Day 17: I faked it

This is a milestone of sorts for me:  It's my 400th blog.  Woohooo!  

Now this might not seem like a lot, especially to people who write things like "Hey, my cat just threw up on my carpet!" or "Screw it, it's been a hard day, I'm going to have some wine and watch car chases and zombies on Netflix." as blogs.  

My blogs, are far from that.  Typically they are wordy.  Maybe a bit too wordy for a lot of people. I used to refer to my blog as a "blogumn" instead of a "column" as I first started writing blogs back in March 2006 at the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper here in town hoping to get a job out of it.  But, if you were reading these blogs this month, you'll know that already.  Didn't happen.  Still hoping that maybe one day someone will see these online and give me the opportunity to write something...anything...and pay me a pittance for the pleasure.

In my mind, I like to believe they are short stories...very short stories. A slice of my life hopefully buttered with enough syllables in the correct order, to make it somehow apply to your life as well.  If I can relate one of these "stories" to your life, in any way, and you think, "Hey, I thought that before!" or "Hey...that's happened to me countless times!" or "Oh...geez...I do that, too." then my job has been done.  If I can make you say, "Wow...I never really thought of that this way before...this is interesting!" then my job has just begun.

I hope one day to write a book...I've wanted to do just that since I was a small kid.  When I was little, my mother always told me to write children's books. "Mariann", she would say, (it would have been stupid for her to call me 'Bob" or "Jimmy") "Why don't you write some books for children? That's where all the money's at."  And I always thought she had no clue - this was well before all those "Goosebumps", "Harry Potter", and "Twilight" books. A LONG time before. But, damned if she wasn't right after all...that IS where the big money is.  And that's probably where I'd get the most satisfaction.  

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for adults to love my books and include my works in those "high school reading lists" - up there with all the classics and other books you dread reading over the summer. But to be able to get a child enthused enough to be glued to my book, or a series of them, like J.K. Rowling did?  Absolutely fantastic! At the end of the day, when all is read and done, I think that might actually give me the most satisfaction.  

I don't know if I'll have ever a career as a novelist, seems everyone nowadays knows someone personally (at least online) who has written a book.  Anyone can write a book.  My cats can write a book...the key to writing a good one is "to put the words in the right order."  

If and when I figure out how to do that, you'll know -- oh, you'll know for certain.  I'll be the extremely happy one walking around with a smile on my face and a skip in my step. And, when I'm not skipping, I'll have a glass of wine in my hand. And, I'll be soooooo rich someone else can clean up the cat vomit from the carpets...hell, what am I thinking here?  I'm rich! I can buy all new carpets every time they do it!

Until then...that smile on my face and that skip in my step?  I faked it.  The wine, however, is real...and it's in one of those fancy "wine-specific" Riedel glasses.  I have a bunch of them...and they honestly work...wine does taste differently in one glass vs another.  Let me elaborate a little...

Ugh...sorry...gotta cut this short...one of my cats is hacking up a hairball or something right now in the other room.  Ugh!  Ugh!  She's right underneath the piano, too, right where I can't get to her.  Ugh...this is always fun.

Anyway, go on over to "We Work For Cheese" to see what the other writers are coming up for "I'm faking it" today, Day 17, of the "30 Minus 2 Days of Writing" blogging workshop.