I like writing. I do it all the time. I did it before there were blogs. One of the reasons I forced myself to learn to use a computer was so that I could write. And in the past 10 years on various blogs I’ve written around 2 million words. That’s a staggering number, really.

I’ve never wanted to make a living at it. There’s no money in it. But I enjoy it. Why I keep doing it.

This blog like Frank’s is not the best example of my writing. In fact, it’s probably the worst. I spend about 3-5 minutes per post; maybe 10-20 for the lengthy ones.

When I take my time, when I cogitate, cerebrate and really get down, I’m not a really great writer — not like David Foster Wallace — but a pretty damn good to sometimes great writer. I have no illusions that I could ever write like David Foster Wallace. At least not consistently. Maybe one or two essays in a lifetime. But I am better nearly every time than almost all of the literary darlings you care to name. (Which is I think why I have trouble reading them.)

Like this asshole.

I’ve seen the novel City of Fire praised widely and many reviews declaiming what a great book it is, how deft are the sentences, extolling the succinctness of its expression and the parsimony of its metaphor.

It sounds like some garbage I wrote 10 minutes before class in 8th grade. Those sentences are so atrocious I wouldn’t wipe my shoe with them after I stepped in dog crap. It’d make the crap dirtier.

My god. This guy is famous for some middle-school level turgidly clueless word expulsions.

Yet I have no desire to compete in this field because it’d be a great deal of hard work to be poor — especially for the sort of writing that I enjoy playing with. But it does give me comfort that I’m better than those that are considered great for whatever reason.

This post took about four minutes to write, by the way. A little slow for me.