I am a failed fiction writer.
I am comfortable with my status as a pathetic writer because I’ve done everything to improve my skills.
- Classes
- Online Seminars
- Books
- Therapy
I will never write a decent story because I always put myself into the narrative — even when I don’t belong. Unfortunately, I can’t write a story or create a character that isn’t shamelessly linked to my life. It’s not fiction when it’s about me. It’s therapy, or more specifically, blogging — which is why Punk Rock HR fills such an important role in my life.
There was a particular moment, several years, ago, when I realized that I was a bad fiction writer. I wrote a short story that involved a main character who is a Human Resources consultant. She picks up a strange & lonely man at a hotel bar in Chicago — and he looks familiar, but she can’t place his face at first.
- Maybe she knows him through a organizational development seminar?
- Maybe she interviewed him for a job?
They go back to his hotel room, and it turns out that this strange & random guy is David Duchovny — except it’s David Duchovny in decline, and he doesn’t look anything like Mulder. His career is in the toilet and he can’t get a decent acting job. In my story, he is a sex-addicted alcoholic who is filming a detective show in Chicago.
Hey, what can I say? I’m a GenXer who had has fantasies about bedding Mulder. Don’t judge me!
Anyway, I wrote my story around June 2001 — and then I accepted a job as a Regional HR Manager with Kemper Insurance as punishment for being such a horrible writer. I wonder if I should give up writing, blogging *and* Human Resources — and become a sex addiction therapist?
Don’t give up blogging….ESPECIALLY if you become a sex addiction therapist
David Duchovny = teh hotness. Seriously. I’m STILL in love with the man thanks to X-Files (even if the movie was a horrendous disappointment and we’re going to pretend it never existed).
Also, bad fiction: I feel you. I got 80 some odd pages into a novel once and realized that it was really an amalgam of all the novels I’d really loved up to that point. So, it was set aside.
Hey man, injecting yourself into the story has worked well for Charlie Kaufman!!!! I have hope to see ‘you’ in something yet!!!
I heard the following quote on the radio: “Sexual Addiction…that’s a disease? Who says “no more sex please?”
When I lived in Dallas, the local paper ran a weekly listing for support groups, including one for sex addicts anonymous. I thought it was both humorous and ironic that the listing always ended with “Spouses welcome”. Of course they would be welcome, wouldn’t they?
fiction is for cowards! do what you do so well, we love it!!!
@Dan I don’t have the patience to be a therapist.
@LadyGeraldine I like self-awareness. It’s better to be a failed fiction writer than a bad fiction writer with false hope.
@Sandworm You’ll see me in this blog.
@Michael LOL, should I laugh at sex addicts & their problems? Probably not. That’s not very sensitive of me.
@col I think fiction is for SUCKERS. Give me real life ANY DAY.
I was in love with Mulder and I wanted to have the same hair color as Scully. Remember when Mulder had that like 5 pound cell phone? Those were the days!
I once went on an interview in a black suit, black hose (!), and black dress shoes (circa 1999). What did I know? Anyway, my hair was cut into a red bob, and the HR colleague asked, “Are you going for the Scully look on your interview, today?”
Christ. Needless to say, I did not get that job. I made a note to myself, too: no black pantyhose.