Suzie’s House 221: “But I’m Better, Right?”

“Shall we call it good for today?” I tried not to appear impatient, but my time is always very, very short. It’s hard enough making myself write. I don’t need to waste time talking to a kid who isn’t interested, though I have accepted Ben’s determination. If he were going to change his mind about being a writer, he’d have done it by now. Poor kid.

“What?” Ben finally stopped looking out the window and turned his attention to me.

“I have a deadline, so…..” This was usually enough of a hint. Not today.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got something on my mind.”

I waited. You’d think he could spit it out, but no. He neither excused himself, nor said anything. He just worried his lower lip with a nice, white set of teeth and shifted around on my couch as though he couldn’t possibly get comfortable there. Actually, it’s a futon couch with a few years on it. He probably really couldn’t get comfortable.

“You said the writing is going well,” I prompted. “But I notice you didn’t have anything with you for me to read today.”

“Yeah. Well. I guess it’s a lot slower.”

So, he’d had a dose of the reality pierce his confidence. Writing isn’t always fun. It was a pity, but I’d been expecting it ever since he turned serious about it.

“You aren’t trying to write something that’s finished as soon as it comes out, are you?” I hazard a guess.

“What do you mean?”

“My books always take at least three major drafts and a couple of polishing revisions. Sometimes more. If I don’t do it that way, I can’t write at all because I get too hung up on making the words perfect. Especially if I’m trying to write for a particular audience.” I threw in that last comment because we’d been talking about what he should or shouldn’t show me. I’m not an easy audience.

“I’m not like that,” he said, chin up and eyes narrowed.

“Oh. Well. Never mind.” I’ll bet it really is that way for him too, but I’m not about to argue. We really are all different when it comes to writing. I might be wrong. And now he knew what I thought. It might come in handy for him some time in the future. “Well, what do you think is getting in the way?”

“Nothing. Except….” He wouldn’t look me in the eye, but I arched an eyebrow anyway. “The internet.”

“Ah. Me too! I get online and start visiting and totally forget what I was going to write. It’s bad.”

“I know!” He scooted forward and looked excited. “I thought maybe I should set up a blog like you have.”

“You might be better off just writing for now,” I said hesitantly. “Blogs aren’t generally a good place to find critique partners. It’s kind of like putting your practice work in a self published magazine, then handing it out to strangers and asking their opinion. You could get hurt that way.”

“That’s the problem,” he grumbled. “Tracy set up a facebook page about Gene’s guitar. I told you about Gene’s guitar, didn’t I?”

I nodded.

“Well, it’s got it’s own Facebook page, or wall, or whatever. And I thought it would be kind of cool if I had one too. So I did what Tracy did and got one. And I put some of my stories on it. And…”

“People said unkind things?” Seems to me most people on the internet are at least polite. The trolls aren’t that hard to pick out, and can often be blocked.

“No! Gene’s guitar is more popular than I am!”

“Oh!” I tried not to laugh.

“By a lot! I mean Tracy got so many friends for it that she had to change it into a fan page thing, and every time we check it’s got more and more fans! See, there’s these initials carved into the back, and everyone’s trying to guess whose they are. People are really getting in to it. But hardly anyone cares about my stories.”

“Oh, Ben.” I patted his hand sympathetically. “That’s part of being a writer. But if you’d like, I can teach you about hooks. At least then you might be able to keep more of your readers.”

“Hooks. Yeah.” He nodded to himself. “Anything to be better than some stupid old guitar.”

If you enjoy Suzie’s House and would like to see more, please leave a comment. Suzie’s House is powered by its readers.

revised 8/3/11 12:18pm