This is the boring part - May 13, 2008

This is the boring part.

For you, not for me. I'm spending a lot of time writing. Or thinking about writing. Or getting drunk and talking about writing. I'm covered with ideas, they spill out all over my desk and on to the floor and even as I try to write them all down so I can come back to them later, I lose more than I save.

But for you, there's nothing new to see here. Move along. It's just a stale entry that you read yesterday or the day before, or maybe the day before that.

I went out with my cousin tonight. She's a lawyer. She's got a house and a great husband and a dog. And at the end of the night she paid our tab, gave me a hug and headed home.

Our tab was nothing outrageous and I'm pretty sure for her it was an afterthought. I found myself thinking "man she's lucky, having money to spend like that."

But it's not luck. She put in the work. She did well in college and went to law school. She works hard at a job she's good at. She wasn't born a lawyer, she's just reaping the rewards of everything she's done up until this point. It has nothing to do with luck.

People tell me that I'm lucky to have a site under the Rudius banner. Or that I'm lucky have a job with Rudius Media. And if I could talk about the project I'm currently working on, people would tell me that I'm lucky to have that.

Lucky is being born with a trust fund or an eleven-inch cock. Lucky is an accident of genetics. Lucky, most of the time, is a detriment. People who are lucky rarely understand what they have until it's gone and then it's too late. Luck is bitterness waiting to happen. Luck is hubris. Luck is all the people who won the lottery only to go broke. Despite what they'll tell you on homicide shows, sometimes it's actually better to be good.

And that's why this is the boring part. Because right now I'm putting in the work and the work isn't sexy or glamorous or exciting. In fact you can't even see the work. The work is spending five hours on a four-page scene which takes minutes to read. The work is doing a ton of research so that the reader never gets pulled out of the narrative. The work is writing yet another revision, which means trashing a lot of work that came before it. Let's face it. The work sucks.

It's the payout that's cool. It's connecting with the reader and knowing that they appreciate what you've done that's sexy. But I wasn't born with a trust fund or a pornstar dick. I've got to put in the work and that means that this is going to be boring for a while.

For you though, not for me.

Posted by Ben Corman at 9:42 PM

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You talked to Tucker? You missed some news.

Posted by: Ryan Holiday at May 13, 2008 10:33 PM

This post reminded me of an article I read within the last month - which unfortunately seems to only exist in my memory, as extensive Googling can't pick it up.

The article described a world-renowned musician at a dinner party. A woman introduced herself, and told him that she'd "give anything to play like him". He immediately responded: "no, you wouldn't". She wouldn't devote thousands of hours of practice and social isolation to master the craft that he had. People want the quick fix; they don't want to put in the hard yards.

I hear that L word thrown around a lot, too. Sometimes at me, for the small achievements I've made and positions I've landed. But like you said, it's not luck. Luck is very rarely the reason why intelligent people end up in enviable - 'lucky' - positions.

Thanks for reminding me of this point, Ben.

Posted by: Andrew McMillen at May 14, 2008 01:42 AM

Hey, I really liked this post. It's a perpetually tough task to keep on doing the drudgework, but at the end of the day (or the project), when other people (or even yourself) can proudly state their satisfaction with the final project, it really does make it all worthwhile.

I remember giving my sincere and awkward compliments to one of my own personal heroes after a gig he had, and even the genius and 'luckily' gifted individual that he was, he literally told me that small things like my compliments made all his ventures worthwhile. Nice to know.

Posted by: Brett Crudgington at May 18, 2008 05:41 PM