Ewriting: Real Democracy.

Everybody is writing books these days.  Since the birth of E this and E thats, anyone, fool or philosopher with access to the "cloud", can commune with their muse and cobble together a string of words into sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters and books.  Democracy in action.

Look, I'm doing it right now. Tap, tap, tap. One-fingered on my magic little iPad. Nothing to it.

But writing might be the easiest part for some folks. The tough part is getting someone to read our crap. I mean, our material.

Last Sunday I put the subject before my old pal, Eddie Salinski (celebrated writer and welder), over a brunch of KFC and Hostess Snowballs. 

Munching on a moist drumstick, Eddie lifted his eyes toward the popcorn ceiling of my living room, obviously lost in thought.

“Here’s how I see it,” he said finally, flipping a bone into the near-empty KFC cardboard bucket. “Hell, I’ve been lucky. My stuff sells like rice in China, even though I don’t lift a finger to help things along. Outside of talking to this shit-eaten agent of mine once in a while, I just lay back and rake in the dinero. 

“There’s a huge amount of luck involved and I’ve had way more than my share.  But I’ve never cottoned to this E business. I still do all my writing on my clapped-out Olympia portable—missing e’s ‘n all. That kind of keeps me in touch with the real world, you see. I mean, I actually still buy stuff like ribbon, white-out and cheap paper.

“Funny thing though, you can’t always tell whether your luck is getting better or worse ahead of time. Seems there’s always some risk involved.”  Eddie paused to take a deep swig from his warm Pepsi.  His adam’s apple pistoned up and down as he chugged the soda.

“I remember an old friend of mine, Harry Something-or-other.  He got into some kind of trouble because of a book he had written describing the sex life of a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Not the smartest thing in the world to write about. Anyway, he ended up being tossed into the Joint for a few years and had to share a cell with a guy name Forrest L Brucknezz.

“Now this Brucknezz character was a bad actor of the very first order. Big guy, weighed about 300 pounds, almost seven feet, arms like full-grown Ash trees.  In fact, he was behind bars for molesting not one but three Army Delta Squad Rangers. Yes, he was bad. Real bad. And here was poor old Harry Something-or-other sharing a cell with this giant pervert.

“Well, to make a long story short, by the time Harry won his freedom, you could park a B17 bomber in his rectum and still have room for a small Ford pickup.”

Eddie winced and grabbed another drumstick.

“What ever happened to this Harry guy?” I asked.

"Last I heard he was writing again. Earns extra bucks leasing his rear end for public storage.  Brucknezz finally got out of the pokey, too.”

“And?”

“Drifted into politics. Ran for congress and won. I hear he’s on the House Ethics Committee now.”

“Interesting story, well told,” I said. “But I don’t see the connection with E-writing trends.”

“E-what?”

“E-writing trends. That’s what we were talking about.”

“Who gives a damn,” he said, reaching into the bucket again.  “Jeez, this stuff hits the spot, don’t it?”