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I’m Not an Expert Writer, but… · 12 August 2023

I’m no expert, but I seem to keep giving writing advice to people.

Just because I have published a weekly blog since 2007 and just because I have published over a dozen print books and over twenty digital books and just because I have written several screenplays, does not make me an expert on writing. After all, not many people have read much of anything I have written. Yes, it is true that I have a faithful following (of surely less readers than I can count on my fingers). (That is counting both real and imaginary readers.) And yes, it is true that I write six days a week. But that does not make me an expert. At least not in my book.

Of course, I do not know that I consider myself an expert in much of anything I do. But that is another story and another point.

The point is that I do not know that I am accomplished enough of a writer to be giving advice to anybody. Which is a funny thought. After all, I have given writing advice in this blog several times. Then again, that advice is always the same. Write.

People are funny. Not everybody wants to be a writer, but there are enough people out there who do want to be writers that I bump into them every now and then. And when I tell them (or when I tell anybody for that matter) that I have written and published more than twenty books, they are always astonished.

Now, I am not sure whether they are astonished that I have written that much or they are astonished that it is me. I am sure that some of my friends and family wonder how I, this striving to be mediocre man, have written so much. Others just wonder how anybody can have written that much. Still others wonder how somebody can have written that much without anybody hearing about it.

The last wonderers need not wonder too much. After all, there are bestselling authors that nobody has heard of. Not that I can think of any off the top of my head, but I know they are out there. Authors who are prolific, but who are not household names. Authors who are not only prolific, but who have sold lots of books.

I am not one of those types of authors. I might be somewhat prolific, but I have yet to sell many books. There are some months that I sell no books at all. Okay, most months. And there are also books that I have not sold at all. Okay, most of my books. The thing is, I am not afraid to put those books out there. I do not know what to do once they are out there, but I do put them out there for people to read.

Which is my second piece of writing advice. (Do not worry, the first piece is coming.) Put yourself out there. Just publish something. There are Amazon and a whole lot of other places to self-publish. And self-publishing is easy. After all, if I can publish all those books, anybody can.

My first piece of advice (see, I told you it was coming) is advice that every author will give you, regardless of how successful the person is. Write. Just write.

It is funny. People say they are aspiring writers. They want to be writers someday. Well, for those who do not write, someday never comes. In fact, if you are aspiring to be anything, you need to stop aspiring and just start. Start doing. Start writing.

So once I tell aspiring writers that they need to just write and to write every day (six days a week anyway), they usually ask the inevitable question. How long? And my answer is simple. It does not matter. Just write six days a week. (Take a day off. It is good for you.) I remember when I started writing each day. There were days when I wrote a sentence. Or just a phrase. But I wrote something. That daily habit made me a writer. And if you start a daily habit, you will be a writer too. Not an aspiring writer, but a writer.

I suppose that I could have given this expert advice in just a few words – write and publish. But maybe that is why I prefaced my advice with the title. After all, I’m no expert, but the way to become a writer is to write every day.

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Vacation Bragging · 5 August 2023

I wonder if vacation bragging is really a thing.

We all know what vacation is. And we all know what bragging is. So vacation bragging must be when you tell everybody how great your vacation was hoping that they might get a little jealous of where you went or how long you went or just that you went. In reality, I am not sure that I really want to do any vacation bragging. After all, I do not want anybody getting jealous that I went someplace far away. But just saying that you went on a vacation to someplace far away seems like vacation bragging in and of itself.

I must admit that I get a little envious when I hear of somebody going to places far away. Places where I have only heard about or seen pictures of. Places where I might like to travel one day. But just a little envious. After all, I am content with my station in life. I am happy to be who I am where I am doing what I am doing.

At any rate.

We recently went to Hawai’i for vacation. It was marvelous. I even already wrote about it in one of my latest blog posts. And since I wrote about it already, I do not need to say much more about it. Except that it was marvelous. Simply marvelous.

But back to vacation bragging.

If you have ever been in a conversation with somebody who is vacation bragging, you know exactly what I am talking about. You might have started the conversation and asked if somebody did anything exciting during vacation, but you did not expect to get an hour long dissertation about the location and all the fun things your friend did while there. And did he or she mention that the place was exotic? And marvelous. And did he say that he wished you were there about a hundred times? If so, your friend was probably vacation bragging. And he did not really wish you were there. Probably.

Now, I am not saying this to stop people from telling me about their vacations. I love to hear about where people went, what they saw, what people they met. I truly do. I just filter out the bragging part if they are vacation bragging. But then again, I think the people I know must not really like to vacation brag. Or they have not gotten the hang of it yet. After all, the people I usually talk to about vacation need prompting for them to tell me about what they saw and the people they met. Of course, the people that I know are usually kids. Who seem to travel way more than I ever did.

Which maybe is a different sort of vacation bragging. Treating the exotic vacation as something normal.

“Ah. We just went to Tahiti. For the seventh time.”
“Oh. We took a Caribbean Cruise for a month.”
“We jetted off to Europe for the whole summer.”

Okay. I do not know anybody who treats vacations like that either. In fact, I do not know that I know anybody who does vacation bragging. People I know are excited about where they went, but they do not want to bore you with the details. At least not unless you ask them to do so. They will tell you a couple highlights, and they will be excited when they do. But they will not try to make you feel envious or jealous. They just hope that you get the chance to go there too someday.

And maybe that is the point. People only vacation brag when it is in the script. They only do it in the movies or on TV. Or maybe I just do not know people who vacation brag. Maybe I just know people who genuinely want the best for people they know. Or when it comes right down to it, maybe vacation bragging is not really a thing.

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Almost Paradise · 29 July 2023

Hawai’i is truly paradise. Well, almost.

If you have never been to Hawai’i, you might not agree, but it is close to paradise. It is just a little too hot and a little too humid. Or maybe a lot too humid. At least when we went. And if you happen to be lucky enough to go there during a tropical storm, a little too windy too.

Anyway.

Hawai’i is a pretty cool place. Cool in the sense of marvelous and wonderful and fantastic. Not in the sense of temperature. At least not in the middle of July. In the middle of July, it was hot. When we went, it was humid. And during the time when the tropical storm was in the vicinity, it was windy. Did I mention that it was hot? Well, it was.

Even though it was hot, I still think that Hawai’i is almost paradise. It is scenically beautiful. It has sunshine all day. (Okay. Not every day.) And the weather is consistent. (Except during tropical storms and hurricanes. And maybe the winter.) In our case, the weather was hot. But like I said, it was consistent.

The thing about being hot is that you can always cool off. Just go into the water someplace. In Hawai’i, that means just go to the beach. And if you are on vacation, that means you go to the beach every day. (It might also mean that if you live there, but I suppose that there are people who do not go to the beach every single day.) I suppose there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

There are many things to do on the islands too. We happened to be on Oahu, so we went to see the capital and the palace and of course, the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. (We did not go into the palace, but it is interesting to note that it is the only palace that housed a monarch of that state in the United States.)

Well, I was going to go on and on and on about how beautiful Hawai’i is, but there is not much more to say on that note. You can only say so much about the beautiful ocean. And the beautiful beaches. And the beautiful mountains. And the beautiful gardens. And the beautiful people. Everything is beautiful in Hawai’i. Which is probably the biggest reason it is almost paradise.

So if you want to visit a place that is almost paradise, make sure that there is no hurricane and that it is not July, then go to visit Hawai’i. After all, Hawai’i is truly almost paradise.