Sorry guys! This has been in the queue for a week…

I think all aspiring artists have one thing in common: fear of being laughed at. As far as aspiring writers go I think we are lucky – my rejections come one at a time from individuals I will never see. I can’t imagine being booed off stage and then having to look at classmates and coworkers who were in the crowd.

There is a disadvantage here. It makes it such that it takes an awfully long time to discover how bad your first attempt at writing really was/is – unless you are a literary genius which I am not. Just like your own voice sounds different to you when you’re talking your own words feel different when you are writing.

Now the trick to beating this when you’re a musician is to record yourself and listen to it. This doesn’t work for writers. You can reread the same draft over and over and it will still sound like Shakespeare to you. Think of your first book like your first child: you tend to have a highly inflated idea of it’s relative merit when compared to similar ones. Alot of my friends are new parents.

So this probably my first really useful piece of advice. I read a book called “How Not to Write a Novel.” This book contained excerpts from a number of submitted manuscripts and what was wrong with them. I was able to recognize similarities between these excerpts and my own work bringing me to the conclusion that my first work was crap.

Fortunately I had only showed the book to one flesh and blood person . He did his best to humiliate me so one night when he was out of town I convinced his roomate to let a few of his buddies who were in med school at the time take some grubby bar wenches into his bedroom and thoroughly defile every ounce of it. The sad thing about it was he was dating a bartender/waitress at the time with terrible hygiene so when he returned he didn’t even notice the smell of strange men, sweat and shame. He probably just assumed she stayed the night. I’m told he didnt even change the sheets.

This brings me to another good point for all you non-writers out there. Don’t criticize your friend ’s amateur writing. That’s what agents and rejection letters are for. If you are one of those people that insists on being honest simply say “it’s better than alot of things Ive seen published.” Seriously it’s not worth waking up one morning with a strange rash on your ear.