I Never Would’ve Guessed One of the Hardest Things About Writing Could Be Coming Up with a Good Title

Book

I’ve become convinced that the title of one of my novellas (the one I’m currently trying to get published) is no good. In fact, I’m on the verge of saying it downright sucks.

Originally, I thought it was a clever little title. It’s actually one of the last lines in the book, and I thought that was smart. What I began to realize was that it was only a clever title if you’ve read the book. It wasn’t a title that made you want to read the book.

I was having my doubts about it, then I reached my tipping point: I wrote a query letter to a small, independent publisher, and found myself purposely not wanting to disclose the title. I felt like after reading the brief synopsis describing the book, the title just didn’t work.

So, now what? Being so new to the whole publishing thing, I’d never put that much thought into titles before. I would just slap a title on a story and move on. Luckily, Novella #2 has a working title that I think will stay, and I managed to stumble upon a good title for the novel I’m working on, so I just have this one that’s posing a problem.

Do I just think and think until a title comes to me out of thin air? Is there a book title version of the Wu Tang Name Generator? By the way, if anyone’s curious, according to the site my rap name would be Phantom Criminal. As cool as that sounds, it wouldn’t really make sense for the title of my book.

I’d love to hear any other writers’ ideas; what do you do when you’re stuck for a title? And any non-writers out there, what titles caught your eye and made you want to pick up a book you knew nothing about? Please let me know in the comments. Meanwhile, I’ll be brainstorming while I fill out the forms to legally change my name to Jobee, The Phantom Criminal.

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Get Ready to Cringe…My List of the Top 5 Creepy Song Lyrics

I needed  a break from writing about writing, so I decided to do something a little different.

I was walking out of my bedroom the other day, and just out of the clear blue sky I found a song going through my head.

“She’s only seventeen, Daddy says she’s too young but she’s old enough for me!”

Where on earth did that come from? I knew what it was, of course. Seventeen, by Winger. As I’ve mentioned before, when you’re a kid in the ’80’s and your favorite music is buried in between videos of hair bands on MTV, you become familiar with it all whether you like it or not.

I always thought that song was kind of creepy, and I came up with the idea of dedicating a blog post to creepy lyrics. I decided to do some looking online, and realized I’d opened a bit of a Pandora’s Box.

So I decided that out of the plethora of creepy stuff out there to just narrow it down to 5, and I’m sticking with music and artists I’m familiar with. There are evidently some Clay Aiken and Chris Brown songs that are pretty creepy, but I’m not going there.  If you think there are creepier songs out there I missed be sure and let me know in the comments.

5. The Police – Every Breath You Take (1983)

I decided to kick the list off with this one because it’s the obvious choice, but in my opinion that doesn’t make it any less creepy.  The entire song is actually pretty disturbing with it’s stalker vibe, but the classic chorus is what seals the deal: “Every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you.” Um, yeah, from no fewer than 500 feet away, thank you very much.

 

4. Winger – Seventeen (1988)

This isn’t as bad as a lot of the songs I discovered when I was looking for creepy lyrics, but I’ve included it because, like I said above,  it stands out in my mind as once of the first songs that I heard and thought, you know, that’s kind of creepy. How old is that guy singing, “She’s only seventeen, daddy says she’s too young but she’s old enough for me,” anyway?

He was 27 at the time. Can you imagine being the dad in the song, and this guy who’s pushing 30 says your daughter is “old enough” for him? If it was me, I could just picture myself choking him out with his little tank top.

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3. Practically Everyone Under the Sun – Baby, It’s Cold Outside (written in 1944)

This one seems to be a somewhat touchy issue with people. I’ve heard several different versions over the years, and I’ve become convinced it has to do with the chemistry between to two singing the song. Some versions just seem somewhat playful, but without that fun context it sounds like the makings of a holiday date rape.

It’s too long to paste all the lyrics here, but if you’re not familiar it’s a back and forth between a female saying she needs to leave and a male trying to get her to stay. He is very persistent, and gives her reason after reason why she can’t leave but for me it’s all summed up in two lines – the female line, “Say, what’s in this drink?” and the male a few lines later singing, “Your lips look delicious!” Ick.

