Thomas Sullivan: WOULD YOU WRITE A BOOK FOR ME? or WHAT DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT SEX, LOVE AND TERROR?
Yoo hoo! Attention everyone who has been broomed out of a job by Donald Trump. And you uncounted millions over and above the counted millions who all are out of work — gotta minute? Also to the rejected, the downtrodden, day dreamers, spurned lovers, adventurers, searchers, fantasizers, philosophers, natural-born psychologists, sob sister, questers, trapped housewives, romantics, gigolos, Delilahs, or otherwise unfulfilled souls with holes in their lives, I’ve got a job for you. You’re hired! If you want to be.
Here’s the standard contract:
On call 24/7. Report to shift muse. Irregular hours, no days off. Weekly pay = 0. Monthly pay = 0. Guaranteed annual income = 0. Retirement = 0. Health insurance = 0 (think of the “0” as the first letter of Obamacare, as in your first free brain surgery is a frontal Obama-ty). Paid vacation = 0. Additional employee benefits = 0. In case of actual sale and publisher eventually coming across with the green scratch, subtract Federal tax, State tax, Local tax, both ends of FICA, 15% agent fee, additional agent fee if sub-agenting, business expenses, and all fees, penalties and taxes yet to be invented hereafter in the known and unknown Universe.
Agreeable? Good. Congratulations, you are now a fully functioning writer. Take a pen with you the next time you go into the bathroom (hopefully you’ll find paper already there). Here’s your first project:
See, I’ve got some questions and the research is murder. No, no, not murder as in research for a mystery (though there’s some spooky stuff I’d like help with too); actually, my questions go more toward character relationships, emotional stuff –you know, whathcamacallits…gender relationships, sexual romance and whatever.
Like I said, the research is a killer, on account of my approach to romance is a little out of the mainstream. Actually, I’ve only met one woman whose instincts/thinking about “luv” were the same as mine, so what do I know about normalcy? I have two requirements for falling in love with a woman. One, she must be totally insane and two, she must be utterly intransigent. The insanity is necessary so that she will fall in love with me in the first place, and stone solid stubbornness ensures that communication will be blocked at some point, effectively annihilating all that I am and leaving me free and independent once again. Yeah, it’s partly theory, but that’s because of my extremely limited experience, having kept myself off the market 99% of the time (why are you applauding?). Hello? Ah…still there and semi-conscious? Good. So I figure I can shortcut the research by getting the benefit of your experience and insight. Here are six questions, five of which you’ll see could underwrite relationships:
If a woman HAD to choose, would she rather have a man be emotionally faithful to her or physically faithful? And if a man HAD to choose, would he rather have a woman be physically faithful to him or emotionally faithful?
Fear, guilt, love. Which one drives the bus? Which one motivates the strongest? Which one trumps? And especially I’d like to hear views on which one(s) win if they go head to head against each other.
Which of the following two nightmares would be the scariest: just as you are about to awaken you 1) feel cool air all around you and know that when you open your eyes you will find yourself on a two-foot wide rock ledge jutting out from the side of a cliff, staring into a steaming abyss 9,000 feet below, or 2) you sense that a person who has been dead for a long time and that you miss the most in your life is lying conscious in the bed beside you, though they don’t seem to be breathing.
React to this statement: men are great dumb beasts when it comes to communication and love, but women train in those skills from early ages and are far more practical about emotions over time.
React to this statement: a man is less likely to fall romantically in love with a woman than a woman is with a man, but if he does, he falls hopelessly and idealistically in love whereas most women are more realistic.
React to this statement: living fully and loving fully (romantically) are mutually exclusive.
Feel free to e-mail me your responses at mn333mn@earthlink.net or just chunk something in below where it asks for Comments. I rather suspect that writing a novel this way is going to be the ol’ making-sausage method. Not pretty, but if it fries up nice in the pan, well, the proof is in the . . . uh, pudding (no), putting (no), sausage (no), blood pudding (no), eating (no) – you see why I’m hiring this out? Hiring being euphemistic. I mean, I hope the phrase “you get what you pay for” doesn’t apply here, ‘cause this ship sails empty. Think of it as a balloon payment on your future as a writer. And you know what balloons are filled with. Floating off now…
Please use your newly hired imagination to pretend the photo above is relevant (floating…empty ship = empty canoe floating on ice pack). It’s from my monthly newsletter which you can get free just by emailing mn333mn@earthlink.net . The newsletter is mostly inspirational stories and a rave about nature w/photos that has a large and growing global readership. Past newsletters are at this author’s website under Sullygrams & Columns (http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/sullygrams.htm ) and usually go up within 1 day of being sent out.
May I also invite you to follow me on Twitter? It’s just something fun you can peep at without having to interact. The only thing that changes after you create an account by making up a username and password is that when you click on your account page you’ll see the tweets of anyone you wish to follow, though they won’t see you. Or simply click this link anytime: http://twitter.com/thomassullivan. Sample of a recent Tweet: The Easter Bunny just saw his shadow. Which means we’ll have 6 more weeks of basketball… Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
