My Writing hobby and how much money I've made writing books

I started writing for fun wayyy back when I was in about 6th grade. I wrote a short 7-chapter looseleaf and scotch tape bundled book that was a Harry Potter rip off, and my main character was named "Ali Baba." It took place in Saudi Arabia. Someone in class read it and wrote on the front "A+++ I loved reading this. Reading was big back then.

Eventually I became disillusioned with the art of writing, and began to take it much less seriously as a focus in my life. For all of college and seven years post-college I didn't write anything. I studied math, music and wrote computer code professionally. By the end of it, I had taken nine years off and could barely string together a legible sentence. I laugh when I read Math professors who have attempted to include prose in their books. Of couse writing pure Math a science that thrives on simplicity. The simpler you make something complex, the easier it is to both explain and also to repurpose in terms of derived meaning and/or functionality. But a lot of these guys are scientific geniuses, who stumble when they attempt to describe mathematical concepts with prose. Aha! I laugh at their pathetic attempts. I jumped ship myself before I fully became one of them. Not that I could live up to their genius in science, but perhaps a dimwitted attempt by someone like myself to appease the science Gods would have truly put the theorhetical dagger into the body of my Writing hobby. This is how I pulled myself out of it all

As boring and cliche as it is, it seems the key to writing really is to journal. When journaling you're putting down thoughts that seem so easy to understand in your mind onto paper. That's all writing is. Just transcribing thoughts down, as per the rules of the craft.

Somewhere on this website I detail my favorite authors, but in case you're wondering I don't exclusively read those guys. I also read what I might refer to, in private, as authors who have produced pure "shite." Although I respect the hell out of the premise and cinematic version of the novel "Sphere" by Michael Crichton, it's pretty obvious to anyone with any reading skills let alone writing, that his quality with the pen is pretty poor. It's better than it presents itself as, I'll give him that, but Crichton falls into realms of craptacular text. He knows it himself. Yet, it is his work I read when "getting back into the game," as it were.

The other book that had a major impact on my reading was Alex Haley's "Autobiography of Malcolm X." It's a monster of a book and I read it while working as a USPS postal employee in the men's locker room. I can remember pummeling through the chapters as I waited to work the mail for several more hours, and then do it all over again the next day. A book I thought I'd never finish until one day it was finally over. At long last.

I kept reading and then landed upon my favorite guy, P.G. Wodehouse. In my opinion he has the best style and technique and I also enjoy his content of writing. Humor. It's been decided I am a humorist. Fun fact I also have read several David Sedaris novels and laughed harder than ever at his book that mentions a turtle and also his book that details his experiences in a sculpture course.

After nine years of journaling and reading I was ready. I pulled out a marble notebook and pulled my car into a local parking lot where milk is sold inside a building. I began to write about my experience playing in "The Handsome Men" though fictionalized the story to some degree. Midway through writing the third chapter I began to wonder just how much I should put into the book as it pertained to the reality. As I considered this I was approached by someone who made threatening gestures towards me, I guess thinking I was causing a disturbance in the milk lot. This guy seemed very upset that I was parked in my car, though I don't think he could tell I was writing. I was there for maybe an hour by then. I quickly pulled away and finished writing the book at home in more conservative terms. At first I'd smoke a cigar at the completion of each chapter. I did this for abour four chapters and then just wrote the rest of the book sans any cigar smoking. After a while I had finished the book, and it was exactly the same handwritten length as one of my favourites, S.E. Hinton's "Rumblefish." I ttyped it up and uploaded it to Amazon KDP. You can BUY IT HERE for a modest fee. See what I'm really thinking. What I really have to say about it all. In Handsome Death.

Money earned (as of 3/6/2025): $650.38