This is the first real post on this blog and it will give you an idea of how I ended up here with the daily updates that begin with this post. Writing or academics related to it have formed most of my adult career path, with seven years studying at Drury University to learn my craft. However, back in 2008 the economy went pear-shaped and I felt the need to get a career skill that was more marketable than writing, so I went to culinary school. Eventually, that led to me starting up a dessert company that just recently failed. Over the years, I've discovered that autism renders me unemployable, whatever skills I may possess, so I may as well embrace my education, training, skill, and talent of writing. Typing out my thoughts for whomever my readers might be avoids all the pitfalls associated with autism. Poor social skills don't limit me because I have no coworkers, subordinates, or superiors. Physical limitations in dexterity and coordination don't limit me because all I have to do is work a computer and keyboard. It won't pay much, if at all, for a very long time and I may very well earn nothing from it, but I'm at peace with that.
Writers are part of the general community of artists, but we don't really get to be cool. We get to be tortured alcoholics, at best. That's why so many male writers want to be Hemingway. Somehow, he pulled off the trick, not just of being cool, but also being badass. By definition, the writing process is a solitary, if not necessarily lonely, one. Alone with our thoughts, we must predict the reaction of our audience and the best way to do that, I think, is to aim very broadly for interest. As long as the writer inflames interest, even if it is the panicked censorship of book burning, that writer had not made the reader bored. So that's the promise I wish to bring to my writing here and anywhere else I may publish in some capacity. You may not always like my writing, but I will always do my damnedest to ensure that it is well done and that the reader is not bored. Controversy is inevitable at times, as my prior writing career has made me well aware. Whenever you're writing about something about which you are passionate, there will be someone else equally passionate about that something in the opposite direction. Fortunately, I've spent enough time in both college and the Internet that I've no problem arguing with people on just about any given point.
The only real rule about what I'll write here is that it must be something in which I am interested. Requests can be submitted to frankcritic@hotmail.com, and I will consider whatever anyone sends in terms of writing ideas. They say to write what you know though, and I'll submit that there are areas in which I may claim expertise in one form or another. These area include atheism, baking and pastry arts, movies, popular culture in general (especially of the 1980s), cigars and pipes, politics (don't expect a lot of that), marketing, grammar and style, and geek culture. With my time freed up, I'll be doing my best to keep myself informed and well-read enough to keep up with the zeitgeist. I am quite looking forward to returning to writing professionally in every sense except I don't get paid for it. Right now, there are countless freshmen in college and many of them will end up majoring in English, writing, journalism, or the like. There is no promise I can make to those countless hopefuls that they'll ever pay the bills with this and no one else should make them that promise either. What I can say is that this craft is a hell of a lot of fun and that, if you really love it, you'll always do it, whether or not that's a good idea.
-Frank
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