2. Motorhead – Jailbait (1980)

As a fan of Hard Rock and Metal, Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead is pretty much a living legend. I’m not the biggest Motorhead fan in the world, but this guy’s been out there doing his thing for decades and that gets my respect. Plus, Ace of Spades is one of the classic rock songs of all time.

Still, that doesn’t mean he gets a free pass out of Creepytown. Just the name of the song is trouble. Then there’s this gem:  “I don’t even dare ask your age it’s enough to know you’re here backstage. You’re jailbait, and I just can’t wait.” And as if that weren’t enough, just before the solo he lets loose with “Love that young stuff!”

*shudder*

The thought of Lemmy having sex with anyone or anything is pretty disturbing, but when it’s an underage girl, that’s downright horrific. Can you imagine your little girl doing it with this guy?

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1. Dean Martin – Standing On The Corner (1956)

Here it is, the Big Kahuna. The Grand Champion of creepy lyrics. This song in particular is the whole reason I wanted to write this post.

I realized researching for this post that this isn’t an original Dean Martin song. That’s of slight comfort.

Now, I must preface this by saying I’ve always loved the Rat Pack, and in particular Dean Martin. As a matter of fact, Dean Martin’s Greatest Hits was where I discovered this little piece of ghastly perversion. It seems innocent enough on it’s face:

“Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by
Brother you don’t know a nicer occupation
Matter of fact, neither do I
Than standing on the corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by”

Okay, not bad. I remember girl watching as a teenager…next verse.

“I’m the cat that got the cream
Haven’t got a girl but I can dream
Haven’t got a girl but I can wish
So I’ll take me down to Main street
And that’s where I select my imaginary dish”

Okay, that sounds a little gross…what does that mean, the cat that got the cream? Maybe I’m making something out of nothing here. What’s next?

“Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by
Standing on the corner giving all the girls the eye
Brother if you’ve got a rich imagination
Give it a whirl, give it a try
Try standing on the corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by”

Oh boy, okay…now, why do I need a rich imagination to look at girls? They’re pretty, sure, I can see that…but surely you don’t mean…

“Brother you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking
Or for that woo look in your eye
Standing on the corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by”

Whoa, whoa, whoa…time out. What did you just say? You can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking?!? So then, you’re saying you’re thinking criminal thoughts about the girls?

Alright, just so we’re on the same page here:

THIS GUY IS STANDING ON A STREET CORNER LEERING AT YOUNG (IN SOME CASES UNDERAGE) GIRLS SO HE CAN GO HOME AND MASTURBATE TO THEM.

Holy shit!

That’s just this side of going to the park in a trench coat and watching little kids on the playground.

That’s why this one wins in my book, hands down (no pun intended).

So, I hope you enjoyed the list…now, what did I miss?

I Just Finished The Rough Draft To My First Novel…Why Aren’t I More Happy About It?

I finished the rough draft to my first novel.  It didn’t take as long as I thought it would, which I guess should be a good sign.  But the thing is, even though I do feel a sense of accomplishment, overall I just have this feeling of all-consuming dread.

I see so many gaping holes in the plot and timeline it makes my head spin. The ending is a little weak.

Rewrites and revisions will probably take quite a while, especially with summer coming on and my work schedule picking up, plus the never-ending yard work and my tireless battle with the bugs that always come about this time of year.

After thinking it over for a while, though, I guess I am pretty happy about it. I have a lot of ideas about fixing what doesn’t work and making what does work even better, and I’m really happy with the general premise for the story. I think it mixes a few elements of outright horror with the tension of a suspense story. Time will tell.

This is also a bit of an experiment for me. My past projects, I would write until I got stuck, then go back and edit until I had an idea or felt inspired to pick back up where I left off. With the new book, though, I just steamrolled through the rough draft, leaving everything to be edited and rewritten later.

