Thursday! 3-1: A Couple Things Didn't Happen To Me This Week.

V3, I1

Welcome to Thursday!, The Third Year.

Normally, in a television series, this is the year we drive forward with gripping drama and clever comedy to nail one more year because if we can get three years done, we can be syndicated, and that’s where the money is. Reruns.

You know where else the money is? Powerball. I didn’t win the 2 billion dollars. That award apparently belongs to someone in Southern California, who will very soon receive a check for roughly $4.17, after various taxes and fees. I bought a ticket or three over the past couple weeks. Nothing extravagant, mind you, but I did get into the game a little bit.

I also didn’t win any elections on Tuesday night¹. Of course, I didn’t expect to win an election since I didn’t register to be a candidate for any office nor did I run any kind of campaign. Generally, you need to do those two things to get elected².

So those are the two things that didn’t happen to me this week. A number of other things also didn’t happen to me, but let’s not get into those things right now, since we only have a little bit of time and I want to bring this whole rambling mess around to something at least slightly relevant to your line and mine. Let me stick with those two things — Powerball and winning and election — for now. Maybe later we’ll get into all the other stuff that didn’t happen³.

Okay. You know the biggest reason I didn’t win Powerball? Odds.

Turns out roughly a bazillion people who weren’t me bought Powerball tickets and each one of those tickets had just as large a chance of winning as mine. The more tickets got bought, the more my odds of winning shrank. In the end, I had a greater chance of getting hit with a giant meatball hurled from a trebuchet 50 miles away than I did of winning the jackpot⁴. Still, the person who did win bought a ticket with the same odds of winning as much ticket. Why did they win and I didn’t? Luck. Fortune. Chance. God didn’t want me to win for His own reasons. Call it what you like⁵, but I had no control over whether my numbers hit or not. In fact, I only controlled one part of the whole events — buying the ticket.

That’s how success works in an artistic endeavor. You don’t control whether you “hit” or not. You don’t control who likes your story, your poem, or your painting. You can try to game the system a little bit — put you work in front of people who might be more inclined to like the sort of thing you do — but you don’t control their reactions. Let me give you a little example. I sent out two “hiatus” newsletters the past two weeks. The first was a story and the second was a poem. The “open rate” for the story was just a little over 50 percent, which means that roughly half of everyone who got it, read it. For the poem, that number was 75% — three out of four.

Do I know why more of you read my poem than my story? Heck, no. Maybe y’all like poetry more than short stories. Maybe y’all got busy two weeks ago and missed the e-mail. Maybe stuff just happened and you forgot. Who knows? I sure as heck don’t. No one does! That’s just how art goes. You make the best thing you can make, you launch it into the big, wide world, and you pray for…luck. Fortune. God’s smile. Maybe it works out. Maybe people see it and love it. Maybe a couple people with more reach than usual see it and spread it around. Maybe it makes someone’s “hot list” somewhere. Maybe an agent sees it and writes you a note. Maybe…a miracle. It happens.

[Maybe you join my small but incredibly cool group of patrons. At $2, $5, or $20 a month you can do a heck of a lot to help me become a full-time writer and poet and excellent newsletter guy!]

The thing is, the luck won’t happen, though, if you don’t put your work out there. I didn’t win the Powerball, but at least I played. As the saying goes, you can’t win the game if you don’t play the game. I only had a chance of winning because I bought a ticket. The reason so many of you wonderful folks could read my cool little vampire house poem is because I gave you the chance. It’s going to work that was for you too, my creative friends. The only way anyone can even have a chance to discover you is if your work is out there to be discovered.

Now, let’s look at that in terms of elections, which are not up to chance⁶. You can't win an election in which you don't run⁷. If you want to win, you have to play. That's just how it is and no amount of wishing and hopping and dreaming will change that. The same goes for your art. You can't get a book deal if you don't send your manucript to publishing houses. Your poetry won't land in cool magazines and anthologies if it sits only in your notebook or on your web site. If you want the job of "published author", you need to publish. Get it done. Figure it out. Shove the fear back into its dank pit and lead with your heart...and your art. You might lose. You might not get noticed. You might get rejected.

Or you might not.

Or you might win.

Or you might get an audience who loves what you do and clamors for more.

Or you might just get the full-time writer job you’ve dreamed of.

You have to play. You have to try. You have to give your art a chance to “hit”.

Because for all the reasons it might not, there is one very simple truth. It might.

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What I Wrote This Week

I wrote a couple or three election-related poems yesterday while perusing the headlines. One of them has a typo I didn’t notice until just now. I let it remain because I think it works quite nicely.

1. Though I’m writing this on Tuesday night before all the votes have been tabulated, discovered in boxes behind various snack machines, and on the back seats of cars belonging to relatives of certain political appointees. It’s possible I might have won a race I didn’t even know I entered, thanks to a write-in vote.

2. Though not always. A friend of mine, a few years ago, wrote in her own name for a local office and, believe it or not, won. She served with dignity, honor, and a tiny bit of bafflement.

3. For instance, I didn’t wake up as a giant bug. I do check that every morning in the mirror because you never know. That Kafka dude is sneaky.

4. Please don’t check the odds on that. I’m confident I’m right, but I didn’t do the math. I’m a writer and poet, not a statistician.

5. I prefer the last one, honestly.

6. In theory.

7. My friend’s case excepted.