Imperfection

This is just going to be a quick little reminder about an undeniable fact that is occasionally hard to swallow.

I’m imperfect.

Yes, I’ll blog about how I go about doing the writing thing as if other people should do the same, or venture my opinion about a piece of entertainment media that some others appear to consider having merit. But I never come out with these things under the impression that I know everything about whatever it is I’m discussing. Heck, my dayjob involves me dealing with Flash on a regular basis, but I managed to mess up my Star Trek Online preview to the point that it came out long after the Escapist did one.

So yeah. I’m not perfect. I’m happy to share my thoughts on writing, the process I’m going through with The Project, my reviews of movies and/or games and whatever else manages to find its way here. I just never want people to think that I’m under the impression my shit doesn’t stink. Because it does. Dear God, does it ever.

The reason I’m letting my fingers fly about this is some of the other writing blogs I’ve encountered. Let’s face it, we can be a pretty pretentious bunch. Now, being a published author can give someone the rights to crow a bit, and I don’t blame them a bit. And we need to be all about the self-promotion and that means puffing up the plumage. That’s fine too. What gets to me is the occasional blog I stumble across that sounds like it’s being written by a wildly successful novelist about everything they’ve done that makes them so awesome but is completely undermined by the fact that they’ve gotten ink for nothing of note beyond perhaps a few articles. By the way, this is not directed at any of the writers I know personally. Most people I know personally are delightfully tongue-in-cheek about either their current success or their prospects for future publication. They know that publication is a hard, soul-crushing, will-sapping process and those that come out of the other side of it with any measure of success are either wildly talented or masters of salesmanship, especially when it comes to selling themselves.

These blogs which shall remain unlinked as I don’t want anybody else to suffer through their pretension fall into the latter category. They talk about endorsements they’ve gotten from celebrities. They gleefully tell us when their next draft is getting reviewed. They act, in short, like Shakespeare or Austin reborn, God’s gift to the bookstore, a veritable fucking revolutionary in the realm of modern entertainment.

I hope I never come across that way.

It wouldn’t be that hard. I could plaster the good things Bob Orci has said about me all over the place. I could recount every single pitch I send to the Escapist or other publications, with the assumption that Jordan’d be foolish not to put me into the issue in question. But I’m not going to. I know not everything I produce is worth publishing even in embryonic form, and things I do submit that have a chance are going to need rewrites. I know it’s not an easy process and it won’t always go the way I’d prefer. So it’d be foolish of me to act that way.

I guess I just have a low tolerance for the people who do.

If I ever should start acting this way, please, pick up a hardcover copy of Lord of the Rings or Stranger in a Strange Land and give my noggin a good whack. You’ll be doing the world a favor. I’d love to do the same for these people I’ve encountered, but I’d rather not be working on The Project from prison. It’d be hard to concentrate on character interaction when I’m avoiding gang rape.