NAD Men and English Dogs: A Few Words Before Bed

When our supreme editor-in-chief Joseph Lane asked me to contribute to The National Affairs Desk, I was secretly elated; there’s no better ego boost then to have someone solicit your talents (or to RECOGNIZE my talents, If indeed I have any to begin with..) and give a poor bloke another forum for downloading those meandering and insane thoughts onto the page. I see that it’s become more than that, however. It’s become a strange and wonderful camaraderie; we have become brothers in words. This is the closest I’ve come to being in a writer’s group, even though no judgment is passed, and no critiques are issued. We respect each other, and we urge each other on. It’s a writer’s God-send.

This is not an admonition to all those writers who choose to be separatists, who want to go it alone and fight through the writer’s blocks by themselves, no. I’m simply advocating the “pay it forward” concept of writing and composing. Do for others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, read other people’s blogs, ask writers to contribute to your own, be pro-active. I notice some writer’s have not taken this approach; they sit on their 5000 followers and don’t share a thing. That’s entirely their prerogative. I think it’s a mistake. Those you step over on the way up, you may meet on the way down again, and they’ll be grabbing your pant cuff on the long ride down. I wish not to be this way (Of course, after I get a book up on the New York Times Best Seller list I may dip my foot into debauchery and self-indulgent egotism and elicit comments from former colleagues like “it used to be about the writing man!”) But I digress.

I’m lucky. I have attracted a small but rabid entourage of writers, just like Jack Kerouac did. I shall not sit on a heap of followers and not share them; I’m not Reverend Jim Jones. There are too many good writers out there who need a break, like some of our NAD contributors Matt Byron, Joseph Lane and the wonderful Gale Mullings. And me. I could use a break too. To summarize; be good to your fellow writers and they will be good to you. And as my partner in literary crime Joseph Lane always says, we’re all in this together.


David Hunter, over and out.

Note: Please keep scrolling down and read about ruts, the writing kind, courtesy of one Joseph Lane. Thank you for your patronage.