I hope to go through it one more time fairly soon and make some of the changes I thought of while I was writing, then I’m just going to let it sit for at least a month or two while I finish editing my second novella and the short stories I’ve written in the past few weeks.

In the meantime, I’ll try to keep blogging at least once a week or more, if I think of topics that interest me. This is the longest gap between blog posts since the A to Z challenge started in April, and it feels weird. I want to keep connected to the blogosphere, and I’ve noticed if I’m not blogging myself I’m not keeping up on everyone else’s blogs either. So my apologies to my fellow blogger friends I’ve made in the past couple months, I’ll get back on track and catch up on your blogs!

Everyone Likes A Strong Climax

So, I’m getting pretty near the end of my work in progress and something hit me. Stopped me in tracks, really. I don’t have faith in my ending. I’m only a few thousand words from the end, and so far…the climax seems sort of anti-climactic.

I wrote a (very) rough outline of the story before I started, but I left a lot of room to just write off the cuff, because I like doing that and feel like I do it fairly well. I had a final scene in mind that I really liked, but nothing that really led up to that final scene. I was happy with the story up until the last couple chapters; then I started to feel like I heading toward an impasse.

I stopped writing it for about a week. I edited the second novella, I wrote the rough draft for a short story, then today I forced myself back into the WIP. I plowed through a couple of paragraphs, and things started to flow a little better. I feel better about it now than I did a week ago, but still, it feels….a little weak. I’m bound and determined to get the rough draft finished as soon as I can, because work becomes more of a burden in the summer months, so maybe if I put the story away for two or three months and look back at it in the fall a better ending will jump out at me.

I am curious, though…any writing Jedis out there have any advice for when you feel like you’ve written a good story that just falls flat? And for the non-writers out there, are there any books or movies that stand out to you as being especially anti-climactic?

A quick search of a couple of websites that addressed the topic led me to believe No Country For Old Men especially frustrated people. I really liked that move, and while I can see why people weren’t satisfied by it, I liked the ending. If I’m going by my own tastes and memories, I’d say…forgive me, any other Stephen King fans…It. All that build up, a thousand freakin’ pages, and it’s a giant spider? I was a little let down, to say the least. But please offer up your opinion in the comments.

Turning Lemons into Limoncello

lawn-mow

I hate mowing my lawn. I hate it with a passion. It sucks. I spent the first 95% of my life lawn free. Now, living in a piece of the country that is green, green, green, I have a lawn to mow. And weeds to kill. And volunteer trees to pull. Yard work really sucks.

So, today when I went out to mow my lawn, I was dreading it.  I hate it, have I mentioned that?

I started mowing, walking back and forth, cutting the grass little by little until I had covered the entire yard.

Then, something hit me. I have all this time, where I can’t do anything else, for my mind to wander. I can let my mind work on my writing, even while my body is doing this godforsaken mowing.

I began to think about the ending to my novel, which had me stymied for over a week now. I thought about the ending to the short story I wrote while I was stymied with my novel. In the course of mowing the lawn, I’d come up with more info for both.

Mowing the lawn had become productive to my writing.

I mowed, thinking about how my characters could resolve the problem I had put before them. How they could give me a satisfying climax to my stories. I was using a miserable task to my advantage.

So now, I have a decent ending to my novel (which I will tweak during revisions), and an ending to my little short story I wrote out of boredom and writer’s block.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I made the most out of what I was given. I took a mundane task, and turned it into something that helped me with my passion. Yay, me!

So, I’m curious, what miserable circumstances do you use to your advantage to think about your writing?

Just About Perfect

I’ve had a hard time thinking of topics for the blog, so I am making the bold decision to share this story. I’ve only told this to two other people because it’s kind of personal, so I ran it by my wife first and she gave me her blessing to post it. But I do apologize in advance to my in-laws.

One of the nice things about living in the High Desert of Southern California was that, despite the sometimes unbearable heat during the day, the nights would usually cool off and actually be quite pleasant.  Once the sun went down, you could open your windows and turn off the A/C, letting the cool desert breeze blow through the house.

