The Importance of Connections

Four hours so far this week. I'm considering by the domain name justafewmorehours.com. Would revamp the site, and all that good stuff, but I think it might be necessary. Running this thing off blogspot is nice and easy, but I can't do everything I want with the site. Just a thought.

I'm a believer that connections are everything. They're at least as important as talent. More important than hard work. In life, when you break everything down to the fundamentals, all you really have is connections. Friendships, lovers, family, colleagues. Everything builds from that. 

Don't believe me? Piss off a teacher in school and see how much extra help you get. Become a teacher's pet and see how much you improve in a year. You're route in life, from a very early age, is determined by the relationships you form.

This is a problem for me. Two things bug me above all else: rudeness and stupidity. I'm not always the most tactful person, but I honestly try to treat people with respect. When someone doesn't do that though, either to me or to someone else that I know, it's hard for me to hold my tongue. It's hard for me not to snap back. 

A mid level exec once told me that if you want to move forward in business (or life), someone has to be able to come into your office, take a shit on your desk, and you have to be able to smile and say thanks. I'm working on this, but it's tough. I won't go into my horrible psychology that makes me nearly unable to tolerate that behavior, but it's important that I get rid of it. It's important that even when disrespected, I respond with respect and not anger.

Because, what we're talking about here, are relationships. We're talking about future friends and acquaintances. We're talking about book sales. We're talking about furthering ourselves in life. I'm 26, and I don't know much about the world, but I believe that to be true. 

You can do nothing without other's investment, and to get that investment, you have to build relationships. You have to deal with rude people; you have to deal with stupidity. This might seem a bit Randian, or Darwinistic, that I'm saying we build relationships to further ourselves--but if you don't think that's true, then I'm not sure you're thinking about this the right way. Even with love, we are trying to find happiness, so we build a world with someone else who will help fulfill this happiness. It's self interest that does it. 

Build relationships, do it genuinely whenever possible, and fake it if you have to. But build them. Have someone that you can call for any situation and know that they'll answer. Be the person that someone can call in any situation, and make sure you answer. It's the only way to move ahead.

And remember to smile.

I'm an Idiot

Put in nearly fourteen hours over the past week.

Have blog searched the f out of the internet. Also read everything Amanda Hocking wrote up until she quit her job and became famous. 

Side note: this chick, Amanda Hocking, wrote like five novels. No one would represent them and no one would publish them. She blogged the entire time this was happening. Her blog consisted of alternating posts between how great her books were and how bad she felt that no one would publish them. Then within ten months, she goes from lamenting her life to: "Quit my job today. Full time writer now." Congrats! and...Fuck you. That's just the jealous part of me talking. 

All I need to do is start writing young adult paranormal romance novels and the paychecks should start rolling in. Although, I'd probably give myself a new smile from ear to ear before I ever saw one.

This blog post does have a point, believe it or not. One that I've touched on tangentially, but not directly--so I want to comment on it. Obviously, the majority of the stuff I write about is going to be based on my life as a starving writer, but I honestly hope that you can take these thoughts and apply them somewhere to your craft or passion. 

I was talking to a friend the other day about how boring my life was. She said what are you doing? I replied that I had spent ten minutes studying a sentence and trying to decide how to fix it. Exciting, right? 

She said she used to write, but sucked at it, so she quit.

That kind of stunned me for a second. My response was: We all suck. That's why we practice.

God, if you read any of the first pieces I wrote, it's like I had never read a book. Even now, editing this novel, their are whole passages where I just think I should set fire to my laptop and never even contemplate writing another sentence. That's after six years of at least writing thirty minutes every day and probably a lot more. Fuck, that's after 18 years of writing through school and training at universities. I still suck.

I'm not sure about all professions, but as a writer you have to be supremely confident or supremely stupid. Luckily, I was both. I sat down and wrote a short story at nineteen years old and was completely sure that I would be a multimillionaire from writing. Let me say that again: I knew, from the first 2,000 words I put down on paper that I was going to be paid money for the rest of my life to do it. That sounds fucking ridiculous. It would be like a kid picking up a basketball, and knowing without any doubt that he was going pro. In my mind though, I had already become the greatest horror writer of my generation. So it would be like a kid picking up the ball and KNOWING he was going to be the next Michael Jordan. The difference between this kid and eye, though, is that I was nineteen.

Supremely stupid.

I didn't care how much I sucked; I didn't care how far I would have to go. I just didn't care about anything. I was a writer from that moment on, and more, I believe all those things now. My friend quit writing, and maybe that's what separates an artist from someone else. An artist already knows they've made it, they're just waiting for the rest of the world to realize it.

You ever done something and knew from that moment forth there was nothing else for you? That you had met your destiny? Maybe it was meeting your husband or wife. Maybe it was looking at your first born child. Maybe it was killing zombies in a video game. I don't know what it might be for you, but find it. Actively search it out. Then when you find it, don't care about sucking--because you will, and hard, but care about becoming better.

Care about not quitting.