Life’s tough. Then you get the copy-edit.

I’m a card-carrying member of the ISWA. What is the ISWA? It’s the International Sniveling Writer’s Association.

I know, there is no such group. But maybe there should be. This morning, in between sips of freshly-ground coffee and a glance or two at the Santa Catalina Mountains from the porch swing, I opened the editorial page and saw this headline: WRITERS WHO WHINE ABOUT WORK ARE FULL OF THE WRONG STUFF, by Garrison Keillor. My first thought: if he’d been writing a blog, he might have changed the second half of that sentence. But that’s neither here nor there.

He posits that authors, particularly authors who do nothing else and make a living from writing, complain too much about how hard it is to come up with something from nothing and put it on the page.

He’s right.

He also thinks that one reason authors complain is because we want to legitimize what we’re doing. Right again.

I don’t have to go anywhere. I wear shorts and old T-shirts and moccassins that are coming undone at the toe. (Sometimes, in the summer, I wear a swimsuit.) A lot of times I don’t shower until late in the day. Who’s going to smell me? My cats? I have no office hours, although when I’m writing a first draft I’m usually at the computer all day. Of course, if I had a real boss, he’d be appalled at the time I spend 1) visiting other blogs 2) visiting my own blog, or 3) visiting horseracing sites. I write on a laptop outside. Sometimes, I go for walks, because it shakes something loose in my mind, some plot problem, or a character thingie—-whatever. Sometimes I work a jigsaw puzzle because that, too, can help me with a plot problem down the line. (I think. It’s never been proven, one way or the other.) Sometimes I just walk around the pool and talk to myself.

Occasionally, I meet MP for lunch.

Is this working? Yes. It would be hard to explain this to the neighbor, though. Fortunately, the neighbor is out of the house by seven-thirty, working a regular job.

So Keillor is right. I blog about the trials and tribulations of an author’s life, and how it’s “just not going right”, or worse, that it’s “draining my life’s blood away”, mostly for something to say, and to validate my own feelings of inadequacy.

The truth is, it’s a great job. I love to write. Sure, I procrastinate, as if it’s something awful, like a diet. And sometimes I hit snags. Well, dang, even recreational fishermen get snagged.

Here’s the dirty little secret: there is no real angst. There is no suffering. There is no starving in a garret. At least, not for me.