A strange thing happened after my post last week regarding Eric Spitzangel's "Authors and their Assholes" series. I'm flattered to learn that I have an asshole of note, and in the spirit of sharing everything you can now see it here. (Not literally. All illustrations are purely figurative.)

This has been a confronting exercise for me. Not only can I not draw (except, as previously reported, when extremely stoned) but I'm also usually, and understandably, a little shy about revealing anything down there. Finding a way to break through both boundaries at once wasn't easy. I think it turned out all right.

Rest assured that this isn't some kind of perverse practical joke. It's a serious exercise, even if it's also intended to be funny and a little confrontational. Ventures like these challenge us to think about ourselves in new ways. While this particular one might not be for you, I'm sure it's worth spending at least a second or two pondering it. (How do you regard your asshole, figuratively or otherwise? If you don't, why not?)

It made a nice change from contemplating my navel, anyway.

Update: Black holes are God's assholes.

A touching post this week from Eric Spitznagel, whose blog I read religiously. Not only does he make me laugh, but he makes me think too, whether he's talking about porn or the passing of literary icons. He also talks about writing, every now and again, and I find myself completely agreeing with him here:

"The best writing, after all, is about sharing everything, even if it makes us uncomfortable or seems just a little too personal. Or maybe it has something to do with mocking literary pretension, and remembering that even authors - sometimes especially authors - shouldn't take ourselves quite so seriously."

I've crossed several different circles as Chair of the SA Writers' Centre, and while at first it seems difficult to find points of overlap between science fiction writers and students of the Adelaide University Creative Writing program, they're there if you look for them.

Not only are the tools employed by every writer essentially the same, but the writers are the same too. Arrogance isn't a quality reserved to the intellectual elite. Genre writers aren't the only ones slavishly obeying the conventions of their form. And, ultimately, there's about the same percentage of types in each group.

There's always someone who won't take criticism. There's always someone trying to please everyone. There's always someone who over-researches. There's always someone who's blocked. There's always someone who thinks they know everything. There's always someone doing it for the money. There's always someone who reaches right into your heart and makes you want to weep--or laugh, or dance, or hide--and strangely they're often the ones who give it away all too soon, as though they've over-generously expended everything they had in a few short pieces, whetting your appetite for more that never comes.

I've been all these people (except the last), at various points in my career. Sometimes several simultaneously. It's good to be reminded that, when you get down to the bottom* of it, we're all pretty much the same.

* Forgive the pun.