I've Got Balls

"You've got balls" is a phrase I've heard pretty much my whole life. But I'm reframing it a little to say that 'I've got balls'...as in balls in the air. And I suck at juggling. Or rather, sometimes I suck at juggling. Other times I'm a fucking juggling savant.

It allllll depends on the day, the hour, the minute.

Right now I've got so many balls in the air, you can't count them. Hell, I can't count them.

But there they are--oh look, that one's sparkly, I need to make sure and catch that one. Uh oh, that one looks heavy, but it's important, so better not drop that one. Whoa, that one's a bit bigger than the others, better watch it close! Ack! That one's tiny but it can't touch the ground today!

Every morning I juggle my balls with my morning coffee and nicotine. I juggle with one arm tied behind my back. I bounce 'em offa my knees, I'm so good. I should have skipped the writing career and gone straight for the circus. I look good in polka dots and big shoes.

Some days, the balls feel like knives and I'm not worried about dropping them, I'm terrified about dropping them. They are that sharp, that vital.

I wanted to write this morning, but I'm managing social media. No, not Farmville. And I'm blogging, obviously, to keep the website dynamic. And who knows who will want to read my thoughts once they fall in love with me, hmm?

An intrinsic part of being an author is how you promote yourself, and IF you promote yourself. I'm a far cry from the "Jennifer Weiner-ish" type of self-promotion (courtesy of Jonathan Franzen, bless his grumpy little heart), but I've got to do something.

In my more naive days, I believed that if you write something good, "they will come." Not so. Not even remotely so. But I also don't want to be a freaking gadfly. So what do I do? Well, my balls are subtle. I'm doing promotions on Twitter right now using my fictional psychologist Dr. Julian Wright (have you been to see his full-color ad yet? You'll love it!) I'm writing a fictional piece for the Twitter Fiction Festival coming up. Is it my best writing? My strongest? My most thought-provoking? No. Of course not.

It's bait.

What else can a writer do? Is it a bait n' switch? Maybe. You can't read about Dr. Julian Wright and get a feel for my novel, The Rub. But it gets someone curious, and maybe gets them talking. And maybe, eventually, that gets them reading.

Meanwhile, I've got my Tweet Deck running (think Twitter on methamphetamines), my Facebook author's page, my Twitter Fiction story on deck, and all of the other balls, personal balls, cascading around me in the air like a whirlwind of gadflies.

But sometimes, at night, when the day is done and I'm about to sleep, I can see and feel certain balls careening to the floor and bouncing away, out of my reach. That friend with whom I've promised to have coffee and whom I've cancelled on twice--bounce, bounce, bounce...connecting with my family, my siblings--bounce, bounce, bounce...working on my current novel--bounce, bounce, bounce...