WRITING THE BOOK I WAS DESTINED TO WRITE

via writing.com

An English major joke goes like this:

I like to write poetry, but I suck at writing poetry.

So I wrote a short story that was worse than my poem.

To fix the problem I wrote a novel and it’s the worst yet, and this explains the deluge of bad writing.

It’s supposed to be funny, or insightful, or maybe just a red flag of time wasted. But I like the fit.

My writing work includes essays and scripts, feature length screenplays that rest in a drawer next to my Final Draft software.

And blog posts up the yazzoo. I like posting impressions and experiences unique to most people, but that go unnoticed.

I notice things, so that’s what gets my attention, that and formatting.

One day I noticed a neck lump. The next day my wife noticed it and I was off to the cancer cure race for sex cancer, hpv16.

I don’t capitalize hpv16 because I think it creates a sensation, confusion. Is it HPV or HIV or what? So I call it sex cancer and leave it at that.

New Writing Ground

Except it’s not so easy when I opened the door to cancer treatment and found a new variety of nutty fuckers in the same cancer boat I found myself in.

For example a man with throat cancer says: “I’m taking it more seriously this time. In fact I even quit smoking.”

He got the shit from smoking. Not me, and his regrets are not my regrets.

An elderly lady was in the waiting room with me while her husband of fifty years was going through the grind and said, “I think my husband married me because I had a real job, which was rare while we were hippies.”

There’s something sweet about marriage doubt that never ends, as if the marriage ends when the doubting stops.

But that’s not what makes me feel like I’m writing the book I was destined to write.

I’ve got a writing habit, a practice, but not a lot of focus. Go through the blog for a few posts and you’ll notice a few things.

I’m not selling, not harvesting emails, offering anything for free.

In the blog world admitting the above marks a true amateur, a real loser, a waste of time. I’m not hustling a class, a product, or service of any kind. So what’s the point? It’s a writing point I’m making, that writing regularly clears up the brain, tidies up the attention span.

A regular writer logs ideas. Whether or not they’re productive ideas is another matter.

The point I’d like to make is the same point made on any idea: do something with it.

Like every medical patient in history, I didn’t ask for cancer, it asked for me, and it didn’t ask nicely. For that I’ve decided take cancer, the treatment, and some of the people headed the wrong way, and give them a shake. My memoir grabs cancer by the neck, since turn about is fair play, and slap it around before choking it out.

Me and cancer in the MMA octagon. Or the MCA. Instead of mixed martial arts it’s mixed cancer arts. But wait, you say, how can cancer be an art?

That’s my story in progress. I’m writing an art story featuring a dastardly villain against the kooks, whack jobs, and staff members populating the road from the moment of, “tell me again? I’ve got what the fuck?” all the way to, “Our tests show a full response to treatment.”

Since it was sex cancer it felt slightly embarrassing, at times humiliating, and other times sparkling with hope. The last one makes it all the more reason to share. Hope grows eternal.

Ah, destiny.