The Life Cycle Of A Failed Writer
Age 0 : Be born softly. With a physical or mental anomaly that will later separate you from your peer group.
Age 0 – 5 : Develop, at an early age, an acumen for words. Be referred to as “sensitive” before knowing the meaning of the word.
Age 6 – 13 : Go to school. Get picked on. Think it’s weird that all anyone cares about is sports and boys (or girls).
Age 15 – 22 : Start to care, almost exclusively, about boys, or girls, but either way only care about a relationship with them. Have your heart severely crushed and or broken, preferably both. Read a number of books. Plath and Austen and Nin. Vonnegut and Kerouac and Dick. Have a good number of traumatic and crystalline experiences: with nature, if becoming a failed poet – with the heart, if becoming a failed writer of longer-form prose. Go to college. Have sexual partners and drink alcohol and do drugs. Pick a major which will preclude you from tangible monetary success in life. Write a few short stories about relationships going bad. Apply to graduate school because there are no jobs for which your major has prepared you.
Age 22 – 27 : Fail to get into graduate school. Or get into graduate school it doesn’t matter, it won’t make you a better writer. If lucky, work for a publication or a marketing firm or a place where you blog. Write as much as you will in your entire life. Like a novel or a series of stories or poems. Submit them to places. Get rejected.
Age 27- 30 : Finish your novel or series of stories or poems. Just call it finished. Have one of one your friends read it. Hide the disappointment when they don’t have the heart to tell it wasn’t any good. Begin to let dreams fade. Teach writing in a workshop or in a small group to people with better skin and hair and more talent than you ever had.
Age Around 30 : Start to forget about writing. Meet a man or woman. Write only when you have nothing else to do. Be reminded, for the last time, there is no money in writing, at least not in your brand. Hopefully get a job in marketing. Non-profit work if available. Call this your career.
Age Around 30 – 40 : Have children. Start a family. Have little to no time to write. Live without trying to catalog your life.
Age 40 – 100 : Write for a few days every year or so. Die at some point.