I've said over and over that I never suffer from writer's block, but I realized that's not exactly true. What's closer to the truth is that I seldom suffer from writer's block -- the actual cliché staring at a white page or a still cursor -- for more than a minute, two minutes if I include my blogging.

I think writers block is not a shortage of ideas. Instead, it is one of two things:

• The inability to decide between a number of ideas, any of which might work; or,
• Any number of fears, most of which fall under the heading "Fear of Failure."

But really, each of these are different shapes of fear. But in every case, fear is not a wall but a test, almost a dare.

My career as a graphic designer and web designer has forced me into those fear-inducing positions so many times that I've learned how to identify an idea that will probably work and running with it. You can never know what will work. There's always that chance it won't, but there are three truths that push me forward:

• There's nothing as motivating as lack of choice. I get paid to produce designs and the clock is ticking. Deadlines clear your head. Sitting there doesn't help you meet a deadline. You must feel the clock ticking, go with your gut and learn to choose and run blind right out of the gate.
• There's no such thing as wasted time when it comes to creative efforts. That is, so long as you're clicking keys. If a story idea fails, if you've got the wrong POV or tone, etc., at least you've documented that failure. And,
• Failure is often not failure. Back in '94-'96, I painted -- oils, alkyds, acrylics. My instructor at the time clued me in to this very important fact: In the creation of any creative work, one passes through what he termed the "ugly phase," the uncomfortable and inevitable middle of the work where the artist either loses faith in the original idea or is displeased with the current phase in its execution. It looks, to him, ugly. He urged me to press through, in fact ignore these doubts, that the ugly phase would pass and that trust would pay dividends nearly every time.

Let me expand on that last one because I think it's a biggie that not enough writers -- or any other creatives, for that matter -- don't know about. Let's say you truly do have a work that fails. You push through the ugliness and it still falls flat. Staying with my painting example, you don't have to keep looking at the ugly canvas. Paint over it. What's cool about painting over the unsuccessful work is that you paint on a vastly more interesting surface than the blank canvas you started with on your first attempt.

I believe the same idea holds true with writing. If you fall short on the first go, you can only do better on your second pass because, in effect, you're writing over the previous pass's words. You're running across a field with which you already have gained some familiarity. You're more likely to miss the holes that snagged your foot on the first go-around.

So face the fear and type. The more you do it, the less it resembles fear. If anything, fear is a hard choice between good ideas. Knowing that you can't really fail, even when you fail, should help you get started every time.

ABOVE RIGHT: My own painting, Hand Up ©Copyright 1995 Thomas McAuley

Only out of absent-mindedness had I not planned to attend ArmadilloCon 2011 in Austin this August, but once again, the gods have shifted sea and stones to make it possible for me to go. Due to another person's personal tragedy or plans or both, an easy slot opened up.

I have to say I'm pumped about it, too. I made no secret last month of the joy I experienced at World Horror Con. I'm told ArmadilloCon is also a well-run writers' convention that is "heavy on literary and light on media." It promises good guests, panels and, to be honest, parties. What great fun.

Before World Horror, I was a little nervous about what to expect. Would my general unpublished-ness make me stand out as a pretender or a hack? Once I got there, introductions and conversations were easy. By then end, I was charged and ready to take on the world. The energy I came away from that first con sling-shotted me through my 80ish-page nose-picking story.

Oh...I do hope there is good weird representation there. I learned so much from my first weird story -- now I have a ton of questions for the other weirdos.

Photo: Albert the Armadillo, a loopyboopy art doll from Colleen Downs. Click here to visit her creepy, strange, odd and goth doll shop.

week away from blogging sort of snuck up on me. I hadn't let so much time go between posts in a few months. Not a crime, I suppose, but a little shocking.

They say the older we get, the faster time seems to fly. That's certainly the case for me. It doesn't feel like a week has gone by. But that fact illustrates another reason we need to write every day. (And, by "writing," I mean do no-bullshit writing-related activities, like editing or outlining or that sort of thing.)

We need to write every day because if we let a day lapse, it gets fat -- it turns into two then three then ten. If you're going to do things even slightly off the path of your direct writing, let them be rewards for having done those direct things.

Anymore, I only blog after I've knocked out 500 or more words, written or edited. I place the same restrictions on my TV or movie viewing and my reading. Of course, I allow myself to read if I'm in a waiting room or anywhere else I can't really write with a calm mind or the right tools.

