Writing Is Not an Easy Occupation for the Self-indulgent
The writing life takes a tremendous amount of self-discipline. This is not a natural thing for me. On balance, I am an undisciplined and self-indulgent person. This is one of the reasons it took me half a century to begin writing in earnest.
I’m better at some things than others. For instance, while I almost never have more than one martini of an evening, I also never go without a martini so long as there are gin, vermouth, and olives in the house. While I don’t consider myself to be a big fan of cake or pie, if there is cake or pie in the house, I am going to eat it until it’s gone. The same is true of candy, nuts, and especially candy with nuts. You may already see the pattern emerging here.
My problem is with stuff that’s in the house. If it’s not in the house, I’m not so attached to it that I will ever go out of the house to get it. I’m too lazy for that. So, if you’ve been paying attention, I can achieve something that looks like discipline by managing my weaknesses so that laziness trumps my attraction to strong drink and chocolate.
Now if I can just figure out a way to utilize that in my daily word count, I will be golden.
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I call the martini in the picture the ‘aimless martini.’ It’s just gin and dry vermouth in a 4 to 1 ratio. The only real innovation is the garnish, which is 2 kalamata olives stuffed with golden raisins. I stuff them myself. There’s not much to it, but, so far as I know, it is a new creation, and one for which I deserve to become famous. My cousin, Lyn, thinks I should become famous for A Cup of Pending. I hope she’s right about that. That would make two things, and, hopefully, bump up my odds. You can actually help, if you’re of a mind. Buy the book, try the martini, tell everyone you know. You’ll like the book and everything else is just as easy as stuffing a golden raisin into a pitted kalamata olive.