A week or so ago I was sitting in my agent’s office, signing some contracts. Since I infect everything I do with incompetence and laziness, we had some trouble getting things going in the right direction:
ME: Uh, was I supposed to sign this page?
AGENT: (peering through cloud of brimstone and smoke that swirls around her perpetually) No! <thunder rolls> Does it have your name next to it?
ME: Uh. . .no.
AGENT: Only sign the ones that do.
ME: Thanks. <Flips pages and signs several> Uh. . .it says here sign in blue ink. This is black.
AGENT: Lord, give me strength.
ME: Also, I’ve been signing a fake name. I don’t know why.
AGENT: What?!?
ME: And I was a little nervous. . .coming here. . .so I drank a whole. . .bottle of whiskey. . .
<JEFF PASSES OUT>
You’d think, after having several books published, having appeared on radio shows and on Con panels, after being interviewed and cashing all those advance checks, I’d feel like a professional. or at least an adult. The sad truth is, I don’t feel much different than I did a decade ago, when my biggest published credit was a comic book episode of Sliders (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I still usually feel like a kid, and a socially awkward one at that.
I don’t have business cards. Every time I go to some official event as a literary guest or something, everyone else has nice, professional-looking business cards to hand out and if I have anything it’s just some quickies I dashed off on the home printer. And that’s unusual; usually it’s just me stuttering and writing my email address on slips of paper.
The fact is, I still think of myself as a zinester who’s photocopying his latest issue on the company machine after hours, and writing mostly for himself. No matter how many people send me emails telling me they enjoyed the books, no matter how many books I actually publish, I still feel like I’m faking it in some way. The constant endrunkening is part of it, as is the pantslessness, the tendency towards gibberish, and my rare ability to make my own books sound boring when speaking about them off the cuff.
Oh yes, the pungent scent of incompetence is everywhere.
Except, of course, when I am actually writing. It’s always been the one time I feel absolutely competent: When I put two words together, they are meant to be. Writing the books has always been the easy part. Promoting and marketing–selling–them has always been hard. Which is, I suppose, how it should be. And socially awkward is why Jebus gave us booze, right?
The Jebus gave us a whole mess of things for social awkwardness. My personal favorite are farts and jokes relating to them. Maybe you should tie that in to your drunken-pantslessnes gig you have going somehow.
Have a large malt for Me …
Cheers!