Here’s the latest from Mr. Thomas Wick

Summer is drawing to a close and I feel obligated to in part the occasional island of useful information in a sea of bitching and moaning that can only come from a bleached boned starving artist.  That island is…classify and avoid other writers.  Published authors will tell you that writing, like anything else, requires you to be on the “scene” mingling with other practitioners of your craft.  I find this to be self-serving bullshit and not just because of the countless examples from Thoreau to that doctor who wrote the Kite Runner to Twain all new and took advantage of solitude but because well, where can you meet other writers? I know! I’ll take a course…no doubt offered by one of these writers to pad their incomes on the dreams of romantic fools hoping to write the world’s next best seller.
 
Writer 1: Rich Kid.  Self-explanatory.  Unemployed rich kid decides to write a novel to justify his existence.  If you’re reading this blog this does not pertain to you and you most likely resent these individuals.  Therefore, because of that mental block, there is absolutely nothing you can learn from them.  Now, here’s the shitty thing…there’s a 50-50 chance this kid is a better writer than you.  Us poor bastards who stumble through life trying to make ends meet have a twisted sense that somehow our suffering counts for something, that it leads to some kind of natural evolution of any and all things artistic.  This ain’t true.  Most writers, like most rappers, come from upper middle class families.  Also, remember the Rich Kid, all things being equal, has a TON more time on his hands than you do to read and refine his work.
 
Writer 2: The Hipster. Fortunately the hipster’s writing is almost always of very low quality.  However, it does tend to be trendy and hence there is a very good chance that it will sell…before yours does.  Now this “sale” could simply be a short story published in an obscure literary magazine but he’ll plaster author-this and writer-that all over facebook for the next six months and in ten years will still be talking about it at parties.  Usually the Hipster achieves his fifteen minutes of fame by writing a story that gives credence and plants the seed of acceptance into an almost universally deplored wrong – racism, cannabalism, religious oppression, etc.
 
Writer 3: The Real Deal.  This is a published author who actually makes a living writing books an average person may have heard of – the kind of books that are advertised in metro cars and train stations.  Unless you are a blood relation (preferably the first-born or only child) you are never, EVER going to get this person to help you.  Even more insulting they will feed you the same BS they tell people when they are out speaking – the manufactured hardships, the revelation that never was and tips about writing a novel that insure all who take them to heart will never ever become competition.
 
Writer 4: Relative of the Real Deal.  This is perhaps the worst of them all and the only group that actually has the potential to become all four variety of writer rolled into one. These are the George W. Bush’s of the writing world.  These individuals can literally have an errant thought or repeat something they overheard someone else say while they were watching television and a team of ghost writers, artists and editors, all of whom are employed by the aforementioned relative turn it into something with a royalty check big enough to pay off our student loans and pay for dinner or lunch on “one meal Mondays.”
 
Writer 5: The secret writer.  That’s what you want to be.  Names aren’t important.  Only stories and ideas.  Once you truly accept that, then it won’t matter whether one person or one in two, reads your work.