I'm not one of those people who always wanted to be a writer. As a child, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. However, I lost interest in baseball once I discovered girls, taking me from one field where I wasn't major league material to another.

I loved reading, but theoretically knowledgeable people — teachers and guidance counselors — kept telling me that writing books wasn't much more lucrative than reading them. So, if pressed, I started telling them I wanted to be a journalist. Which was — theoretically, again — a real job. As you can probably tell from reading these columns, I never wanted to be a journalist.

I did try journalism grad school. I dropped out in the first quarter, after covering a demonstration where seven American Nazis drew a crowd of approximately every journalist on earth. The journalists put the Nazis on the front page of four major metropolitan newspapers and made them the lead on every Bay Area news show for three days. Oh boy, just two years of grad school and I too could become a PR hack for the Fourth Reich. No, thanks.

Still, I did have a perfectly good electric typewriter. So, lacking any marketable skills, I became a writer.

I liked being a writer. It sounds so much better than simply telling people you're unemployed, even if the money is about the same. Unfortunately, I didn't much like writing. Then, I read in Playboy (see, I did like reading) that Gore Vidal wrote four hours a day.

If it was good enough for Gore Vidal, it was good enough for me. Working four hours a day sounded wonderful. It was agony. I became a clock-watcher. Literally, keeping track of every minute I spent writing. Seven minutes here, five minutes there, until it added up to four hours and I could knock off until the next day. Then, I'd go through the same wretched process again. Writing was hell.

Another problem was that electric typewriter. I had my own typing system: I just went faster and faster until I made a mistake. That meant bottle after bottle of White-Out for corrections, and so I could rewrite without having to retype the entire page. The White-Out was so thick on some pages that you couldn't bend the paper.

Plus, the more White-Out I used, the more stoned I got from the fumes. And the more stoned I got, the more mistakes I made. Which meant more White-Out and ... you get the idea. The manuscript may have been crunchy, but since I was writing a fantasy novel, I could never figure out if my mental condition helped or hurt the book. White-Out fumes do not make figuring out easier.

According to Google, which knows everything, whiffing White-Out "is extremely dangerous ... Even a single, concentrated inhalation can trigger sudden sniffing death." If you're wondering, I didn't die. But remembering those days always makes me think of Van Gogh, painting from dawn to dusk. His dedication exposing him to toxic lead paint. His absinthe habit poisoning his brain with a dangerous neurotoxin. My four hours a day weren't exactly dawn to dusk, and I preferred Dos Equis to absinthe. Still, years later, a massive brain tumor did develop on my less-than-massive brain. So I can claim, I suppose, that both Van Gogh and I suffered for what — in his case at least — was art.

Maybe it was the invention of the personal computer, allowing me to rewrite without risking death or additional brain damage. Or maybe it was that tumor. But, somehow, at some point, something changed. Because nowadays, I write because there's nothing I'd rather do. It's my job and my hobby, and I love it. And the hours sail by. I don't work dawn to dusk even on the shortest days of the year. I'm nowhere near as diligent as Van Gogh. And — if you're going to nitpick — nowhere near as talented. But I know how lucky I am to love what I do.

Plus, I sleep so much better, not having to worry about the IRS questioning a $3,000.00 White-Out deduction.

Check out Barry Maher's dark humor supernatural thriller, "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon on Amazon. Sign up for his Substack at www.barrymaher.com.

To find out more about Barry Maher and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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