megwrites

Sometimes, watching other people make jackasses of themselves makes me feel tons better. Cruel, callous, I know. But it warms me to the cockles of my black little heart. Maybe even below the cockles. Maybe in the sub-cockle area. Maybe in the liver. Maybe in the kidneys. Maybe even in the colon. We don't know. [/denis leary].

And we wonder why people don't give SF/F its due respect.

You need to go read this man's exerpt. Seriously. In fact, go view his entire website (and yes, as every sharp-eyed reader of Miss Snark points out, he misspelled "metriculate").

Ten dollars to the first person who can tell me what in the sweet lovely hell is going on, because I had to read the first paragraph three times before I got past the completely nonsense terms.

Still, my enjoyment of this site (however mean-spirited) comes from the fact that I now look at my own work and go, "Wow. I am not the worst writer on Earth. I'm not even that close to the bottom anymore." And I was at a point in my life when I needed to be reminded of that.

Okay, I'm not even within sight of being the best or even really good. But I have, in the years I've been writing, made some kind of progress. I am not this bad. And this has a snowflake's chance of being published. Ergo, I have a little more chance of being published than a snowflake in the lower regions of Tartarus.

Good to know that.

But take my advice and bring the brainbleach, people. You're gonna need it when you read about the "essence of pilots".

And a wordcount to keep myself responsible:

Wordcount: Tower!Guy Story

13,914 / 100,000
(13.9%)

Wordcount: Fantasy Story Wot Has Wolves and Nonsense

2,525 / 100,000
(2.5%)

Anyone ever seen Finding Nemo? Remember the charming, excellently voiced character of Dori (yes, I have a girl!crush on Ellen Degeneres).

Sometimes I think of writing as being in that net, with Dori and the other fish. And on one side you have this big powerful boat which is the force of entropy and Real Life and all the things that keep you from writing. Your inner editor, your distractions, your excuses.

On the other side you have all these little fish and Dori. They are the idea you have. The story you want to tell.

Real Life, excuses, the boat - they want to grab all those bits and pieces up and gobble them whole.

The fish don't want to get eaten. Duh.

But in the end, there's no special trick that the fish have. No clever McGyvering to do. No nifty little gadget. They just keep swimming. They flop and flop and swim and swim and they think only about the ocean, about getting one inch further.

That's writing. And you do that everyday. If you're not ready to fight that battle every day, then you're not ready for writing. If you're not ready to be all alone in the ocean, just you, the fish, and the boat - with nobody else there to help you or give you a kick in the pants or a compliment or a pat on the back - then you're not ready for writing.

Okay, sure. Somedays the fish have the boat tipped so fast you're not even sure what happened.

Somedays, the boat wins. Somedays, the boat *has* to win.

Or even worse. Somedays there's not even any fish in the net. And then that sucks all around.

But the point is that 6 days out of 7, the fish swim their little tails off and tip the boat and the net breaks and the story comes out. That's how you become a writer.

Because you sit down with your pen and paper (or computer) and you do it. Not because you can think nifty thoughts or go on forums or join communities. Not because you can talk the talk.

But because you just keep swimming.

I just sorta needed to say that.

And now, for a wordcount. I'm not going at the lightning fast pace with this project that I was with Revenant Blues (which is getting a new title). I've been on this for three and a half weeks and my progress? Not so much with the good.

Although, I console myself with the fact that I'm balancing another project and that overall, my wordcounts haven't been *that* bad.

Wordcount: Tower!Guy Story