Was Writing a Book Worth It? And some brief fiction…
Good end of June. It’s hard to believe we’re already reaching the end of the month, and I hope your Pride Month has been good in spite of current negative factors often outside of our control. Without sharing some personal details, this month has on the one hand felt less Pride-festive this year for me, but at the same time some personal events that have happened this month mean it will go down in the history books for me as one of the queerest Pride Months to date. And that is very cool indeed.
Family life has been personally hectic of late, but good, and that’s kept me from spending too much time on the newsletter. I’m trying to remedy that. Maybe over the next two months, I can get back into a proper groove for the newsletter. Lately, it’s felt like an afterthought or something I have to do at the last minute, and I hate that.
In this month’s freebie newsletter, instead of focusing on a single topic, I’m going to have two short pieces for your consideration. The first concerns my impromptu answer to the question, “Was writing a book worth it?” And the second will be a brief bit of fiction based on a writing prompt.
Was writing a book worth it?
In February of 2021, I had a young coworker ask me a very interesting question. At first I wasn’t sure I knew the answer, but to my surprise I had a quick response and learned a little about myself in the process.
The young man knew I’d recently published Sweet Sixteen Killer. And he had been thinking to himself about possibly writing a book, but he wanted to know if I found writing a book was worth it.
At first, my obvious answer was yes. But I also jokingly said that from a financial point of view “not yet.”
He further explained that he was thinking of it from the reader perspective.
To that I had a quick and thorough response that surprised me.
I said:
“First and foremost, you write for you. You do it for yourself. Sure yeah, you do it for others too eventually, for your audience sake. But firstly you do it for you. When it comes to creativity and art, you do it because you want to. Because it’s who you are. Because you get pleasure from it. You write for other people after that.”
But what about you all? If you’re an author, how would you respond to this sort of question? I was surprised I seemingly already knew the answer, even though I wasn't sure I had ever really thought about it (or at least not in a while).
Writing prompt: A letter from prison.
I recently joined a local writer’s group hosted by the local bookshop Double Dog Bookshop in Wentzville, Missouri. This past Monday we met and had a brief writing prompt that we all engaged in. The prompt involved writing a letter from the perspective of a prisoner to someone on the outside. Mine turned out to be a humorous take and I’m including it below. You’ll notice the letter is written to my floating fictional character, Sally Pinkerton. If you enjoy reading this prompt, let me know if you want to include more of my writers group prompts in the future.
Dear Sally Pinkerton
Dear Sally,
I thought prison would be horrible. That I wasn’t tough enough for prison. But it turns out when you’re filthy rich it’s not so bad. Everybody knows me, but they like me because we were all rich tech bros on the outside.
I get a lot of quiet time in my own cell which I’ve primarily devoted to reading books from the prison library. The prisoners who manage it are pretty cool and have helped me find some good books. I’ve read quite a few books by Bill O’Reilly that are always about someone being assassinated. Someone needs to stop O’Reilly before he kills again.
I’ve also found a lot of solace in the kids lit section. Honestly, I’m not even sure why a prison has one, but I’m glad we do.
Sometimes I lie awake at night and think about all the crimes I committed and people I’ve harmed with my business decisions and reckless race to the top. And then I remind myself it’s not my problem, and go to sleep. I still sleep like a baby. How are you sleeping these days?
I’m not mad at you for testifying against me in court. There’s always gonna be haters when you’re successful and I was a trillionaire after all. I learned during my first billion to just not give a hoot when people decide to take the moral high ground within my vicinity — “shit happens,” as my mother always used to say.
Any rate, I hope you’re enjoying all the money and fifteen minutes of fame. I saw you on 60 Minutes the other day, tell Bari Weiss I said hi.
Cordially yours,
Allan
Feel free to sound off in the comments and let me know what you’ve done this Pride Month, how you’ve celebrated, or maybe yours has been more quiet and personal in a way like my own.
