When today’s message from the Universe arrived in my inbox a bit ago, I thought, “Hrm. I can riff on this for a Thursday Thoughts. I left it “unread” in my inbox so I’d see it whenever I checked email. Sometimes I would open it and read it again. Sometimes I’d stop scrolling there because it meant I’d come to the end of the new emails. The thing is, I kind of weirded myself out with the direction my thoughts turned.
Well, actually, Silver, you were different.
You didn’t want a perfect life, a typical life, or even a normal life.
You wanted a one-of-a-kind life.
How we doing?
The Universe
©www.tut.comP.S. And I am most grateful to say, Silver, you still are different. Way.
I was. Different. And weird. I wanted to wear jeans not dresses. I wanted Roy Rogers six guns not Barbies. I immediately took the flowered basket off my Stingray bicycle because I intended to ride it off a ramp to do tricks. I built a skateboard out of an old skate and a 2×4. I did NOT want to be a boy. I liked being a girl. I just didn’t like dresses, dolls, or girlie things. I was the weird kid who’dt rather read a book and play with the invisible characters I imagined. (Okay, I’m STILL that kid but whatever.) And yes, I wanted a one-of-a-kind life. I wanted to dance with Baryshnikov. I wanted to be on the US Equestrian Team in the Olympics. I wanted to be a famous actress. Heck, I was a drama major when I first matriculated at college. That lasted a semester and then I became a government major. Don’t ask. Anyway, I wanted a different life, not a normal one.
Where am I going with this? I’m going here: I think you have to be different to be a writer. We need to march to a different drummer, live in a different world, deal with different people, and bottom line, we need a different mindset. We have to love what we do to keep doing it. Most of us will never be best-selling authors and make fabulous amounts of royalties. Most of us simply hit the trenches each day, making up our stories, telling our tales, sharing our friends and enemies with the wider world.
Fact of life. As of typing this, I’ve sold 3 books for a total of $8.46 in the month of February. I’m never gonna get rich in a hurry. I pinned a post on my X profile. It says “I write the kind of books I love to read. I do it for fun and sometimes profit.” That’s the truth. I get discouraged because deep down, I don’t want to be the weird kid standing on the fringes getting along with everyone but never really fitting in anywhere. I want people to read my books and enjoy them. And dang it, I want to be paid for the blood, sweat and tears that I put into each story.
See? I told you I kept going into weird headspace when I thought about the Universe’s message. In retrospect, I haven’t done anything great or spectacular but I’ve done a bunch of different things–and often they were things that someone like me wouldn’t normally do. And now, I write the kind of books I love to read for fun and sometimes profit. It is what it is.
Anyway, I’m rambling now and I need to get back to work on RETRIBUTION because it ain’t comin’ out tomorrow. There are reasons, including a memorial service for a member of the extended family, and some other things that have cropped up. New ETA? My birthday. It’ll be a present from me to y’all.
Silver James 