Alright, already.  Enough of these apocalyptic predictions of environmental disaster, social disruption and the end of the world.  I must confess, as a writer I do tend to exaggerate things a bit.  But the problem is soeasily solved.  First, everybody on Earth has to agree that there is a problem.  Second, everybody on Earth has to agree on the solution.  And third, everybody on Earth has to agree to pay to implement the solution.  See… piece of cake.  So, with that concern out of the way, it’s time to move on.  This week I’m going to go back a theme or three and pick back up making fun of the one individual who, judging by your comments, you most enjoy see me make fun of.

Namely, me.

Let’s start with an update on my writing career.  The “writing” part is going quite well although the “career” part is lagging somewhat behind.  The whole lack of a career is not yet a concern but I can see that train coming down the tracks.  To address this I have made some adjustments to my behavior that would cause B.F. Skinner to roll over in his grave.  For those of you who 1) aren’t trained psychologists or 2) haven’t spent years in therapy, some background may be in order.  B.F. Skinner is the guy who thought up Operant Conditioning.  This is the method that says you can change an undesirable behavior by substituting a different, ostensibly desirable, behavior.  Well, duh.  We should just all be glad the Dr.  Skinner was a psychologist and not a rocket scientist.  We’d still be gazing at the Moon and wondering about green cheese.

Insanity can be defined as the repetition of a behavior with the expectation of a different outcome.  For example, suppose you had an irresistible urge to hit your right hand against the wall.  This would probably hurt.  Maybe a lot.  Now, regardless of the complete irrationality of this behavior, as long as you expect it to hurt every time you smacked the wall, then you are sane.  However, if you expected the result to be different, say, you thought: 1) it wouldn’t hurt, or 2) you would break the wall into a million little pieces like in “The Matrix”, or 3) you would punch a hole into an alternate universe and all the Demons of Hell would spill forth; then, you would be considered insane.

So Skinner came up with this idea that if you wanted to change how you felt about something that was tied to one of your behaviors then you just changed your behavior.  In our example, whenever you got the urge to hit the wall with your right hand, you would instead pick up a hammer, and use it to pound on your left hand.  Eventually, you would become used to this new behavior, and your left hand would hurt so much, that you wouldn’t even think about smacking your right hand against the wall.

So it was with me.  As long as I can remember I have been a private person.  I kept my feelings to myself.  My thoughts were shared with only a close group of friends.  My hopes and dreams kept under lock and key.  This, as is pretty darn apparent, is counter-productive to a formative career as a Famous Writer.  I may shun celebrity, but if I want a whole lot of people to read my stuff then I have to acquire some degree of fame.  This is a behavior that is somewhat foreign to my personality so I decided to take some tentative first steps down my Skinnerian road to fame.  I picked up my psychological hammer, suspended it the air, and logged into www.meetup.com.  I became a Joiner.

Meetup.com is a place where groups are organized around anything, and everything, you can think of.  There are singles groups, there are quilting groups, hiking groups, skiing groups, there are extra-terrestrial speculation groups, and there are even extra-terrestrial singles groups judging by some of the pictures.  Most importantly, for me, there are Writer’s Groups.  Just what I was looking for.  I stepped out onto this slippery slope in my pursuit of renown. I put down the hammer, picked up my keyboard and joined.

Until now I have avoided “group experience”, preferring to enjoy life alone or in the company of a few carefully chosen – mostly based on the criterion that they could tolerate my presence – friends.  Privacy is obviously antithetical to my quest for recognition so I changed my behavior.  I joined two writer’s groups to see how it would go.  In a couple of words: not well.  OK, one of the groups does seem like it’s got some potential.  The members are all spending a lot of their time writing, with greater or lesser success, but they all take it pretty seriously.  The group’s purpose is to provide carefully thought out criticism of the members’ works and then sit around discussing those works and telling dirty jokes.  I think this one is going to work out.  The group is pretty exclusionary – I was not allowed to actually participate in my first meeting while the rest of the group was busy evaluating my membership – so I felt right at home.  I made it over that first hurdle and now look forward to my next meeting this coming weekend.

The second group I joined is something of a different beast entirely.  At this group the membership seems to consist mainly of people who can’t write except in the company of similarly impaired people in a public setting.  The meetings go something like: “Hi.”, followed by about 45 minutes of silence while everybody sits and writes quietly; then there’s 15 minutes of discussion; and then everybody leaves.  This, I’m sure, is all well and good except that 45 minutes isn’t a long enough time to get the creative juices flowing, 15 minutes isn’t really enough to let everybody have their say, and the meetings are held in a coffee shop.  Plus the group has the whole “Seattle Nice” thing going on.

If you are a writer one of the first things you learn is that, at some point, your stuff sucks.  Tell us something we don’t know.  Having people say “nice” things about your work is kind of counter-productive.  You have to develop thick skin and realize that “criticism” is just a step along the path to having your stuff not suck.  At my first meeting one writer read something that they had written which was still at the sucky stage.  The others at the table offered such helpful criticism like “oooh… I love the imagery”, or “what flowing descriptions”, or “I felt like I was there”.  The writing in question was a laundry list of geographical items and architectural peculiarities.  I weighed in with something like “nice description, how do you tie it in with the story?” My tablemates looked at me with shocked indignation and one of the other writers jumped to the author’s defense and said “there doesn’t need to be a story”.  “Ahhhh…, of course” is what I said out loud.  I was thinking then why would anybody read it?

Which is really the whole point of this quest for fortune and fame.  It doesn’t do you any good to write things if you don’t have anybody to read them.  A writer really doesn’t care what other writers think – short of the lies they’re willing to give you to put on the back cover.  What a writer cares about is what readers think.  The frequently mentioned Lee Child – one of my heroes – writes a series of novels that are as far away from Literature as Splenda® is from Nutrition.  Nevertheless, readers snap up his books faster than free candy at a dentist’s office.  I want to be Lee.  I figure the only way this is going to happen is to get my stuff in front of readers.  And the only way to do that, short of actually getting published, was to form my own group with Readers as members.

So I did.  It’s the New Seattle Writers and Readers Assembly and you are welcome to read all about it and join if you want by clicking here <link no longer active>.  The stated purpose of the group is to give writers a forum to present their writings, in person, to readers or people willing to pretend to be readers.  We are traditionalists.  Following the rich legacy of greats such as Hemmingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Thompson, and Poe our meetings are held in a bar.  There are no authors famous for drinking coffee.  Wobbly, starry-eyed writers will address the group and be judged not by literary merits but by the response of their audience.  If the audience roars with laughter, weeps in despair, or cheers in exaltation then the writer can know that they were able to find that elusive connection.  If the audience does nothing, well maybe it’s time to rethink the tale.  Real writing, real feedback.  Perfect.

The first meeting is this week so you’ll probably be getting an update in the not too distant future. 

In my modesty, I thought this was such a compelling idea for an up-and-coming writer that I pitched my new group to the coffee house crowd.  The concept was not well received.  One writer said something in response that I could barely hear:  “I joined a group that met in a bar once.”  She raised her voice to be heard over the other table, the twenty other competing conversations in the room, and the music blasting up from downstairs.  “But I quit.”  A jackhammer started pounding on the sidewalk just outside the café.  “It was too loud.”