The downside to this was that it meant the sounds of the neighborhood would sometimes flood in and invade our living space.

The kids across the street riding their miniature dirt bikes incessantly.

The neighbor next door to them sitting in his front yard, drinking beer with his friends, listening to music blaring from his open car (how did his battery never go dead?).

And, most often, our crazy next door neighbor yelling at her kids.

We suspected she may have been a highly functioning meth-head, but that was never confirmed.  She was always out in her yard, planting trees and bushes, putting decorative stones around the yard, but she did all that while yelling at her kids constantly.  I quickly gave her the totally clever and original nickname ‘Crazybitch,’ and never bothered to think up anything better, so that’s how we referred to her.

Cut to a hot, sunny Labor Day weekend.  It was Sunday; my wife and I both had the next day off.  We spent the day lounging around lazily under the air conditioning, as it was too hot out to do much outside.  Once the sun went down and the oppressive heat let up, we opened all the windows and let the fresh air in.

One thing led to another as the night progressed, as things tend to do, and we found ourselves in the bedroom, um…frolicking.  At one point in the middle of our frolicking, I heard Crazybitch screaming at her kids.  I instantly blocked it out, because the last thing I needed at that moment was a mental image of that horrific beast (did I mention how ugly she was?).

After we were done frollicking, we walked out on our back porch (which was private), naked as the day we were born, to catch our breath and let our dog do his business.

“Did you hear Crazybitch yelling at her kids?”  I asked.

My wife laughed.  “Yeah, what’s wrong with her?”

“Beats me.  She needs medication or something.”

We heard a car door slam, and it sounded close.  Like it could’ve been in our driveway.

“Is somebody here?”  my wife asked.

“Couldn’t be,”  I said.  “It’s after eleven.”  I heard footsteps to my left and looked over to see an extremely bright light shining through our double gate.  I thought I heard the faint sound of a radio or a walkie talkie.  “Is it…the cops?”

My wife let the dog in and bolted down the hall to the bedroom.  I went inside too, but for reasons still unknown to me I veered right, into the kitchen.

Then, a knock at the door.

“Who is it?”  I called from the kitchen.

“San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, sir.”

“Just a minute, please!”  I said.  I kept thinking my wife was going to come to the door, but she was nowhere to be found.  I finally sprinted from the kitchen, down the hall and into the bedroom.

I should mention at this point that not only were our windows open, but at the time we had the world’s worst vertical blinds in our living room window.  They were there when we moved in, and they were so old and brittle that over time they started breaking off, making the window look like a toothless hillbilly’s grin.  Even with the blinds closed there were large gaps, making it easy to see inside.

“Why didn’t you get the door?”  I asked, hurriedly putting on my clothes.

“I’m not getting it,”  my wife said defiantly.  “Who is it?”

“It’s the cops!”  I got some shorts and a shirt on and went to the door.

I saw a male deputy standing at the door, and a female deputy standing back a couple of steps, on our sidewalk.  The grin she was trying to hide told me instantly that she had just seen my hairy, white ass running down the hall (I can’t remember if I covered the twig and berries or not) through the gap in our blinds.

“Good evening, sir, I’m Deputy So-and-so, San Bernardino County Sheriff.”

“Uh, hi.  Is there a problem?”

“Well, sir, we were called out tonight because we got reports of a woman screaming.  Is everything OK?”

“Um, yeah,”  I said, searching for the right words.  “Everything is…”

The officer grinned.  “Everything’s just about perfect?”

“Pretty much,”  I chuckled.

“All right, sir, sorry to bother you.  You have a good night.”  The deputies quickly got back in their squad car and drove off.  I closed the front door and began laughing so hard I could hardly breathe.  My wife came down the hall wanting to know what was so funny.

“Crazybitch called the cops on us!  She wasn’t screaming at her kids, she was screaming at us!”  I had tears streaming down my face.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to laughing so hard that I pissed myself.

I called the police station the next day to see if there would be any kind of record of the deputies’ trip out.  The woman on the other end of the phone told me if no citations were issued or no one went to jail, there is generally little to no paperwork.

