Talking about writing again

I think if I ever become even minimally successful as a writer, I'll stop blogging and move on to a quarterly update or something like that. I guess because what speaks to me when I read other writers' blogs, especially the kinds of writers who only produce highly-anticipated hardcovers that go right to all the bestseller lists with no qualms or questions, is when they convey humility about the writing life--and not how loved they are, and how doted upon, and how much they deserve it.

That's not to say I think all of the above isn't just once a writer has met some success and wants to write about it, the Man Himself only knows they probably struggled as hard as the rest to get there and want to share their excitement and accomplishments with their friends, families and fans. It's just to say that I've always been more able to relate to writers (including those very successful writers, especially those writers, on remembering the early days) who talk about and admit to experiencing the things that have always resonated with me as a writer--the loneliness of living in your own world with a bunch of people who don't even exist, the feeling you may be insane for preferring to hang out with these people in place of the ones who actually do exist, the frustration of spending most of your time working at a job that will probably never pay you, the upset of reading a book that really sucks and knowing how well it's selling while every editor in New York just came back to say your book is the one that really sucks, the fear that you will die before you ever get there, the fear that you are actually a pretty shitty writer, the fear of hurting your friends and family if you write anything that even slightly resembles something they've said or done, the horror of thinking about your friend's uptight mother reading a raunchy sex scene you wrote...and then, the unthinkable, that when you finally do get published, your book will get nothing but one-star reviews and be described as the literary version of Gigli.
It's funny what you learn about being published once you actually get published. If you're like me, prior to it happening, you think your whole life will change once it actually happens. Then, if you're like me, you find out your life really doesn't change all that much except that you can tell people you had a book published. Even then, they usually think you mean that you paid a print-on-demand service to make your manuscript look like a book and you've got some copies for sale in your living room.

But, there are the upsides. I've made a few new friends. I've gotten to know what people other than my best friend think of what I wrote--good and bad, it's still interesting to see how total strangers react. Sometimes they get something out of it that I wasn't even trying to give them. Sometimes, they were hoping to get something out of it that was never even there.

Another upside is that now, when I attempt to get published again, I can say I've already been published and so, with editors I'll have a little credibility.

Now I just have to get back to writing books. Oh, yeah. Tell me how to do that again?