Verizon

I really hate Verizon. I hate their upgrade fees, their bullshit surcharges, their horrible service, and just about everything about them. They are the greediest, most evil cell phone provider in the world.

Those "unlimited data" plans we were supposed to be grandfathered into are getting phased out. So even if we already have the plan, we will be losing them. Now they charge $30 to upgrade to a new phone, for a bullshit reason that no one can understand.

Verizon is terrible. Absolutely terrible. And that's why, when this contract runs out, I'm going over to sprint or t-mobile, because fewer people complain about them.

I really hate cell providers.

Just a little tip, sir.

I don't know if it's my low self esteem or if I'm just a realist, but I don't feel that I'm even remotely good enough as a writer to be giving suggestions and advice to the other writers. It's partly the reason why I've stopped doing it. I really just don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do when I have such a low opinion of my own work.

With that said, if someone asks me a very pointed question, I often find it difficult to resist answering. The problem? I get so many questions from people, and none of them are ever pointed.

These days, people love to ask me to give them a tip on writing. And by that, I mean literally give them a tip. And by literally, I mean, they literally say the following words: "Can you give me a tip on writing?" Or, "I'm starting a new book. Do you have any suggestions?"

In case my use of the word "literally" isn't being fully realized, the word "book" in the previous quote is not a substitute for <insert type of book>.

These people literally ask me to give them a tip on a  "book" they are writing, without giving me any more information to go on than that: what kind of book, what genre, what's the name of it?

These people are always the most difficult to respond to. What am I supposed to say? I am a terrible advice-giver to begin with, and these kinds of questions only make it all the more difficult.

"Hi, I'm a new writer, and I'm creating a story about stuff that's important to me. Any advice?"

Yeah, here's my advice: ask me a fucking question I can actually answer! Obviously it's important to you or you wouldn't be writing it!

"Hello there. I've read your works. Is there any way you can give me a tip on how I'm supposed to begin a certain chapter?"

My answer: No, I can't. Because I have no idea what you're talking about! What book? What chapter? What genre, type of story, situations!

And my all time favorite:

"Hi. I really need some advice."

That's a statement not a request!

It's like walking into a McDonalds and saying, "Hi, I am here because I plan to eat food." And then waiting for the guy at the counter to figure out what you want.

Sheesh! 

It's getting harder

There was a time when all I wanted as a writer was for a single person (just one; didn't matter who) to like my writing. I thought I'd be able to die happy if just one person in this entire world genuinely enjoyed what I wrote.

But I got that, and then some. At first, it was great, and I felt like things were finally going my way. Yet I've discovered two things in my pursuit of writing:

#1--Having fans doesn't increase your chances of getting published or finding an agent, not even if you have thousands of them.

#2--Having fans can make it impossible to write.

As I gain increasingly more fans, I also gain increasingly more trolls, stalkers, and people I just really don't want to deal with. Now as I continue to gain more readers, I find that other authors will use every single chance they can to take a shot at me, in the hopes of reassuring themselves in their own writing. They feel that if they can "show me up" it makes them somehow better.

Some authors have millions of fans, and they do just fine. I have but a couple thousand, and I can't keep up anymore.

More than anything else, it's getting so difficult to write with other people's thoughts in my head. "Do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that."

I used to be able to write 10k words a day. Now I'll be lucky if I can squeeze out 2k every FEW days. It's not so much that I'm suffering from writer's block, but rather I keep having to wait for the influence of other people to wear off so I can make sure what I'm writing is what I really wanted, not everyone else.

I'm becoming gradually more certain that wanting to be a professional writer was a mistake for me. Why? Because professional writers, by unwritten law, must love criticism, cuddle up with edits, and change their story to meet the needs of others.

But me?

I just want to tell the stories the way I imagine them and the way I want to tell them. If being a professional writer means giving up that right, then I feel as if I've made a very bad call in aspiring to be one.

I just want to write what I want, like I did before having all these outside voices in my head.