Ryan, here’s whatcha win: $150 smackers. You can get that in a VISA gift card, an Amazon.com e-certificate or pesos (dude, please don’t pick pesos). I was toiling with an Apple gift card and then realized some people hate Apple or (like me) have all the Apple product they need. And some people never use Amazon.com. But EVERYONE uses CASH! Fuckin’ A.

So yeah – The Redhead thanks you for your story and all who shared their stories in my latest mystery contest. Ryan – drop me a line on my contact form and you can tell me how you wish to be rewarded.

[puts hands in the air in a "raise the roof" fashion] Can I get a whoop whoop? I’m off to live my passion!

Now, go practice living out loud…

I am three hours from out the door to Ouray, Colorado for my annual girl’s trip to the Betty Ice Ball and I haven’t packed. There is the remnant of a zit the size of the Dominican Republic on my right cheek and I’m still sitting in my workout clothes, mildly soggy with sweat (ew). I horked a bowl of hot cereal, cleaned-up Small Dog’s pee present, took out the trash and recycling and am currently washing the dog beds because they smell like 6 shades of canine ass.

But my Bitch Slap this week? It’s a thank you.

I’m a paid columnist for ToyWithMe and put out a column each Thursday called Dear Redhead. Paul and Sandy are incredible to have as clients and they’ve always let me feel my way and talk about what I want. For the past two weeks, though, we’ve tried something different: letting me rant. It’s a talent (my mother will substantiate), but I had to figure out HOW to rant for their readership…and mine.

When people hire you to write an online column, they’re bringing you on board for your voice, style and existing audience. My @RedheadWriting audience is a delightful mixture of local Denver flavor, snark and professional insights. My @DearRedhead following developed into a sex kitten with NSFW content. Fuck – how did I bring the two worlds together?

We chatted, we strategized. We needed to change the format, but—to what? I went to the mat and said: let me try something. Please. And they did. The tactic? My brand of purpose-driven snark coupled with current events – shit that incensed, inspired and or/infuriated me. I sat down and…I wrote.

And I got a Bitch Slap: be who you are and do what it is you do best.

Traffic on my Dear Redhead column exploded, my followers exploded on both Twitter accounts, Facebook Fans of Redhead Writing upped almost 100 in a week (and still rolling) and…I’m happy. And ToyWithMe.com is happy. And my readers – well, they’re happy. The first column on Proposition 8 was picked-up by multiple blogs across the web and this week’s on the Superbowl/Tim Tebow/Anti-Abortion snafu is rolling in comments and hella Retweet action even a day later. Shelly Kramer even gave me a shout out in her piece today on the Superbowl advertising issue.

I went back to what it is that I do best and got a little smackdown that reminded me why I ever did it in the first place.

Who you are is precious, whether you’re a fucking idiot or a flaming queen…staunch conservative or blazing liberal…helicopter pilot or train conductor. Embrace YOU and stop leaving YOU behind. If people want to be in your life, hire you…stand next to your fire…bring them into your realm on YOUR terms. And listen to the people in your life who are telling you that perhaps you’re straying from YOU. Take a moment, reel it in and get back to the basics. It all begins with you.

I write for a living, yet it still never ceases to astonish me that people read what I write. People I’ve never MET read what I write. It’s like – OMG….SERIOUSLY? Tell someone that you appreciate what they do today…appreciate who they are and what they bring to the table. We need those people – and they need us. Symbiosis…ah. The most delicious sting of a Bitch Slap.

Seriously. Thank you.

Suffocated. I’m sitting in a bookstore and I’m suffocated. The high ceilings and plush chair offer no solace as I sit here and think:

Every one of these books represents someone who could write.

Or just fucking lucky to find a publisher.

The words, the books are towering over me and piling on top of me and I can’t breathe, but somehow I can type and I know this is going to end up on my blog.

It’s a rough place to be as a writer when you have ideas piled-up on the shelf, yet not one begs to be taken down and dusted off. Used. In a filthy, self-satisfying way that only writers enjoy. We grope them, our ideas. They are highly malleable and when primed, plead with us to mold and caress them into something … finished.

