My muse is AWOL, as usual
"Can I read your book?"
I've had a few people ask me this. Of course they can read my book. And equally important, they can buy a copy. Make that, lots of copies.
I guess people ask that question because they have this notion that we writers are geniuses. How else can we spin worlds out of nothing? We must fall into a trance and channel the muse, who uses us as a medium to transform the sublime into literature. To read our work is to then be privy to creative majesty.
My answer to that: Ha!
Kurt Vonnegut didn't call his fellow writers "ink-stained wretches" for nothing. Forget this crap about the muse. Who else but a crazy wretch would sit for hours at a keyboard and pound away? There is nothing magical about what we do. Our work is the product of writing and rewriting and rerewriting. We inflict brain-damage on ourselves to find the perfect words yet the two most often used keys are "delete" and "backspace."
And in the end, when the story has been ground up and worked over like tripe sausage, it is us, the writers who owe you the reader. Because of our books, you have decided to get into a little more credit card debt. And on behalf of all the hacks in the world, I thank you.