I won't be one of those folks who apologizes for not having blogged. First, I'm not exactly letting anyone down. I have maybe 30 regular followers and there's no shortage of other writing bloggers, I've found, so there's plenty more to read. And second, if I'm not blogging, it's probably a good sign that I'm deep into other things -- either the normal requirements of living an engaged married and family life, working or, even more probable, writing and editing.

I'm not sure what got into me this last Saturday but I did my normal solo write-in at Local in the morning. It was a massive editing session to get my pages -- twenty was my goal -- ready for the upcoming critique on the 30th. The story is about 10k, so by the time I got to the end of the first draft, there were plenty of things early on that needed to change. You name it -- everything from style to simple facts. So editing was slow. In five hours, I only got to maybe page ten.

Urg.

So I returned home. I tried to take a nap or otherwise relax, but all I could think of were the edits I didn't get to. From noon until I hit the bed that night, I wrote for three more hours off and on in short sessions between other tasks. Until my wife actually wondered if I had grown to my writing chair.

High praise. I think it is, anyway.

Even with these extra hours, I only got seven more pages done. Still not the twenty but I was close enough to taste it. The problem was that it was Father's Day Sunday and I had already decided that it was a no-write day as soon as the boys awoke. I got to page nineteen.

There was a time later in the day on Sunday when I thought they might get enough involved in their video games that I might be able to go back on my oath to take the day off from writing, but that's when their present to me came out. A game changer.  FIFA10, the next-to-newest soccer title for the Playstation 3.

I accept it. I thanked them for their very thoughtful gift. But I wasn't afraid to moan and tell them that I was afraid. A soccer game of this caliber, especially during off season for the Premier League was tantamount to handing me a bundle of smack. There would officially be no writing.

I had not hit my goal of twenty pages, but I did get to spend some fun time with my boys. How I will fare with that temptation begging for my attention is yet to be determined. Joking aside, though, I think it'll be okay. I put my blogging into proper perspective and have disciplined myself to work from home for the last seven or so years, so I think I'll do okay. I love my stories and wouldn't be a good dad to them if I were to choose a game over them. With my reduced TV time, I'm finding that my ability to fit in a whole lot in day has risen dramatically.

I completed two dark fantasy story drafts in just two weeks two weeks. For me, lately at least, is ridiculously fast.

About three weeks ago, I typed "The End" to the next-to-last draft of Forever By His Side, my Appalachian semi-ghost story. And last Thursday, I typed it again after completing the first draft of what I've been calling "my nose-picking story" or for the ease of file naming, Bad Hand.

Whereas I had worked for more than a year on Forever's 90-some-odd pages, I sprinted through Bad Hand's 45 in two weeks and two days. I had thought my writing speed was solely a result of having so much pent-up energy, but after the first week, it was clear to me that wasn't the case. Bringing Forever to a final editing state was (for me) a monumental challenge. My writing college -- or something akin to a writing internship.

Thanks to the following for my terrific recent output:

• A good writing friend's propping my eyes open a la A Clockwork Orange, which resulted in my resetting the balance of activities and priorities in my writing life.
• My younger son's being off for the summer. That's a whole lot of not getting him organized, on task and equipped. And it's a whole lot of not driving him back and forth.
• His soccer camp which allowed me to sit for more than an hour for a week at a fairly clean McDonald's in a decent neighborhood to write. That's 7 1/2 hours I wouldn't have had available for writing.
• My critique partners for their ongoing patience. Everyone's writing path is different but mine never fails to be weird and/or erratic.
• The folks I met at World Horror Con who were finally able to assure me that "outside shit," as Sanford Allen would say, can work. Specifically the folks at Chizine Publications. Still more specifically, Simon Logan and his inspiring and timely book Katja From the Punk Band.
• The end of the '10-'11 English Premier season. A real mixed bag there, admittedly.

As promised, Violeta Nedkova (finally?) posted the piece she asked for about my muse here (at the bottom):
http://lynmidnight.blogspot.com/2011/06/meet-muse-collaboration-part-2.html#more

I'm kidding, by the way, about the "finally" and "at the bottom." There was some humorous back-and-forth about the posting and position -- I called her a mop, among other things -- but I couldn't be happier to have been asked to contribute. Not only did someone give a shit about my muse enough to ask me to write about it, and not only was I among some pretty good writers, but Violeta (@lympha13) gave me a great opportunity to address something that I hadn't given a first thought to.

So stop by her site and read all the different ways Violeta's friends and peers answered her inquiry.

After too long spent reading it, I finally finished Simon Logan's strong industrial novel, Katja From the Punk Band.

