The whole of history can be summed up as attempts to impress women with varying degrees of success. Along these lines, I have made more headway as a would-be writer than as a would-be rocker. This never made sense to me. Weren’t women supposed to go home with the star of the stage while the novelist wept onto the freshly spat letters from his inkjet? A few entertaining generalizations that make for better copy than the truth occur to me. For one, women like books. They seem more likely to read, and more likely to read often, and thus more interested in having someone around producing their favorite sort of entertainment. Also the lifestyle of a writer is more conducive to a domestic scenes than years shuffling between motels and clubs cheating with groupies at every turn. To hang out on limb, I will argue that it is far easier to make a good song than to write a good short story, and, while we’re at it, let’s say it’s far easier to make a good album than to write a good novel. Let us say nothing of greatness. That has less to do with ease and more to with fluke luck and thunderbolts from Thor than it does with effort. When the hours are clocked both of these assertions hold up. I know of good songs written and recorded in minutes and have never heard of short fiction like that. Of poetry I know less, but poets sometimes seem to spend even more time on each word than the average or even fastidious lyricist. This difficulty factor, along with a preferential art form and lifestyle, makes any serious writer a better choice than any serious musician. My personal history, like history itself, favors that which impresses women the most. So if you want to get laid, kid, quit your band. The pen is mightier than the axe, at least as long as size doesn’t matter to her.
