Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Self-indulgent thing where I write about me, writing.

So, okay, so my friend Eleanor asked me to participate in a thing, and in that thing I am going to participate. You will be witnesses.

Eleanor is great, by the way and it is flattering as all hell to be asked to do something about the stuff I do by someone who does stuff that I admire more than I would feel comfortable saying out loud to her. Anyway, this is a thing that was started, as near as I can figure, by Eric Kaplan and it spread from there because everyone who does this is suppose to ask three other people to participate. I didn't do that, but if you want to do it, you should. I am sorry that I broke the chain, everyone.

 Oh, my friend Patrick did this, too. You should read his. Here it is. Okay here are some questions and also some answers...


1) What am I working on?

 I am working on my Professional Wrestling Fanzine The Atomic Elbow. It's basically what I am always working on. At least for the past couple of years. I am as surprised as anyone that I've been able to stick with it, really.


 2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

 Not sure I would call print-only 'zines about wrestling a "genre." As far as I know there are less than ten of them in the entire world. Mine is probably the eighth best. Maybe seventh if that one guys stopped publishing his. I guess it's slightly different because I try as hard as possible to write about as much non-wrestling stuff as I can within the context of wrestling. Sure it's fun to read about who suplexed whom or whatever, but I'd much rather talk about the nearest JC Penney store to Palmetto, Florida. I'm not gonna tell you where it is, but the answer is in issue 6 (June 2013).


 3) Why do I write what I do?

 Why does anybody do anything? Most dudes my age have boats or play golf or have affairs or whatever. I'm not interested in any of those things, but I am interested in 'zines and professional wrestling. So that's what I do.


 4) How does your writing process work?

 Usually I just mash as many words as I possibly can out of my keyboard and then try to whittle it down into something that makes sense. I'm my own editor, though, so more stuff makes it into the final product than maybe should. I have to keep reminding myself not to get too precious about it.

 I'm really inspired by my friend Tom McHenry's attitudes about writing. It's not a new or novel concept, really, but he once wrote something somewhere about how the main focus should be to just do the work and not worry too much about it.

 I think about that all the time. I just put some words on the page. The world will tell me if they're good or not. If they're not, I'll try to do better next time.

 Thanks for looking at this. You're one of the good ones.


 EDIT: Oh, hey, my friend Joey did this, too, and his is super interesting. Go read it.