Living Comment-Free Next to a Bear I was just looking at other people's blogs and all the interesting comments that get attached to each post. I suppose "interesting" is a bad word to use as I find many of them inane and just pointless.
When I started this blog a few days ago, I decided against entertaining comments. I have seen too many creative people eaten alive by trying to interface a bit too much with their readers. I once read the blog of a writer that I enjoy (the writer, not the blog) and it seemed like he was having such a time in the give-and-take of corresponding that he didn't have time to actually write books anymore. He was busy answering endless questions about what his favorite food was and describing his writing process over and over again. All this chatter just seemed to be hero worship and buzzing static, which I could never personally manage to work with or even alongside.
I long for the experience of writers from a hundred years ago. You write a book. It gets published. You write and publish a few more books. You made a good deal of money. You buy a nice little retreat far from people, perhaps an island. You may or may not write any more books. Years later, People find your half decomposed corpse in a nice rocking chair with an shredded afghan pulled around your lap. Maybe a Bear got to you. Your chair facing toward a scenic landscape out the window. Heavenly life.
You may notice that in my vision, People only show up after I am dead. I like to keep People at a distance. A few hundred miles seems good. That is my vision for the future.
Okay. Instead of working with single-mindedness toward my dream, I got married and now have six kids. My wife likes People, at least some of them. I now feel obligated to live in town, surrounded by People (rather than Bears). God must have something else in mind for me rather than my plan, which I have apparently botched terribly so far.
So, in favor of trying to reclaim a few bits of my visions and dreams for my life, I choose not to bother with comments on this blog. It took some time to convince Blogger that I didn't want comments. It seems to think that blogs are all about the feedback, which I obviously don't want. I think I disabled that feature somehow, but if you cunning readers come up with some way to circumvent my anti-response efforts, rest assured that I will ignore any comments you somehow force onto this blog.
Of course, please click on the ads, buy the books, and use the Amazon store to enrich my quest to acquire some distant hovel and rocking chair. I may also need some money for that lobotomy for Lisa so she will actually be content with rocking beside me until the Bear comes and ends it all. I suppose you can email if you really feel the need, but I may or may not respond. I wouldn't want to get your hopes up...
As an aside, I would probably go stir crazy in that cabin and tear up the landscape for some diversion. The Bear would likely feel compelled to put me out of my misery!
I don't even like bears.