Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I'm something like 40 pages into the best thing I've ever written, and I feel like I could walk away and never write again. That's so not true. I am, of course, an obsessive (am I? Yes. Really? I don't know. But is that fair...? Shut up. Okay.). No ideas. No ambition. I'm just going to sit here for a moment typing out whines and then erasing them. I'll just be a sec. No more than five minutes. Okay. I'm better now.

I write because, in the words of the great Josh Chapman, I'm damaged in such a way that this is how I communicate best. Well, some of those were Josh's words. The better ones. But to what end am I communicating? It would be nice if, after, what, eight, nine years of publishing, and another, who knows, ten before that of writing, a naked, nubile young blonde would show up at my door with a bag of cash and a keylime pie. Is that too much to ask? Okay, she doesn't have to be blonde. Forgive me--I don't mean to be sexist. We all know the most important thing to me in that image is the pie. Sad sad sad. But the cash really wouldn't hurt. It would all go to student loans, but still. A nice thought.

A prof. in a writing class once asked me what my goals were for being a writer. I said I really wanted, some day, to be a mid-list writer--you know, the guy with a couple university press publications who's respected and enjoyed, but hasn't become a slave to New York? Slow and steady for me, baby. As with most of my long range plans, when shared, this was met with a glazed look. Mostly because, as an MFA student, I was supposed to be convincing myself that I was going to be the NBT (next big thing). I was going to go blow Rupert Murdoch and become the next you know, that one guy with the golf book? Or that chick who writes about vampires? And everyone would love me and respect me and realize that I am better than them. Well, that's how it seemed, anyway.

This is all my way of saying it's nice to know, from time to time, that someone is actually reading something I've written. Because that's all I'm really after. It's nice to get a little bit of cash here and there from writing too. It helps. But it's much nicer to read an editor's response when she identifies herself as a fan of mine. Or to see Glenn over at Feel Free To Read http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/ posting some of my stuff (and lots of other great writers) with visual accompaniment. He's found over 100 pieces of mine online. Thanks for that. Now, do you have any pie?

4 comments:

Glenn Buttkus said...

Gosh, gush, thanks for the wonderful plugs for my tiny blog site, and my creative choices. Except for Charles Bukowski's poems (I think I found like 120 of those on line to reprint), you are coming up as Top Dog Poet on FEEL FREE TO READ. I love finding some new poems by you, and I post them immediately. I checked at Amazon, and so far have not found a formal published book by you. Perhaps this novel will put you into that catagory, or perhaps Amazon needed to respond to "Cortney L. Bledsoe" and not CL Bledsoe, enit?

Glenn

Jannie Funster said...

Was just over at Glenn's blog.

You ROCK. The world needs many many many more folks with your spirit.

Thank you.

CLBledsoe said...

Thanks Glenn. Amazon charges a fee to list books with them. Honestly, I can't afford the fee, and neither can my tiny publishers. An anthology--Nothing But Red, shows up, but that's a POD book to which I contributed one flash piece. I'm working on it.

I don't mind being second to Bukowski.

CLBledsoe said...

Jannie--thanks! I appreciate it.