For those of you who stumbled in here thinking this was a writer’s blog about writing…psych! I was just going through my old posts (because I’m flu braindead and can’t do anything actually constructive or creative) and noticed that a total of none of them are actually about writing. Unless you count the ones where I discuss rejection letters. I am also very aware, thank you, that I don’t sound much like my stories, but that’s probably because I’m not fictional and I’m not a character. So, writing?

Okay, here we go. A post about writing.

…

Um. Yeah. You know, there are a lot of people who talk and write about writing much more intelligently than I do. Most of them are Christopher (Uncommonwealth) and Gwenda (Shaken & Stirred) or someone on their extensive linklists. Most of these people have very smart routines (unlike me) and word minimums/day and tricks for plot construction, etc, etc, etc that I don’t have. I’ve tried them all and finally resigned myself to the fact that I don’t write like any of that and therefore am probably not a writer at all.

One of the main points of difference between myself and an actual writer is that I don’t believe that I will ever make a living writing, so I don’t try to. What difference does this make? Huge. Don’t feel you have to pat me on the back or cheerlead me through this, I’m perfectly happy being a not-so-successful writer. For serious. It really is a nice place to be. I write what I want (except for the drivel/adcopy/content I write for work) and don’t really get paid for it. Sort of like being an indie rock musician! See, I’m used to this. I’ve had years of training.

I also know this about myself: I’m a sprinter. Not a marathon runner. And it takes a marathon runner to make a living at writing. Fiction writing anyway. I can’t churn out minimum 2000 words/day in order to get My Novel finished. Well, actually I can, but it wouldn’t be a novel I would like very much. I know because I have one and a half of these. They look like novels and they sort of sound like them too, but they’re not novels I’d want to be friends with.

I work best in incredibly productive blasts of writing that usually start with some character who won’t shut up (and keeps me up for nights at a time) and end when I get sick or have fifteen stories started and one or all of them finishes itself. Or sometimes these stories start with some strange line of dialog I’ve overheard or (usually) misheard that evolves over time into an actual story. It’s definitely an act of accretion. Or sedimentation. And I can’t push it any farther than it wants to go. It’s a stubborn donkey.

Stubborn donkey? Did I mention I still have the flu?
Okay, let’s do the math:
Short stories in progress right now: 8
Novels in progress right now: 3
Poetry/flash fiction in progress: 15?

See, if I wanted to be successful there would be one novel in progress and maybe 2 short stories., because then they would actually get Done. In short, if you want to be a successful writer, don’t be like me.