Month: May 2026

JUST when I thought I was getting back into the saddle…website back up and running…They Came in Peace foley ready to roll…the Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind foley being rebuilt to remove 20 year old legacy formatting fuck-fuck code and remove the image that queerphobes at Draft 2 Digital got their clam in a jam over…making progress with Youth Protection about getting to be part of my children’s lives again…knee surgeon clears me to go back to the gym…I go back to the gym…one week later I have a cold.

BOOM! Crash out, sleep all day, sleep all night, spend 20 minutes at a time clearing my chest, misery, medicine, mucous…It’s a long, hard road out of Hell.

So…I know I had originally intended to offer a pseudo University-level course on writing and self-publishing and shit, but here’s thing about writing: It’s not a marathon, it’s several thousand sprints interspersed with periods of varying inactivity; my record is 6 months, but that was because of my whole knee thing and the fact that even my Host doesn’t know what in the actual fuck happened to my website.

Perhaps that IS the lesson: A lot of side-questing is involved in writing. And, yes; I mean side-questing like in RPGs. INVARIABLY something happens and you have to put things down: crises, fun times, distractions, housework, life…random strangers asking you to retrieve stolen cast-iron skillets…unless you’re Stephen King in the 1980’s fueled by blow and madness, you’re not likely to be churning out more than one draft of one book a year, let alone spending your days in front of the keyboard, and if you are, unless you’re Stephen King in the 1980’s fueled by blow and madness, those are not going to be fantastic.

It’s one of the reasons I like to shit on NaNoWriMo, or National November Writing Month. It is impossible to write a good first draft; it is therefore likewise impossible to write an entire novel in a month, expect it to be good, and to expect it to be respected. In fact, the organization that originally ran the project finally went under, but the meme survives among mediocre social media microblogging fanatics and wannabe writers who never try to do anything beyond fanfic with very graphic, very poorly written sex scenes.

That is NOT to say, however, that I am opposed to fanfic. A lot of times when I’m stuck, I’ll start or continue work on a project I’ve written, while playing in someone else’s sandbox. I’ve written The Matrix fanfic, Batman fanfic, Star Trek AND Star Wars fanfic. The reason you won’t see my work up on AO3 is because these are not intended for anyone else’s eyes but mine; sometimes playing in another sandbox is just what I need to get my creative juices flowing passed the clogged artery of writer’s block. Hell, I’ve even come up with concepts, characters and whole scenes in fanfic that I later turned into parts of actual stuff I wrote to be read. Stay creative when you’re not writing. If fanfic’s not your thing, pick up an instrument, learn to paint, start collecting action figures or physical media…have an expressive outlet besides writing available.

Basically, ou write when you write; when the inspiration hits, when you have extra time, when you don’t know what else to do, when you know you should be doing something else. You let writing interrupt your life as much as life interrupts your writing; that’s just how it works.

If you DO have the means and ability to sit at a keyboard for 10 to 12 hours a day, every day, and you are turning out good shit, fantastic. You are, nevertheless, the exception rather than the rule in my experience, but, hey, you can do it so good on you.

For the rest of us, the key is to not panic if you go a long stretch without making progress. Just thinking about writing is writing, so you’re good, even if you’re not planted in front of a keyboard consuming high doses of caffeine.

And if you get that breakthrough but can’t get to writing? Make a note; even if it’s a voice memo on your phone. It’ll be even better by the time you get to writing, because that part of your imagination that’s always running is going to be working with that idea in the background.

Okay, well…I guess that’s it for this entry. Stay tuned, I will be posting on a more regular schedule, now.