and we were going to do...well, something. And a week later we were all going to Vienna for Christmas to see some of my family members who live there (one of them is Norbert, who you might remember from canyoning). Carly and her mom got in on Sunday and we just kinda hung out the first day or two, but they wanted to see the sights and took off to see some nearby things and places, which is something they might tell you about if they were blogging but I don't think they are. Anyway, the real excitement started at the end of the week. Carly and her mom took an overnight train to Vienna on Thursday/Friday and Jenna and I had to wait until Saturday to go. We took a two-layover train; once in Verona to turn to the north and then a second stop in Innsbruck to switch onto an Austrian (OBB) train that would swoop through southeastern Germany en route to Vienna. It was a nearly 12 hour day of trains and, believe it or not, it...

Vienna Christmas, Part 2

In Part 1 , we had a handful of days in Vienna with Carly. But she had to leave and we had to press on and enjoy dreary old wonderful Vienna (and more) without her. On the day she left, the three of us who remained took a tour of the underground catacombs under St. Stephen's Cathedral, which is Vienna's big, central church. The tour started off shaky, as we weren't sure whether we'd see dead bones or not because we were looking at some burial sites of former priests and the like. Suddenly there appeared a hole in the floor of one room which was quite literally filled with bones. Mostly arms and legs, with skulls neatly placed on top. Very cool. The next room was lined around the walls, and still another was full of haphazard skeletal remains. My bride-to-be was in heaven. I ignored this possible red-flag. No photos allowed though, so I can't share any. We stuck around the city center until dusk, hoping to get a nice glimpse of things under the lights, and ...

New Year's Eve

One thing that seems to be a true worldwide phenomenon is the realization that my last name is used on New Year's Eve signs around the globe. At first I felt slighted, as if someone were cheapening the worth of my last name. In more recent years I've taken is as a weird sort of compliment and even occasionally tried to make it into a pseudo-attention-getting thing if I'm feeling very "look at me" on a particular day. But that's not what I'm supposed to tell you about because that's boring. What's not boring is that most of the big cities around the world do big exciting fireworks displays and celebrations that stretch way beyond a ball dropping down a pole and standing in a crowd of 500,000 people for nine hours. In short, New Year's in the states generally blows. In the northern US you either go overpay by insane amounts to go to a bar and then wait for three hours for a cab back home or you go to a friend's house and it's...fine. ...