Have you seen these?
A Year in Books - 2009-12-27
Skip Tracer, Loan Detective - 2009-11-22
New Job - 2009-11-03
The coleslaw got served. - 2009-10-21
Probably a new job. But maybe not. - 2009-10-08

What, you want a title now, too? Don't I have enough on my mind already?
2000-08-09 13:38:23

I've been reading a compilation of SF edited by Harlan Ellison, Again, Dangerous Visions. In so many of the introductions, it comes out that SF writers traditionally spend years in crappy jobs before hitting The Big Time. Even though I know it's totally backwards logic, I find that strangely comforting. I have no plans at all to write SF that I know of, but now I can pretend that my slacker lifestyle is justified. Yeah, someday I'm going to write a novel, man. This nothing that I've been doing? I'm just getting myself warmed up. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Of course, to fully support this delusion, I'm going to have to pretend that all those SF writers weren't trying to get stuff published for years. Nope. They just sat around with their thumbs up their collective butt for a few years, and then inspiration struck.

Note how I am desperately avoiding the obvious here. I haven't ever sent anything in to anywhere. God, I'm a wuss.

This gets back to what I was saying a few days ago. I'm not doing anything with my life. I'm trying to pretend it's because I don't want to, but honestly, it's just easier that way.

Dammit. I don't even have any sort of justification for not Writing. All the crap about how I'd hate a corporate life simply does not apply. If I want to worm out of this one, I'm going to need a damn good rationalization.

I don't want to write for anyone else. I write for me. That is enough.

Oh, come off it. You can't pretend that writing for others, and maybe getting paid for it too wouldn't be a damn sight better.

I'm not really that good.

How do you know that? When have you tried?

I can't think of anything.

Shut up. Again, when have you tried?

Remember Neil? For two years, I tried writing. It was all just a bunch of disjointed pieces. I couldn't begin to bring it all together.

Well, you wrote it as a bunch of disjointed pieces. Every night, you wrote a paragraph or two, each one a complete thought. By the time it occurred to you that you could tie them all together, there were just too damn many of them.

And they repeated themselves. It was basically 50 or so outlines of the same story. Neil has a wacky idea about how to immortalize himself. I didn't even try carrying one of them to a conclusion.

Well, why not?

It never even crossed my mind. See? I'm no good.

You don't really think that. Again, I think it's more that you got trapped in the format than any real shortcoming as a writer.

***

So now I'm thinking about Neil again. Maybe I could do it this time. I can't believe I never even considered expanding just one of them. The trouble is, I went through two years of this crap. "Neil is going nowhere. But wait! This time I can fix it! Oh, wait. Maybe I can't. But what if..." Every time I start writing about him, it all falls apart.

For a while, I tried to convince myself that if I could ever get him the hell out of my head and over with , anything else I tried to write would be easy. But then what do I do if it turns out I really can't write about him? Wouldn't that mean I can't write anything?

See, this is the problem with Neil. I'm thinking about him for the first time in months, and already he's become some sort of personification of everything wrong with my writing. My very own insecurity demon. Goddamn do I hate that guy. Maybe I'll write a story where he throws himself under a truck. That'll teach him.

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