Writing and in London Alone and the Emily Dickinson Doll

     As some of my readers know I very much like Stephen King.  I listen to his books all the time.  They are better than the movies they make from them.  He has such style and humor.  As a writer, I suppose he is one I really look up to and would like to be influenced by, not in genre exactly, but in style.  Although, come to think of it, writing horror might be fun, morbid I know, but no more morbid than life.
    I like his epilogues where he talks about himself.  One uncanny thing, I have in common with him besides bad eye-sight (he has macular degeneration, why he wears such thick glasses, the exact opposite of RP which causes tunnel vision and eventually loss of macular or central vision, it causes only peripheral vision and no central) is the fact that I once went off my anti-depressant cold turkey in England and had side effects of that.  Stephen King went off an anti-depressant in England cold turkey as well with major side effects.  For me the side effect was mainly a splitting headache.
     I only was in London once for three weeks.  I went to see a boyfriend who was mean and spent no time with me, so I went to museums alone, rode the bus alone, the tube, had coffee alone, went to Oxford Street alone, shopped alone, had lunch alone, walked the streets alone, went to the airport twice alone and lost my luggage by leaving it on the tube, stayed longer to get it back, drank alone, even looked up alcoholics anonymous in the London telephone book I was so bored and desperate, well not really bored, but certainly lonely.  That is why I liked the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie Bradshaw played by Sarah Jessica Parker spends the whole time in Paris alone, ends up standing up her own book signing party for a total creep, also older and foreign like my ex-boyfriend, and she ends up getting slapped by him, and I got slapped by my ex-boyfriend too, only I did not have Big to come save the day.  Since then I have always been with nice men and some like Big saving the day once in a while.  I told my mom I have never been with anyone so mean or even close since then.  At least I learned my lesson.
     So back to writing, Stephen King says the writer should love to write as much as the reader loves to read.  If you asked me why I write, I would tell you, "because I like to write."  Recently I was asked how I have the time to do all this writing.  I told her "because I have no life", but the truth is I should have said "what am I supposed to be doing? or how do you have time to paint and have a shop, etc.?", but I do not want to be nasty, just resentful later.  LOL
     I have a way of putting myself down and selling myself short sometimes.  I guess I feel that my work was not being taken seriously or something.  Perhaps I have a way about myself, that I joke about myself so much, that others may not take me seriously when I want to be taken seriously.  I do not know.  Maybe they take me seriously, but it really does not matter what people think.  I have seen my number of facebook friends go down and up and down.  I cannot worry about what people think, except that I do want people to know or believe that I am basically a good person, a law abiding person, etc., and that I have a good relationship with my family and friends.  I guess that is where my values are at, family and friendship values.  I suppose it might not be fair to say that I am not taken seriously, because I am sure most people do take me seriously.  Truthfully, I am sure they are not really thinking about it.  They have their own stuff to think about as we all do, so I may be making much to do about nothing, except that this was how I felt.
     Earlier I tried to remember another great writer, Joyce Carol Oats, the author of The Grave Digger's Daughter. That was a heavy book, but I really enjoyed it.  I also enjoyed her short stories, one about Mark Twain working in a veteran's hospital, and it is very gory, but this guy who has lost his leg, he refers to as his beloved and takes him home.  Another was about this married couple who want to buy a life size robot of a real historical person.  The husband wants Vincent van Gogh, but the wife wants Emily Dickinson, who serves tea and writes little poems, but the husband tries to rape the Emily Dickinson doll, only to find she has no female genitalia, being a doll, so he gets mad, but the Emily Dickinson doll has feelings and, the wife and she run away together leaving the husband all alone.  Crazy story, I know, but really well written and weird for lack of a better word.