My Argument for Cloning

Writing is a solitary endeavor, at least for me. I spend hours alone in my office, at my computer, creating worlds that don’t exist for people who aren’t real.  I challenge my characters, put roadblocks in their way, and fill their world with conflict and struggle.  It’s a monumental undertaking, and takes more time, effort, and brain-wrangling than most people understand or would be willing to undertake.  Such is my fate.  I can’t help it.  I’m a writer.

Gone are the days where a publisher promotes and publicizes an author (unless you’re one of the biggies, and even the biggies didn’t start out that way). A potential publisher wants to know all about you before you’re published, and they want you to have lots of followers (Pied Piper, anyone?).  So, while you’re pounding away at your keyboard, you’re also expected to be blogging, tweeting, maintaining your internet presence, and who knows what else.  I attend writer’s conferences where it’s all laid out in front of me.  My eyes glaze over and the miniscule section of my brain that knows anything about technology shuts down.

“How do any of you get any writing done?” I wonder. Perhaps they don’t need to work full-time like I do.  Perhaps they’re blessed like me in that I have a fantastically talented daughter who maintains my website www.annehawkinson.com (shameless plug inserted) for me.  Without her, I’d have no internet presence and in today’s world, if you don’t have one, you really don’t exist.

Which brings me to my argument for cloning. If there were more than one of me (some would say that one of me is one too many), I could assign myself all the other jobs that need doing so that I could focus on my writing, such as:  laundry, housework, full-time job, yard maintenance, shopping for clothes (shopping for anything, really), errand-running, and car maintenance.

Then I need another me for the tweeting, blogging, and website maintenance (my daughter, dedicated as she is, has better things to do). I need someone to market me so that I can spend whatever spare time I can find getting my story written.  The challenging part of this extra me is that I still know little-to-nothing about technology or how it all works, and to be honest, I really don’t want to know.  I just want to be out there somewhere so this story I’m working so hard on will have a fighting chance.  That’s all.

Image credit: Pixabay