I want you to take a look at that picture above. It's one of my favorites. Do you know who these two are? It's OK if you don't. I'll name them in a little bit. But I love this picture. Well and truly.
So I read the kinda-sorta autobiography of Maynard James Keenan recently, and I discovered that he and I share a lot of traits. The most important one was a bewildered response to people who have a very obvious talent and just don't use it. Keenan would browbeat people he knew who had talent and weren't using it. I do the same. I have a friend who is a great writer, but for the longest time he ignored it. Granted, he has a very unusual style. He had no faith in it. I fucking loved it. I told him so many times that he should do something with it, but he ignored me until recently. He actually got a book out there, and he's working on the next one. I won't name him. He doesn't go by his real name, anyway.
I can't tell you how many talented people I know. Most of them use it. Some don't have the courage of their convictions, and I'm the guy who gets angry with them. I try to talk (or maybe argue) them into doing something with what they have. I fail more often than I succeed. It irritates me to no end that there are people who have amazing talents. Talents that would burn your eyebrows off. And they let it stagnate. I feel happy that they share it with me, but I want the world to know their talent. Their names, if they so choose to be identified as such.
Here's the thing: we creators are more or less afraid that we are phonies. That our work is not as good as we think. It's impostor syndrome. And I totally get why most don't get over it. Regardless of what you think of your own work, it should be fun, yes? Creation is an amazing adrenaline booster. When I was a kid, I'd create these elaborate stories with my Transformers and GI Joes. But even before that I would create these mysteries about the Detective Boys. They were my five-year-old ripoff of The Hardy Boys.
Whatever your art is, when you sit down to create it, it should be fun. I've said in the past that editing sucks. That trying to sell your shit to a publisher sucks. That marketing sucks. But I was wrong. I learned that lesson the hard way. We'll use me as an example.
When I was a kid all I wanted to do was write stories. A high school teacher of mine showed me that I could actually make money from that kind of thing, and he introduced me to The Writer's Market. And when I was a mere sophomore in high school, I submitted my first stories to magazines.
Still using me as an example, I thought that being a writer was a solitary thing. I was wrong. The first part, the creation and editing, is solitary. But when you try to get it published, you have to be a social creature. And if someone does, indeed, pay you for your work, you have to be even more social. And it becomes really social when you start doing signings and readings. That was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I learned it.
It's hard to write the shit on the back of the book. I used to hate it. Now, I love it. But so many writers don't want to do the social part. I get it, I really do. But it's kind of necessary to the job. I can't tell you how happy I am to have met so many authors I love, from the NYT bestsellers to the folks who publish on Amazon and Lulu. They're great. I rejoice in the friends I have made through this process.
But there is one author who fucking despises the whole business. Don't worry. If you're reading this, I'm not talking about you. The guy I'm talking about is a bestseller, and I can't figure out why.
Rewind to my first job. I worked at the Elmhurst Public Library (which was the library from my Tales from the Library bits from Tabard Inn). I worked there almost 10 years. At one point I was assigned to do periodicals every Friday night. My job would be to first reshelve the magazines and newspapers perused by our patrons. After that, if someone actually used the microfilm or microfiche, I would put them back where they belonged. After that, I had to make sure the magazines and newspapers were in order. After that, I had to go through the new issues of magazines in the red binders because there was this scumbag religious zealot in town who liked hiding their bullshit tracts in new releases. After that, if there were damaged periodicals, I would repair them. After that, there was nothing. So I'd pretend to do work in the back room. That's because they kept their copies of The Writer's Digest back there. (For magazines, it was essentially P-Z.)
I should mention that our periodicals section was supposedly haunted. I never saw anything, but others claimed to have.
I found an interview with a certain author in one issue of TWD. This bestseller's name was John Grisham.
I saw The Firm, and I more or less liked it. It was fun, and it depicted one of the greatest moments of depression I've ever seen. It's when actor Terry Kinney is so full of grief he is sitting in the backyard while a sprinkler constantly sprays his legs, and he just doesn't care. But then I read the book, and it fuckin' blew. It sucked. Hands down, no questions.
So I read this Grisham piece, and he said that he hated writing. I get it, his main job is being a lawyer. But he hates writing? Fuck you, asshole.
Grisham hates writing, and it comes through in his books. I read two more, and that was enough for me. Three strikes, you're out. Yet somehow he's on that bestsellers list when at least fifty more authors in the world should have taken his place.
If you're a writer, and you hate writing, you're in the wrong business. Writing is supposed to be fun. Even the less fun parts are still pretty fun. If you have this talent (or any other talent for that matter), don't waste it. Don't throw it away. Do something.
The day writing is no longer fun for me is the day I'm no longer myself. I've had some writing problems in 2020, and I bitched about them, but I saw it as a problem that needed solving. And I figured it out. And I made it fun, because I like figuring out puzzles. It's a bit awkward when I'm trying to figure out my own shortcomings, but it's still fun, at least in retrospect. Don't waste your talents. Have fun with them. And if you can make a living at it, do so. Or at least try.
Oh yeah. Those two guys in the picture just rocking out and having fun? They're rock stars right now. This is just them having fun with their art as kids. But one of them is Adam Jones, the guitarist for Tool (and the art director for their very disturbing videos). The other is maybe one of the greatest guitarists alive, Tom Morello. He's been in a lot of bands, but you'll probably know him from Rage Against the Machine.
If you're an artist who is burned out on the whole thing, I advise you to think about what drew you to this in the first place. Remember how fun it was,. Then recreate that fun. Don't be cynical. Don't be negative. Just put your fingers on the home keys. Or on the frets. Or on the paint brush. To quote a Romero film of a King book, "Give it the car keys and let it ride!"
PS: Tom Morello has a great show on Lithium (if you get XM) called One Man Revolution. Sometimes he has his activist mom cohosting, which are my favorite episodes. Here is a song he wrote about her, and it's fucking great. And he and Maynard used to play around with music before either one was well known. One of my favorite products of this is Maynard guesting on RATM's "Know Your Enemy."
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