I was disappointed to hear that.  I was hoping the officer had to file something about the results of the call, and  had already planned on framing it and putting it on my wall.

Instead, I’m left with a great story to tell, and any time someone uses the phrase ‘just about perfect,’ I start grinning like the cat who ate the canary.

Well…Rejection Sucks

In an earlier post, I talked about the trouble I had declaring myself a writer. I actually got very interesting feedback on the topic, and I appreciate everyone’s comments. Today, however, I believe I may have finally crossed the threshold to counting myself among the masses (and masses) who call themselves “writers” – I’ve been rejected.

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I’m not sulking about it or pouting (although I do make a mean duck face), but I am disappointed. I’m not totally naive; I’ve read enough about writing and writers to know how many famous authors and classic books were rejected (in some cases many, many times) before finding success. Still, there was a tiny voice in my head that would whisper to me…Your novella is that good. It’s going to be accepted by the very first publisher you submit it to.

Alas, it wasn’t. I know it’s just one publisher, but I can’t completely block out the much louder voice in my head, the voice of self doubt :

Was the title catchy enough?

Did they even read the whole thing?

Maybe my first sentence/paragraph/chapter/quarter/third/half wasn’t catchy enough.

Maybe they didn’t like the ending.

Maybe they didn’t like the short synopsis I submitted.

Maybe they didn’t like my blog.

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I don’t know; can’t know. All I can do is what all writers do – just keep writing. I have a second novella that’s is nearing the end of the never ending hell that is the revision process, and I’m 33k words into my work in progress. The world keeps turning, life goes on. Back to work.

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Earthquakes Vs Tornadoes

As a native Californian, moving to the Midwest after over 30 years was quite a shock. One of my friends from high school moved  off to Oklahoma, but the rest of my friends had stayed put.  Their reactions to my wife and I deciding to move were pretty amusing.

You’re moving to Kansas?  On purpose?

Kansas? Like from The Wizard of Oz?

Are you going into the Witness Protection Program?

and the number one question I was asked…

Why?

The answer was simpler than many of them could believe: we needed a change and wanted to be closer to our respective families.  My dad let us know if we moved he’d move somewhere in the vicinity too, so that made it easy. We sold our house, picked up, and plopped ourselves square in The Heartland.

I noticed differences right off the bat.

Despite the bad reputation this part of the country has for being flat, I found it kind of awesome. Driving through the middle of nowhere, looking off in either direction and seeing nothing but green as far as the eye can see is actually amazing. It’s the Midwest version of standing on the beach, looking out at the ocean.

Since I lived in the High Desert of Southern California I could easily drive to lots of different places, but there in the desert there wasn’t much in the way of greenery or wildlife. We had lizards, scorpions, and black widows. I miss the lizards; the other two, not so much.

Since I’ve lived in the Midwest, I’ve seen lots of animals I had never seen before. Raccoons, opossums, even deer have found their way down my street and into my yard. One time we were driving down a busy street and stopped at a red light. I looked around and didn’t notice as many differences as I did similarities – Best Buy, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Circuit City (R.I.P.), etc.

Maybe this won’t be all that different after all.

Then I turned to my right and there, in a vacant lot next to a convenience store, two wild turkeys went strolling past. Much to one of my friends’ chagrin when I relayed the story, I did not ‘pack my musket and go shoot them.’

I haven’t had much trouble getting used to the cold winters. Deserts get colder than a lot of people realize, and I was no stranger to low temperatures. That being said, I’ve been colder out here than I’ve ever been in my life. Pumping gas at 1am in 12 degree weather stupidly wearing a hoodie instead of a heavy coat.

I’ve also been hotter than I’ve ever been in my life. Here I thought it was just some dumb saying, but it’s true – it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. I could handle triple-digits in the desert pretty easily most of the time. Here I start to bitch in the mid-80’s. When we hit triple digits here I want to die.

