Freedom

I know a writer who has several blogs and they have a huge following. He likes to read mine. He says I am lucky that I have so few right now because I am trying to form what it is I want to do. He can't do that. He wrote a book and it did very well and has been doing the same sort of book since. Every time, he tries to do something else his agent shoots it back at him and tells him that it isn't his bailiwick. The money looks good in his checking account and he has bills to pay; so he will continue in that direction at least for a while. I think he is being nice to me.

I change direction here and there. I read one writer who will give me some ideas and then read another who will give me other ideas and I am off and running. I am trying to put a positive spin on the lack of readers on my blog, but it gets me down at times. I do like the idea of change. I don't like what has happened to my friend or to Ted who can only write about his life in the form of memoirs. He does not have a blog or tweets but he does worry about running out of material. He is just a bit younger than me and one has just so many life experiences and he has this theory that his readers will be able to tell when he is lying. He says he invests his money and plans to change his pen name and do a different kind of writing.

I used to do more editing than I do now. I would get paid fairly well. I don't know how many times I would catch well-known writers lying in their biographies or memoirs about their lives. I could always tell. I figure if I could so could the readers. Usually, I would find a way to tell the writer not to put something in as it is not likely as it is written or it must have at another time when the object in question was invented or something silly like that. One man told a story about a wagon of kids rolling into a creek while he was looking for a way out of an Amazon jungle. He walked back and found the native kids drowned. He said he was just up the river and he escaped from that place alone. The whole story revolved around him and how the Gods made sure he would be safe. I explained that a wagon rolling into a creek full of kids who grew up in that area would have the smarts to jump out or at the very least scream for help. Why would they be sitting in a wagon in the first place in a jungle? Most kids from that area never traveled in a wagon. They walked. He had one improbable adventure after another and he had me removed as editor. Then it was discovered he never was in the Amazon in the first place. Big surprise.

What would have been worse would be for writers to have some of their books published and then have to live down the stuff that was in it. I have been published before and nothing out there is embarrassing. I know of other writers who have on contract writers who write for them and some use their graduate students to write their books for them. That has been embarrassing and they have been accused of plagiarism. Some of them are well known. I lose respect for writers like that.

There has been other writers who wrote successful first books but could not equal their successes in later books. Or one writer who wrote a huge successful book and could not write another. Oh there are lots of reasons, a writer can't write again. It is not a good idea to stop no matter the reason whether you are a smashing success, mid-listed writer or some one who just limps along. If you get out of practice, it starts to show.