I’m a writer. You’d think such a lofty title would shield me from criticism. But I have news for you, it doesn’t. Because I suffer slights all the time. There’s hardly a day that goes by when I’m not parrying cruel indignities from a throng of jealous rivals. Recently, a close friend asked me if I “enjoyed the editing process” implying that my first drafts aren’t gospel, written without error or improvement - pre-packaged prose perfectly produced in Paradise. I was astonished. Nobody asked Bill Shakespeare what he thought of rewriting. I don’t make mistakes, okay?
Speaking of gospels, there was an associate of mine, who shan’t remain blameless, emailing me the other day about a couple of typos he discovered in a long masterwork of mine. I was stupefied. Did John, Matthew, Mark or Luke go through a similar rigamarole when putting the finishing touches on the New Testament? I don’t think so.
Then there’s the anonymous commenter, JoaquinPhoenixTheJokester, seriously inquiring whether or not I’m inspired by others. You think Homer had to deal with this garbage? Good thing his blindness prevented him from reading the comments. But the man had ears, ears that were in fine enough shape to hear veiled barbs and casual insults.
I answered my phone yesterday – something I never do. A business associate had a proposition for a partnership. Instead of saying I always work alone, I said “maybe”, my go-to response to such questions. She wondered if I had the bandwidth to take on another sixteen projects, lecturing me on how the day is 24 hours, not the 48 required to get these jobs done. I was stunned, mortified, in fact. Was she honestly saying that I didn’t understand how the rotation of the earth affects my bottom line? She just said, “don’t bite off more than you can chew.” This really sent me through the roof – straight through the ceiling, picking little bits of insulation out of my hair for the next few hours. But I had the time to explain. Did I bite off more than I could chew at Peter Luger’s? The time I stuffed a 64 oz ribeye down my gullet like it was a leftover Juju bean in the crystal dish of a celebrated Upper East Side podiatrist's waiting room? I don’t think so. I brought my own blender that evening. How about when I insisted on eating the bone and not just the marrow, as a nod to my cave-hopping ancestors? The waiter said they didn’t have the chisels and hammers I requested.
Like everyone else, she doesn’t get it. Doesn’t understand that what made Cervantes successful wasn’t nit-picking hangers-on asking questions like, “does it have to be a windmill?” Someone else, residing on the outskirts of my friend group wanted to know if I needed any help. That if I did, simply raise my hand. I was flabbergasted. My ability is infinite, my humility is nil. The only thing that limits my time are other people asking questions. How many masterpieces could I have produced in the time it took to fight off these idiotic queries? The world may never know, but it’s that much poorer for suffering in silence.
I’ll do my best to make it up to humanity. Before you ask me something, no matter how innocuous it seems, think of any insanely successful writer you know from history and wonder if you’d level the same question at them. Rethink before you speak.
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