The Life and Times of Bugs Bunny

 

A writer is a peculiar creature. Living in the landscape of their mind, they produce a universe of their own device that seems perfect to them. You don’t have to be crazy to be a writer, but it sure helps.

Universal acceptance is a utopia you will never achieve. If you can find only forty-five percent of acceptance that is acceptable. There will always be detractors because detractors think that they are writers too and have their own universes spinning this way and that. So, how does the writer avoid “The Hemingway” exit?

Money is not the answer. When you begin you have it in your head, “If I can just get famous everything is gonna be alright.” So where do all the suicides come from? Have you ever noticed that almost no poor people commit suicide? No, really! Think about it. You can come across a homeless person, dirty, hungry, drug-addicted, with their entire life in a shopping cart and are suffering from some STD that doctors don’t even have a name for yet, and they still haven’t considered checking out. Don’t you wanna know why? Because when at the bottom of human misery, they don’t want to chance heaven because they’ve learned that as bad as it is down here heaven can only be worse! Don’t think so? Look at it. God, angels, saints, then you! That’s the heavenly hierarchy! Then there’s always hell. Shopping cart’s better!

But there’s something fulfilling that draws those cursed to become writers. After you write something you always judge the emotional high that always comes. Sometimes it is euphoria. Most times is only worthy of a spell check. It’s almost never original. You must settle for “cleverly concealed.”

And the new always wears off. That’s where divorces come from. The new wears off. The trick is to postpone that until you are too old to look for Miss Right Now, and she’ll be the  new New. But I digress. Oh, by the way, some of the best stuff gets written after you make that move. And you will make it. Trust me!

Life is a hallucination. Don’t believe me? Wake up from a sound sleep and stare at anything in the dark! Tell me what you see. I once looked at a basket of laundry and saw Bugs Bunny eating a carrot. You turn on the light and Bugs hops away. Why can’t it be Taylor Swift? I digress again. The trick in writing is to make your illusion of life believable. In order to do that you must attract readers who are as crazy as you are! Strike a chord with them and hope they buy a book before the suicide. If you can do that enough times you may be able to pay the rent and stop going to the food banks.

No matter how well you do you will eventually run out of gas. We all do. You must learn to save. If you can just make seventy that’s a good sign. By that time, if you have enough out there, successful or not you can lie and do little speaking tours. Try to avoid closets. That’s no good for you.