I overuse ellipses, placing them where my brain stalls. My fingers rarely stop when I sit down to write and those three little dots are visual expressions of my brain’s stutters. Welcome to my brain and all that is (as I recently described) the mental equivalent of Speedy Gonzales on meth. I find it staggering that I can drone on about not being able to write. Sickly ironic. I also despise it when people misuse the word “irony.” Here’s a link for you to use the next time you want to describe something as ironic.

Circling at 24,000 feet is where this writer’s life is at as of late. If I were a jetliner, I’d have long since run out of fuel and crashed into mid-American suburbia (or perhaps mid-Italian…I’ve always wanted to see Italy). As a human, however, the power of the mind to stall indefinitely is inconceivable. I still can’t type or say that word without a Princess Bride-ish lisp.

Conversations, they come. We dance with our words and stir our coffee, creating our own little escapes each time we clasp our mugs or take a sip. Those are our ways of saying I’m done talking … Your turn … I really want to leave … This guy is an asshole and I can’t say anything because I have a full cup of coffee. Why is it I can crack corn with whomever throws verbal discourse in my direction yet I can’t get a single festering idea to ooze onto my page? I have left the house, I have no distractions. None except the woman who just came and moved the faded burgundy Victorian-style armchair clear across the bookstore and the Weeble-ish man wobbling around the Science Fiction section directly across from me sporting a … Members Only jacket. Good Christ.

I could take Weeble Man and hypothesize that his name is Rick. His last name is likely overly generic like his beige jacket, beige plaid shirt and beige pants. (Yes, they’re beige) I also adore parenthetical notations. I use them as my own rendition of Shakespearean asides, though Will’s got a much larger subscriber to his RSS feed.

Rick is a tech guy and manages IT for a mid-sized corporation. He works from 9 to 6 and takes an hour for lunch. He likes Chipotle and always eats the entire burrito, evidenced by the heft that overlaps the front of his overburdened waistband. On the first and fifteenth of each month, Rick logs into his Wamu (becoming Chase) account and verified that his direct deposit has, indeed, appeared. Unmarried and uninterested in women, he would rather dream of imaginary robot princesses who come to discover they have feelings and fall desperately in love with their human creator. Books pile Rick’s bedside table and empty Mountain Dew cans line the top of the desk at his home office. He does not have a phone line and uses VOIP and has a nine-year-old cat named Ford. Not after the automaker, mind you, but Lita. The highlight of Rick’s day is viewing new videos on CollegeHumor.com and he prefers the ones with scantily-clad coeds. Subject matter? Unimportant. Dressed is better than undressed but he likes them when they’re in cotton underthings most of all. He eats three Luna Bars a day, but secretly. People think they’re for chicks but he really likes the Lemon Zest flavor. They go well with Mountain Dew, accounting for the pile of wrappers that form a foil moat in front of his desk’s soda can fortress.

But Rick does me no good. He doesn’t serve anything I’m working on or have in my cache. I could build Rick out six ways till Sunday and have him in a quandary over his love for Ford and his pent-up need to torture stray cats in the alleyway behind his house with the light saber replica he bought at the Star Trek convention (yeah, it’s Star Wars but have you seen the shit people buy at Star Trek conventions?), but it would do fuckall for my attempts to put together this book idea that’s bitch slapping my ego at present.

If writing were easy, more people would be good at it. Face it: many people do it and most suck. You might think I suck. Fine. I suck, point conceded. Now fuck off. For those of you who stay, congrats on making it this far reading my musings on why I cannot write. Another damn ironic moment. But back to “easy.” It’s not easy. Writing is more than words on a page and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably a shitty writer. I’ve got a lot left to learn but that, I know. The goal is always to tap. Tap into your reader’s mind and life and either peacefully coexist with what they love and revere or shake them so goddamn hard that they’re left reeling. Anything in between is unadulterated failure.

Afraid to fail yet more afraid to begin, I think. It’s easier to ponder why I cannot (will not?) give myself a good, hard what the fuck? than it is to jump. Upside? I’ve got a blog for Friday. Downside? I can’t get Rick and his beigeness out of my head.

Like this shit? Subscribe to my RSS feed. Publishers like to see that people already dig your shit because they’re inherently lazy and have no idea how to market flake food to fish. They just want to know who’s really gonna buy your book if they go out on a limb and print it after flipping you a $2500 advance that barely covers a writer’s rent for two months. But I digress… << ellipsis