Guilt

A while back, someone messaged me on MySpace, asking to be my friend because, to cut things to the chase, she wanted me to buy her book when it finally comes out. Seeing a chance to chat with a fellow novelist about the writing process, I started sending messages with her back and forth. Now, I've decided to stop replying. She's been nice, but I just can't bring myself to care about the story another writer I don't know is writing. I'm not particularly interested in the story from what I've heard. What hurts even more, to be honest, is that she hasn't shown any particular interest in my own writing. I've talked about it a little, but I guess she isn't clairvoyant in being able to leap onto the fact that she should be quizzing me about my own theories about writing and the details of the stories I'm working on.

I'm not saying I don't like being part of a "writing community," as if there was such a thing, rather than just a bunch of writers who are friends. I'm saying that, I'm sorry, but since I don't know this person and she doesn't seem particularly concerned about getting to know me, there's really not much for me to do other than wish her luck, which I did. Maybe I'll buy her book if I see it on store shelves. But there's no personal connection there; frankly, her self-promotion left a bad taste in my mouth. I want to be friends with people who genuinely want to know me and my writing, not just people who want my Benjamins.

Today was a good day. I watched Battlestar Galactica with some good people. Sharing something that I like isn't nearly as satisfying as sharing something I like that I've created, but until the sweet, sweet day I finally get something published, the story of BSG will have to do. Maybe I'll do a blog later giving my own anti-Cylon sentiments. I also had poetry class. That's always an adventure. That class always feels much too short; one of my criticisms is that we spend too much time "workshopping" poems. I have the good fortune of studying under award-winning poet Michael Sowder. Sometimes, I just don't consider how fortunate I am, as a writer, to work with people like that, even though I'm a fiction writer at heart, not a poet.

But Shakespeare never wrote prose fiction, and Chaucer himself was a poet.