I’m still not used to the way people talk out here. It’s mostly little stuff, but a lot of it is still like nails on a chalkboard. For example, there are no bags out here. Only sacks. I hear the word sack and I think of a giant brown paper bag, but out here it covers everything: paper, plastic, even Ziploc bags. Asking for a soda may get you a funny look, as there is only pop. People will refer to a man as an “Ol’ boy.” Instead of saying thank you, people say “I appreciate cha.” And if you say thank you to someone there’s a good chance that instead of you’re welcome they’ll answer you with a simple “Yup.” Not that any of that is so bad, but it still sounds foreign.

Then there’s the elephant in the room. The difference that everyone always asks about.

I swapped earthquakes for tornadoes.

People out here seem to be terrified of earthquakes. I’ve been told on more than one occasion earthquakes are worse, because “you can’t see them comin’.” As a seasoned veteran of probably a dozen or so earthquakes who now lives in tornado alley, I will say this –

I would trade one tornado for a hundred earthquakes. I know what they say. The Big One’s coming, and California’s going to fall off into the ocean! I’ve been hearing that since I was old enough to understand what an earthquake was, and I’ve never seen anything like what happens in a tornado. A big earthquake is bound to happen someday, and it will probably be devastating, but it’s not like there’s an earthquake season.

I’m not trying to crap on the midwest. Almost every place has something to watch out for. The east coast and gulf coast have hurricanes; in addition to earthquakes, California also has wildfires and mudslides. Helping my dad decide what was valuable and what wasn’t as I helped him evacuate his house due to a looming wildfire royally sucked.

Luckily, my friends and family in Oklahoma are OK, no pun intended. Some of my family have had some close calls, and my friend from high school has lost a house once already. But for now I’m just thankful they’re OK, and I’m really thankful we have a secure storm shelter.

Chocolate Covered Bacon – Pop Culture’s Guilty Pleasures

I was reading something in a magazine about guilty pleasures the other day, and saw things that I liked mentioned. Not things I liked ironically, or things I liked that I know are bad, but things I really liked. It got me thinking…who defines what a guilty pleasure is? If it makes you happy it can’t be that bad, I mean — oh my God, I just quoted Sheryl Crow. You can all email me as to whether you’d rather slap me in the face or kick me in the ass.

Anyway, the point is I don’t feel that guilty about things I like, pop culture-wise. However, the more I thought the more I realized there are some things I enjoy in the privacy of my own home that I might be embarrassed to get caught enjoying in public. And so today, dear readers, I have some confessions to make.

Movies – At first, I had a hard time thinking of a specific movie that is a guilty pleasure for me. It’s more a genre than a certain movie : as I’ve discussed before, I love horror movies.  Even the crappy ones. I feel like a little kid bargaining for a later bedtime when my wife tells me to turn it from the stupid slasher flick I’ve turned on halfway through, and I beg, ‘C’mon, I just wanna see one death scene!’

I also have a soft spot for really stupid comedies, but I don’t feel all that guilty about those.

But then I did think of one particular movie, and I can’t believe I’m admitting it. One of my wife’s favorite chick flicks is the movie Return to Me, starring David Duchovny and Minnie Driver. The plot is a little farfetched. It’s not incredibly funny, but it has some funny parts. It’s not terribly mushy, but it does start to get a little gushy toward the end. But it’s actually a very sweet movie, it has some of the gruffest old bastards you can imagine in warm supporting roles (Carroll O’Connor, Robert Loggia, and William Bronder), and it was written and directed by one of the costars, the terribly underrated Bonnie Hunt.

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I used to put on an insufferable face when my wife would flip to it on a lazy Sunday afternoon. After seeing parts of it, I realized it really wasn’t as bad as a lot of the chick flicks out there. One year, I bought it for her on DVD. To this day, she thinks I’m playing games on my iPad when it’s on, but that’s just for show. If your wanting to feel in touch with your sensitive side, you could do worse.

Plus, the more she thinks I’m letting her watch it against my will, the more she’ll let me watch Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

TV – This one was a no-brainer. Hell’s Kitchen.

