A Grasshopper Inbetweenie for January 27, 2023

Say wha….?

Last week I invented the first Inbetweenie, a way to get really random thoughts into my exploding Grasshopper Universe. The Hopperverse, if you will (I promise to never use that phrase again. Though it has a ring to it…). Actually, it’s just a way for me to potentially annoy my subscribers who may have thought they were getting insights into being a writer.

Right now, with the sound off, there is a PBS documentary on my tv about the use of amphetamines by the US military during WWII. Well, why not? We were fighting for the future of civilization, after all. I have to admit that as a stoner dude back in the seventies, I tried this stuff.

It still makes me shudder to think about how awful it was, a few moments of exaltation followed by hours of feeling like total crap. 

There have been writers who used substances to enhance their creativity, sort of. As I write this, I am drinking a lovely, cold vodka martini (Goose up, twist, splash of vermouth). But I have no illusions about its effect on my writing. 

However, I get the use of methamphetamine by pilots in a world war. Staying awake meant staying alive. And I have no doubt military medics across the wars of the world are doling out versions of the stuff daily. I can imagine Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary army is full of speedfreaks.

They recruited 30,000 conscripts from Russian prisons with the promise of freedom if they survived the Ukraine Special Military Operation. Rumors have the survival rate at 10%. That’s 27,000 men put into a death grinder. 

So, what does this have to do with writing or being a writer? Well, first, it’s a story, a powerful and disturbing one. Second, in my case, I write about this conflict and its effect within Russia, but I’m no journalist, by choice. I am an observer.

Now I have learned that they spiked the coffee in WWII with speed. Zowie. You learn something new everyday and it always reinforces my faith in mankind. Well, not really.

But, as a writer, all of this goes into the bucket, and any of it might suddenly prove useful in an unexpected way. And that is important because if your writing is getting that dull, boring look, you probably need to fill the bucket with some real stuff.

It’s the stuff dreams are made of.

(!)

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If you actually read my stuff, and it’s ok if you don’t, you have been barraged lately with my pitches about upgrading to paid. It has been a new thing, an experiment, and I never had any expectations for it. And as you see that stuff, bear in mind that I spent 20 years of my life in marketing, so wearing that hat comes easily. Honestly, I assumed last year when I started writing The Grasshopper, that I might find 100 free subscribers, and that was fine.

But I did find that there were more people interested in the writing life and my subscriber list grows daily, which is fantastic. If you try to make a living as a writer, as I have tried to do with varying degrees of success, then you have both the paid stuff, and if you’re sane, your own stuff.

When those two things coincide, you’ve hit the writing jackpot, which I define as having your voice and getting paid and read. The Grasshopper has been a thing I could completely define without adult supervision. It has never been about money, but as I’ve said many times here, writers in our society should get paid.

But getting paid here was never a priority. I always intended to have a paid level, but I’ve had no illusions about this being a meaningful financial contributor to my writing income. So, any reader that puts a little money on the line is a pure gift. 

So, thanks again for reading, and writing! 

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688 words. 

I always leave a word count in these pieces. It’s a good metric to track. I didn’t really get traction with my first novel until I started tracking my daily word count (for that book it was 600/day), and used that tracking to keep me at it every day.

Sit down, write 600 words without trying too hard, every day, and then one day you realize you have a book. And that is an amazing feeling.

Martin