It's a boner-worthy romp that follows an assortment of characters who each own their own, unique piece of this dark world. The forward, backward and sideways time jumps don't once jar the reader into having to scan back to figure out what the heck is going on. It's clear throughout, even when Logan "fails" to outright tell us until, sometimes, paragraph four who the hell's head we're in. Each of the characters, all unique and interesting, find themselves on a nameless island filled with shady folks and shadier business. Everyone would love to leave for their own reason, to make it to the mainland, but that's a no-go. No one leaves without official permission or by some less reputable manner.

From beginning to end, Katja is a read that keeps you wondering what's next. It frequently defies normal writing rules but never in even a remotely bothersome way.

Reading it as a writer, I smiled more than once at pronoun-less sentence starts, the afore-mentioned non-anchoring of chapters, the sometimes laundry tag short chapters which have to appeal to today's shorter attention spans.

From a reader's perspective, Logan has a comfortable, easy style and an impressive subtle knack for appropriate metaphor. Like a good drummer, Logan is never in the room with you asking you, "How'd you like THAT," something I find with more than a few cutting-edge writers.

My fave testimonial:

"Logan is a stylish transgressor for the next evolutionary moment. He reminds me of Harlan Ellison at his most daring and dangerous raw, fearless, unpredictable, disturbing, and much needed. --Jack O Connell, author of Word Made Flesh and The Resurrectionist"

I found Katja at World Horror Con in Austin at the beginning of May at the Chizine party. Bought it on a thumb drive with three other Chizine titles. A month later, I'm feeling 100% happy with the $25.

I emailed Simon back and forth a couple of times and was pleased to learn he's a pretty cool-headed guy. I always love it when the good guys win, despite my bent toward horror and black metal.

So, readers and writers alike, please click here to download Katja for $8 (as of this posting) and all his other novels and short story collections. Again, as of this writing, I-O was still just a buck, so rush, all you limbaughs. (This added later, to clarify that I think Limbaugh is a piece of shit, dangerous, wrong-minded, fame-feeder who exploits the easily frightened and influenced and the "rush, limbaughs" thing was just a pun. So don't unfollow if you thought I was pro-shithead and DO unfollow if you thought I wasn't. In fact, in the latter case, also fuck off and shoot your TV.)

Also check out Logan's website, coldandalone.com

Personal note: Only 400 words this AM but I'll be writing for an hour and a half this evening and should be able to finish up the first draft of my nose-picking story. Words are less important to me than progress as this point. I just want a good twentyish pages for Wednesday's critique.

Question: "Good news or bad news first?"

I'll do you one better. How about a good news, a "don't worry" and an only slightly bad news.

First, the good news: I knocked out another almost 500 words this AM before a very early start to my normal work.

Next, don't worry: Who knew nose-picking would involve so much writing. I was thinking it was more like 20 pages but I underestimated the last part of the story. But -- and here it comes -- don't worry. This ain't no Forever where I sit on the thing for a year until I get it just right. I'm making the same progress I made in the beginning; it's just longer than I expected it would be. (I get that a lot . I kid. I do NOT get that...any. *sigh*)

This week has been fortuitous for me, though. My son has had a camp all week long. His involvement will end up giving me a solid hour and a quarter each night to sit at McDonald's and write. Seems like scraps until you add it up. And hour (minimum) each morning and that precious time in the evening and I'm up to 12 1/2 hours and that's not including my solo write in Saturday mornings. So it'll be a 16-hr writing week when it's all said and done.

Slap!

And lastly, the bad news: My muse guest post got knocked to the 2nd day. At least that's what our young Brit says. And we already know that little mop can't be trusted anymore, don't we. *cocks hammer*  (Which is vastly different and far less pleasurable than hammering one's cock -- FYI for the children.)

I had a pretty fun, productive writing day today, when it was all said and done. I started out a little slow. Only 300 or so words in my AM session but that's a qualified 300. Only 300 new words, but probably another 300 earlier words reworked to make the new ones work, make sense and/or work better. That second set of 300 words didn't qualify as editing to me in that I wasn't trying to massage the language as much as I was adding or correcting details that I was certain were subtle enough that they would be missed on the next rewrite.

But the real writing fun came about mid-day when a writing friend of mine, Violeta (@lympha13) from Canterbury freaking England -- yeah the one with the famous tales. THAT Canterbury -- Tweeted "What is the name of my muse?"

