"April Fool's Resolution" by Troy H. Cheek on Apr 01, 2004

"Hello, keyboard, my old friend. It's time to peck at you again..."

April is a wonderful month in which to start a new mode of behavior. Why? Because if you fail at it, you can always claim that it was a protracted April Fool's joke!

And this month I have decided to try my hand at writing daily. That's right. You will see a new article here every weekday. Or close enough so as not to matter.

Why? The short version is that I just wanted to see if I could do it.

The long version is, of course, longer.

Those of you who have followed my writings know that there is very little in this world that I can't do if I put my mind to it. Or, at least, I am certainly conceited enough to think that there is very little in this world that I can't do if I put my mind to it. I have often expressed an opinion that I could do certain jobs as well if not better than the people currently doing them. Even if I couldn't get the job in the first place.

I can do the job but I can't get the job? Of course. In some cases, actually doing the job is no big deal; it's knowing the right people and kissing the right behinds to get you hired that's the problem. In other cases, it's not that the job is particularly difficult, it's the years of hard and thankless work to struggle your way up the ladder and reach a point in your career where you're offered it.

For example, I've always believed that if someone picked me off the street and offered me the chance to host a nationally syndicated talk radio show, I could do a passable job at it. I would never have the strength of will to work for years as 3rd shift DJ to learn the radio business, scrimp and save while working two extra jobs to be able to afford to pay for my own airtime until I could get sponsors, then live for years as the biggest on-air personality in the smallest town with a radio station until I finally got a syndication deal. But just plop me down behind the mic of an existing show and you'd be surprised how well I'd do. It's not that any of the current people in the business are better than any of the rest of us. It's that they had a little luck and a lot of hard work to make it happen.

I'm not that lucky and I don't like working that hard.

In similar news, I've read enough excrement that passes for writing these days to know I could do a better job than some of the people who make a living doing it. The difference between them and me is that they are making a living doing it, while I'm writing for free for a vanity website with 47 new readers on a good day. Not because they're better than me, but because they were willing to quit their day jobs and spend thankless months writing day and night until they finally churned out something they could sell. Me, I piddle at it on odd weekends.

Author, composer, and all around nice guy Peter David once wrote how he hates it when people, upon hearing that he's a writer, make comments such as "Oh, how nice. I wish I had time to write something." He says, if I remember correctly, that such comments imply that anybody could be a successful writer if only they could be bothered to take the time to do so. As someone who has devoted a huge heaping portion of his life to writing, he naturally takes offense at that.

I don't take offense, because I think I know what they're really saying. By saying that they wish they had time, they really mean that they wish they had enough faith in their abilities to quit work and devote their lives to their writing just to see if they're good enough to make a living at it. Many years ago, I read that if you want to be a writer, you should save up enough money to live on for at least six months, then close yourself up in your house and not come out until you've sold something. If, at the end of the six months, you've had enough sales or potential sales to keep you going for another six months, keep going. If not, go back to working 2nd shift at the local Stop-n-Shop. I think when people say "I wish I had the time to write something" they're really saying that they don't have the guts to take a chance on themselves like that and are envious of people who have.

I don't have the guts, either. At best, I ignore the phone and incoming email for a few nights and dabble at writing fiction. I have an unexpected day off while recovering from oral surgery and I fill it by trying to wring some humor out of my pain. I have an hour between dinner and bed and I update my website.

But this month I am going to attempt to write one article a day for this space. Just to see if I can. Maybe it will be funny. Maybe it will be short fiction. Maybe it will be a recount of what I had for lunch. But I am going to make the attempt.

This won't put me in the same league as people who write six novels a year (and get paid to do so), but maybe I'll feel a little less guilty when I criticize their awkward sentence structure.

Or maybe this will turn out to be a big April Fool's joke.

Time will tell.

See you tomorrow.

Copyright 2004 by Troy H. Cheek. Reprint with prior written permission only. Comments and questions to $mail:theview$