One of Those Guys

Jerry Seinfeld said that from a young age, he wanted to be a comedian.  He wanted to be "one of those guys."  He was obsessed with it.

I haven't followed a writing career nearly as obsessively as Seinfeld followed his passion; however, I do feel an intense desire to be "one of those guys," a writer.  And have felt it (off and on) since the age of about eighteen or nineteen.

I think I'm getting closer to achieving the goal of getting published in more than a few little poetry magazines.  I feel confident that my stories could make it into print, at least five or six of them if not a whole pack of them.

Today was difficult, however.  I spent about fifteen minutes (all the time I had for anything but my son, and related activities) revising an already much-revised story.  Yet the story feels completely half-baked.  It's one of the weakest stories of the bunch.

One of my chief criteria for a good story (two-thirds of Hollywood movies do not succeed at this) is, the main characters have to come alive.  I think this is where this story falls apart.  The main character is almost a caricature.  I have to add more details--rich, significant details that tell us exactly who this guy is.

Somehow, getting this one story right seems very important.  That's because most of the story works so damn well.  But the part that doesn't work pretty much kills the rest of it.

If I want to be "one of those guys," I have to cut out the bad stories, just get rid of them.  That much I know.