It has come to my attention that I lack attention in attending to other people's attention.XP What I mean is, I suppose I'm devoid of that emotional radar that picks up other people's feelings. Their feelings being: they hate me.

Hundred percent the time I don't give a fart what other people think. What The President thinks. What my mother thinks. What space aliens hijacking the planet's satellite internet lines to read my stupid blog think.

I don't give a shit.

But sometimes I do mind what people think about me. (Yes, I am human, not a robot.XP) This is when I market--albeit whore--myself to some company or organization. I always remind myself to make an impression but that I just forget. Always ending up too comfortable with myself in any situation. Being me. Being loud. Obnoxious. Venomously offensive. And during times I'm not, protected with a force field of snobbery.

I try my best to be nice and approachable and amicable and other suchlike buggerific traits of people-fucking-pleasers. But I end up bored and boring I'd rather go home and read a book. Such times happen when I join organizations of predominantly "sane" people. The people who behave like how people should. People who obey the rules. Memorize pointless little details about the organization's constitution when told. Enumerate its officers and members during the interview. (A purposeless endeavor, I might add.) Meek, gentle, submissive, compliant. The perfect recipe for the betterment of any society.

I tried.

It didn't work out.

Majority of the members didn't like me. And by majority I don't mean all. Maybe I had an attitude. Maybe I was a snob. They didn't elaborate. But I am among the few applicants who write with a grain of sense. (Alright! Alright! I admit it! I'm talking about the writers club.XP No point concealing it now, is there?)

It gets me thinking: what does my attitude have to do with my productivity? Is getting in based on how servile and fawning we are to the members? Or is it based on how we write and how we attack each other's manuscripts with a red pen?

Final verdict is, you get in for pleasing the members, not for the stuff you write.

What makes a carpenter a carpenter is not the stinky scruffy clothes he wears or the permanent cigarette clipped in between his lips. What makes a carpenter a carpenter is his creativity and imagination and talent embodied in a piece of wood.

But here, they judge you for your personality, not your work. (Isn't that a bit tad judgmental?) It's a power and hierarchy thing. The same shit that governs pretty much everything in the real world.

I don't see why I should even join. I've been prolly brainwashed by the impressive portfolio this org has made. The literary giants it gave birth to. The laudatory press releases. Its popularity and notoriety.

I gave in to all of them.

I bought what it connotes, not what it really is, right now. Why it deserves all that reputation, I have no idea. Pretty much my entire stay in the org was uneventful. BLAH. Dead as a log. What merely kept me going were my fellow neurotic applicants. To put, without the organization's name, it's basically no different from the others.

WC > Others

Oh, please. Show don't tell.

I can't help comparing writers club to UP Mountaineers. At UPM, the members teach you the ropes to pass the skills test come induction. They teach you how to survive in harsh environments with nothing but your gelatinous brain to rely on. At writers club, they don't teach you anything. How you should write properly or how you should critique, everybody's a poor vulnerable idiot on his or her own. Everybody doesn't know anything until you produce a manuscript that exposes the real incompetent idiot you truly are inside. Not everybody had "the calling" to be a writer. It was evident on paper. Or so I thought.

Two thousand years ago, Homer and Virgil simply were writers who were born writers, lived as writers, and died as writers. Two thousand years later, a writer is made, not born.

Back then amateur writers who tirelessly pursued their vision but failed were called "unfortunate". Now they're what we call "losers". They're regarded as the pimple on society's ass and they'll never amount to anything. Ancient people called such an unfortunate situation a "tragedy". Like how a beggar is destined to be a beggar because the gods said so. As carved in stone. Directed by fate. A beggar is a beggar not because he's a pessimistic unproductive dunderhead living off other people's money. Now tragedy has transformed into something astronomically different. We call it "failure".

One pseudophilosopher says, "Every single thing that happens to you right now, you deserve it. All of it." Or something with the same ring to it.

It's comforting to have someone else to blame for your flukes in life back then. People bitched at the gods momentarily then moved on with their lives. Now I have no invisible scapegoat for my dilemma. It's just either I am a loser or the org's system sucks.

I'm on probationary period because of this issue, that the majority didn't approve of my "interaction with the members".

All I'd have to say is: Please enlighten me.

But really: They don't need to explain anything. It's too obvious to even just fingerpoint.

Needless to say I'm not sold into their pointless grading system for membership. I know I'm just on probie, not exactly rejected, mind. But it's clear and simple as morning sunshine. It's bizarrely illogical and politically biased. In other words, it's royally screwed.

Tell me my mistakes or I'll point out yours.

At the end of the day any established writer will tell you that you don't need them orgs to train yourself. Orgs are for spineless wussies who need a pickle shoved up their ass. (Though I'm not saying all. UPM exempted.XD) If you want to be a writer what you really need is an excellent editor.XD

Centuries ago, writers used quills to scratch their ideas on parchment. They squinted before candlelight at night and grew old blind. They didn't have fancy organizations and fancy awards and fancy national writers workshops. They didn't have the luxury of computers. Internet then was unimaginable, unthinkable, impossible. They didn't have Google, Wikipedia, Visual Thesaurus, or Hyperdictionaries. In the 50's, Ray Bradbury wrote his novel Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter at the basement of UCLA library at $0.20/hour totaling to $9.50.

To get to the fucking point, if 95% of all writers in history did it the hard way, why can't you?

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