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My wife and I love cooking shows. We watch Food Network and Cooking Channel all the time, and sometimes it feels like we’re just killing time between seasons of Top Chef. But Hell’s Kitchen is the worst, and I eat it up.

It has idiots, losers, smartasses, and Gordon Ramsay tearing them all a new orifice. It’s trash TV, but I can’t help it. It’s like crack coming over the airwaves; I just can’t wait for my next hit.

Music – This one is the hardest for me to admit. Even though I like nearly every single type of music, I really despised ’80’s glam rock, aka ‘Butt Rock’. The catch was, I had to suffer through that crap for the chance to possibly hear or see the harder stuff I really liked on the radio or MTV (ie., Metallica, Slayer, Ministry, Helmet). So, although I can’t stand most of it, I’m quite familiar with that coke-laced, Sunset Strip big-hair crap.

But one song broke through.

Still of the Night, by Whitesnake. Now, I never minded seeing Whitesnake on MTV, but that’s a completely different story, as a lot of guys my age will probably understand.

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By and large, though, I didn’t like their music. Except for Still of the Night. To this day, if that song comes on while I’m in the car the radio gets blasted and I unrepentantly rock the hell out. If anyone caught me listening to it, I’d be mortified. But I can’t help it. It’s a good song, dammit.

I’m curious if anyone else has the gumption to share their guilty pleasures – by all means, let me know in the comments. In the meantime, in doing a little research before I started writing this I found that Still of the Night is only $0.69 on iTunes. My wife is going to kill me.

“Are You a Writer?” – And…Cue Extreme Shyness

I’ve always been shy. Not just a little quiet, or kind of bashful, but extremely, painfully shy. A few years back, I was listening to some talk radio show one day and they were talking about Asperger’s Syndrome. They started listing some of the more common symptoms, and I thought, Holy crap, that’s me! I can’t say for sure I really do have it, and if I do it’s definitely a mild case, but I do share some of those common symptoms. The big one being avoiding eye contact.

I’ve gotten better at it over the years, and if I’m having an important conversation with someone I’ll force myself to make at least occasional eye contact, but if I’m left to my own devices I’ll look someone in the eye somewhere between rarely and never.

Friday I was at work, on my lunch break, busily typing away at my Work In Progress. One of my neighbors in my little block of Cubicleland popped her head up over our shared partition to ask me a question. I turned around to answer her, and I made a point to look up and make eye contact. As I was talking, I noticed her eyes had shifted from me to the page of text on my computer. By the time I was finished I wasn’t even sure if she’d heard anything I’d said.

She nodded, said “Uh-huh,” then paused and said, “Are you a writer?”

Why, yes, I am. I just submitted a novella to a publisher (fingers crossed!), have another that I’m almost done editing, and I’m currently working on my first novel.

Ah, what an answer that would’ve been. Or even ‘Why, yes, I am,’ would have sufficed. Or just a simple ‘Yes.’

Instead, I froze. My eyes began to dart around, and I found myself completely unable to make eye contact. I came just short of picking up pieces of paper and trying to cover up my monitor, and stammered, “Uh, I – well, um…I write.”

What the hell?

My cubicle neighbor gave me an appropriately odd look for such an odd response, and said, “So, yes?”

“Um, yeah, I guess.” I began to feel hot, and just wanted the conversation to end. I swear to God, I haven’t felt like that in years. I was completely overcome with the devastating shyness I used to feel as a kid. I thought that all that was in my past, for the most part. Obviously, I was wrong.

So, what’s the deal? Was it just because I wasn’t expecting to be asked out of the blue like that? Surely it can’t be this hard to talk about my writing all the time, right? Jesus Christ, I hope not.

On that note, isn’t writing one of those things where the criteria for being a writer is just that you write? ‘I write, therefore I am…a writer?’ Evidently, there’s some stigma in my subconscious that I’m not a legitimate writer yet, but when am I?

Does anyone else deal with this type of self-doubt, and if so, when does it end? When did you finally stop doubting yourself and proudly call yourself “A Writer?”