Writing > Not Writing

 Three years between posts really isn’t that big a deal in my own mind, as anyone who’s stumbled across my old blog will realize.

The bad thing about this pause is that I really wasn’t writing.

Today I started to fix that.

Some things happened in the interim:

• My job got crazier
• I sent in some submissions to magazines I liked, got rejections as everyone does, and discovered that I’m not quite as much of a hardass about rejection as I thought (thought one of the rejections was very nice)
• My job kept getting crazier
• I found myself writing less and less and delving more and more into other hobbies like Android hacking and media center PCs
• My job got really crazy
• I lost my job

This last bit is pretty relevant. See, my job was an extremely specialized/generalized one. Generalized enough to give me a whole lot of skills that cover many areas of expertise, and specialized enough that nobody else offers a job quite like it, at least in this area (or possibly nation). And I had been doing it for almost 10 years. New employers don’t like it when the job you apply for isn’t the same thing you’ve been doing for the last 10 years.

So I keep searching, I branch out, I get depressed about rejections (told you), and then I clean up a little corner of my house and find my old Kindle. After a quick charge, it works as well as ever and I find a whole lot of my own drafts on it. Some finished, but quite a few not finished. I can’t remember for the life of me why I didn’t finish them.

I installed Write or Die today, not because I think it’s a fantastic word processor, but because it’s obvious I need a kick in the teeth occasionally to keep myself working, and picked up one of the stories I had left half-done. I stared at it for a while, thought, Hmm, this is good. I think I know what happens next… and then had no idea what to do. And then I just started typing. Shortest writer’s block ever (all of about five minutes).

And, in keeping with the excellent advice DWS gave me three years ago, I didn’t care whether it was any good or not. I just put it down on paper.

Felt pretty good.