My own brand of negative self-talk

Today, I was reading a blog post by Linda Ursin about negative self-talk. In it, she mentioned that negative self-talk tends to rear its ugly head when people are trying to lose weight. Now in my case, I have never needed to lose weight--I have been dangerously underweight for most of my life.

(This is one of the few times in my life that I have been at a healthy weight.)

First, I came from a really poor family, and learned to ignore hunger as a kid. Then I worked twenty years in food service where you would think that you would actually get to eat; but if you are a good employee, your breaks are few and far in between. Then I spent several years as a poor unemployed college student living off of student loans. Now, I am a self-employed writer...and so far, I have seen little evidence that there are tables laden with food any place in this particular profession.

And I am good at ignoring hunger. For instance, it wasn't until seven hours into my day today that I realized that I hadn't eaten anything yet. Unless, you count the one can of soda I had. And my wife tells me that the can of soda doesn't count.

But enough about that problem...this post is supposed to about my own personal brand of negative self-talk.

My own personal brand of negative self-talk comes in the form of "I am too stupid to figure that one out" (IQ is the upper five percent of the population); "No one would be interested in reading that" ("It is a box of clowns!!! Everyone run for your lives!!!"); "The only proper type of writing that one should practice is the literary kind" ("Gee, I have made over three hundred and fifty dollars on a three thousand word erotic short story that took me less than ten hours to finish and self-publish").

My negative self-talk kept me in burger flipping jobs that I loathed, made me positive that I was going to fail college (ended up with two bachelor degrees), and make me have anxiety attacks about the fact that my business is going to fail and that my cats will starve (please note that my cats have no food issues other than the one where they skraff down a dish of their favorite food real fast, and then proceed to barf everywhere because their tummy is upset).

So what is your negative self-talk? What has it prevented you from doing? And can you send me a doughnut?

Working on the Holidays

Patriotic Cat overdoes it--just like my neighbors.

As I write this, there are screams of "Chug! Chug! Chug!" moving from the house next door. It is safe to say that there is some drinking going on next door. And I also saw one of my neighbors light fireworks in the middle of the street--the fountain type--good for you keeping it away from your completely brown yard that is just one spark away from going up in smoke.

And my thoughts overhearing the loud partying in the neighborhood:

"God, was I ever so young?"
"Gee, my wife has to work tomorrow; I hope that they shut up soon."
"I wonder if it is wrong to base the next murder victim on my neighbor." (I am working on a science fiction story and someone is about to have "an accident" involving an airlock.
And "I am really glad that I am not working at some burger flipping job tonight--all these drunks would insist on coming though my drive-thur."

For the record, I do not miss working at a restaurant and dealing with customers on a holiday, especially drunk customers. And I used to deal with more than my fair share every holiday that involved alcohol.

(I am hard pressed to think of a single holiday that does not involve drinking.)

And who gets to work on the drinking holidays? Yes, that is right--the poorest Americans. One way to guarantee that you are working tonight and dealing with the drunks is to make minimum wage.

I don't miss it at all.

Yes I write erotica (Safe for Work)

While this post is about the business of erotica, or at least how I got involved in it, the post is perfectly safe for work. That fact might be confusing, but the truth of the matter is that you can talk about the economics and business of erotica without any actual erotica being involved. If that disappoints you, just leave a comment in the comment section...and I will pretend to be shocked that you were disappointed that the raciest word in this post is the word "erotica" itself.

As for the rest of us--prepare to be bored by how dull the writing of erotica is.

I started writing in junior high--this is when there was junior high schools (now they are middle schools, or at least they are in my neighborhood)--and I continued to do it in high school. And no, I wasn't writing erotica in high school--thanks for asking.

It was while in high school that one of my friends decided to declare that I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I think that she got tired of me shrugging my shoulders and saying," I dunno" whenever anyone asked me what I was going to do for a living after high school.

(Honestly, I thought that I was going to be in the military for several years...I was kinda overlooking the fact that I am not exactly the ideal material to be a soldier.)

The truth be told, I never realized that it was possible to be a writer and actually do it for a living. I thought writing was something you did for entertainment purposes, and that you felt lucky to get published. (Again, no, I wasn't writing erotica yet.) And no one around me informed me otherwise.

The fact that you could get paid to write is something that I stumbled upon all on my own. After all, given how poorly the profession pays (on average), you could hardly have a booth set up on career day advising students that they too could make more money flipping burgers than they could as a writer.

(Yes, your average writer would be better off flipping burgers for a living--appalling, isn't it?!)

It was actually at a truck stop in Kansas (or was it Nebraska?) that I realized that someone had to be getting a paycheck to write stuff. I was on my way home (riding the Greyhound Bus) from being asked politely to leave the army...it might have been the fact that my father got killed in a truck accident a week before, or it may simply be that I am not good at marching and doing pushups (I be a white boy; I have no rhythm and no upper body strength). Anyway, I was looking over the magazines in the rack when I saw it.

The vital clue that someone was getting paid money to write something. Yes, it was an erotica magazine, one of those magazines filled with sexy stories...that are supposedly written by readers of the magazine. And I realized that the writing was too good to be written by amateurs--hey, I saw the writing skill of my class mates in high school, and mine wasn't much better--no, this stuff had to be written by people getting paid.

Why did I assume that money was involved? Well, you would never write this stuff and admit to it.

(Yes, I found one of the stranger types of erotica...in Kansas...at a truck stop...and no, I am not telling you what type of erotica it was. Just say imagine the worst, say Ewww! and read on.)

Or at least, I wouldn't admit to it. And still don't. I do it under a pen-name...and my pen-name is a secret...one that my wife doesn't even know. (Yes, she knows what my bread and butter writing is...but I am too ashamed to let her read any of it.)

And the moral of this story is: If you don't want people writing trash, don't let them know that they can make money doing so. Or at least, I think that is the moral; I could be wrong--and if I am, feel free to say so in the comment section.

Creative time lost at Walmart

Yesterday, me and my wife went to Wal-Mart. For a fan. Which we decided not to get...but that is another post for another time.

There was four registers open, and they were at least four customers deep. We got into a line with four people before us. And we waited in line. And waited. And waited.

We were in line for over a half hour.

At certain point, the happy little cynic that is me, looked at my wife and asked, "How much money are we saving here? Because I think that I could have made more money in the amount of time that we have spent in line."

Now, in all fairness to Wal-Mart, that last part might not be true. I am a writer and an artist--self-employed. And there is no guarantee about how much money I would make in a half hour. My wife was also working on her business yesterday--the same problem applies.

But my time is worth anywhere from zero plus to thirty-three dollars plus an hour.

(Ok, real quickly I state my potential hourly rate in a range because a lot depends upon what I am working on. There are some articles that I have written on the page-view sites that have earned me only pennies. And there are the ebooks that have only earned me a couple of dollars. There is my mid-range earners...about ten dollars a hour. And then there are the stories that beat that marker, like the story that took me ten hours to cobble together that has earned me over three hundred and thirty dollars and counting. Yes, it is the joys of ebook royalties.)

If nothing else, I could have been home napping with the cat. Sure, it would have earned no income, but it still beats standing in line at Wal-Mart.

I suspect that I was in a "penny smart, pound stupid" situation; and as you will see tomorrow, it was just the tip of the iceberg.