Yes, God. So welcome to

to Plodcast episode 52 and if you learn these things when you're a little child,

there are 52 weeks in a year,

which means that we've been doing the

podcast for one year as of this episode.

So when you're listening to this one you've been listening to a

years worth so welcome thanks for thanks for accompanying me thanks for coming

along thanks for listening very. So I want to talk a little bit this

podcast about the writing life, about the writing life.

Mark Twain once defined a classic as a book that everyone wanted to have read, but nobody wanted to read.

There's a similar setup with regard to writing. Many people want to have been a writer, but they don't want to actually write they want the glory that comes from having been a

writer having gotten something published or gotten something published in a

magazine or gotten a book published.

But they don't want to submit themselves to the arduous process of actually sitting down to write.

They would like the contract from a big New York publisher to sort of fall out of the sky on them.

And then if they are blandished with enough incentives then they will then

they will sit down to to crank out the book they but they need to be

incentivized first. Well that's not the way it works. It's the

same way with writing as with the blues. You've got to pay your dues. And paying your dues has a number of layers.

So if you want to be a writer as I most certainly did I wanted to I remember back in

grade school wanting to make books. I grew up in a bookish family. I grew up where books were around,

but it wasn't just enough for me to have books around that I could read.

...