If you give a writer a pencil, chances are, he’ll want a piece of paper.
So you’ll strap on your helmet and hop on your bike to go along on the ride to the office supply store .
But once you’re on the bike path, the writer will want to explore. Because that’s what writers do. It’s called creative procrastination.
You’ll be riding along the bike path and probably see a pack of bike riders racing very, very fast.
And the writer will try to keep up with them, just to see if he can.
So you’ll ride your bike as hard as you can for as long as you can.
When the real cyclists slowly turn into tiny dots on the horizon, then disappear,
the writer will say that’s for the best. It’s a better story now.
That’s when you’ll realize you don’t know where you are, and that you should have brought a map, if not a survival knife and flint.
You’ll be scared, but the writer will smile with glee. He’ll say, remember, what doesn’t kill you …
… makes you stronger, you’ll answer proudly.
But he’ll crinkle his nose and say, Hell, no, what doesn’t kill you makes a great story! CHA-CHING!
And if you haven’t realized it already, you understand why writers are lonely people without a lot of friends.
At least, friends who are alive.
You’ll spend a few nights in the cold, eating wild berries and drinking rainwater as if you were on Survivor. The writer will fill your empty nights with terrifying stories of what could possibly happen to you, all them ending in excruciating death.
Eventually you’ll get rescued and even though you shared the frightening ordeal 50-50 with the writer, you find that really you only own 100 percent of your story, and none of the writer’s.
Of course, the writer will hire an agent, who will take 20 percent right off the top, which is fine with the writer, because if he tried to sell anything on his own he’d end up with 100 percent of nothing, just like you.
The agent will sell the book to a marketing company, who will take 50 percent off the newly neatly trimmed top. The agent is fine with that because without the marketing company, he’d be earning 100 percent of nothing, just like you.
The marketing company puts together the book and sells it to a publishing house, which will take 50 percent off the top simply because it can, and another 20 percent off the top for distribution costs. For some reason, the marketing company doesn’t flinch at this. Probably because 100 percent of nothing is …
The distributor will sell the books to local stores, who will jack the price up even further, to take off their 20 percent.
You’ll go to the bookstore for the book signing on the day the book is released, and you’ll fork over $39.99. But you won’t mind because, of course, you know the author will only get about 50 cents of that, and he’ll autograph the book, meaning someday when he rides a little too far and too fast, you’ll get your money back and then some selling it on eBay, with you actually getting to keep a full 100 percent.
Which makes you start thinking that, hey, who needs all these people in the first place?
Why not just buy a computer, type in your story, download your photos and video, maybe make a podcast, and offer it to folks like yourself for, oh, free! Then secretly hope and pray that maybe a few folks will decide to fork over five bucks or so and actually subscribe because you really aren’t concerned about getting rich, you just want to make a decent living.
So you go to the office supply store to buy a computer, and as they hand you a laptop you feel like you have all the power of the world behind you to help you tell your story.
And then, you laugh, because you think to yourself, hey, this is much, much, MUCH better than …
… if you give a writer a pencil.
Or is it?
Time to ride.