I stopped in my tracks, realizing that I hadn't thought once about my muse. I suppose I don't have one. Well, I certainly didn't have one until she asked me to write 200 words about it. She's putting together a group blog event where some untold number of us authors will discuss our muses. Mine is supposed to post Wednesday on http://lynmidnight.blogspot.com/ (Lyn Midnight being Violeta's pen name) but that's not solid, I'm told. It sort of depends on how many writers she involves.

I suggested a couple folks she might want to ask for blurbs, so I'm looking forward to their answers as well as the answers from a bunch of other writers I haven't yet met.

Oh...so without giving away what I wrote, I'll say that I used the opportunity Violeta presented me to contemplate my not having a muse. I gave the issue some thought and, by the end of my 200 words, had come up with something I hope will get me through the hard times. (That, you will find out when she posts my piece (also a pun, btw) is a pun. (It's starting to feel like Inception (which my fam and I watched and loved last night) with all the nested parentheses. A thought within a thought within a thought.))

Energized by my lunchtime writing, I used my son's marathon soccer practice to spit out another three pages (750ish words) at McDonald's without spitting up the horrid Double Cheesecancer I had before opening up the document.

All in all it was a great writing day. Certainly a weird one. I think Inception had at least something to do with the weird cast to the day.

My critique colleagues seemed as pleased as i was about seeing "The End" at the end of the pages I submitted last week. To know what a struggle getting to that point in Forever has been for me is one thing, but imagine being one of the folks who have to critique all the failed attempts, all the epic misses as well as the near misses. To see that Thomas has restarted the same story again, for a third or a fourth time.

As a parent, I know I can tolerate a whole lot of crap (pun) from my own kids, while sometimes I can hardly tolerate even normal behavior from other folks' kids. I imagine that's got to be at least similar to the what I've been dragging my mates through for the last God knows now long.

I salute them. In fact, I probably owe them. Certainly to never have to look at another Wady chapter -- new or reworked. Certainly a new, completed story. Certainly something the shows I'm not the crazy person mumbling to himself and walking in small circles.

Maybe that last one is what I owe myself.

To be honest, I haven't touched the edits I've been collecting since this last rewrite began. I've kept all the marked-up pages in an accordion folder. Six separate groups of pages to match the six critique stages the story underwent. I'm finishing my current story's first draft before I get back to Wady and Forever. I think the short time away will benefit me and the story in the end. In ways, it already has.

When you're working on a story, the feeling I get is of working from inside a heavy sweater. Engulfed in details, focused like a conductor on rhythm and pace, obsessed like a poet on word choice and style. But when you stand back, you can view the work -- the sweater -- in the mirror, as it's intended. Worn and comfortable.

I have maybe another thousand words to go on the current story. At that point, I'll determine whether I edit it or Forever first. Regardless, serious editing is in my immediate future.

I was only able to knock out another 300 words this AM, but I did go back and add/remove elements to make the new words make sense. Usually when I do that, it's subtle stuff I'm reasonably sure would get forgotten in later rewrites.

My nose-picking story is going well. I knocked out another 500 words before the fam woke up this morning. I only have two more scenes and it'll be ready for critique.

It's such a pleasant experience, such a wonderful change, not to be pinned to the difficult language and magic rules of my last story. What a hill climb Forever has been. When I explain the difficulties of that story -- and I do so almost apologetically because I feel, for some reason I need to explain myself to others when it comes to my lack of writing productivity -- I liken it to my senior year in college.

I never went to college for writing, in fact anything traditionally academic, unlike so many of my peers. And, as I've mentioned before, I was never an avid reader of fiction. It has always accounted for no more than a third of my reading until recent years. So I've always felt I was working from a disadvantage.

The new story certainly won't be perfect, but I can tell there's something about it and the process of writing it that feels somehow permanent. Real. It feels more like a signature than any other story I've written, with the possible exception of Spirit and Speck, which is close to my heart for its feeling like a long poem. 

My wife -- bless her -- took it upon herself to clean out our game room. It had gotten to a point of clutter and filth that the hoarders shows would have envied. Computers, cords, speakers, broken pieces of a table. An overflowing bookshelf. An old couch with its cushions scattered, its surfaces reclaimed by game boxes and text books. A metal filing cabinet. On and on.

If you ever have to consider your foot placement and balance -- not anesthetic balance, physical balance -- when you enter a room, you've gone well time to clean the room.

But the state of the room is not the point. Nor, for that matter, is my wife's cleaning it. The point of today's post is that, she asked that I take care of a couple of my stacks. I needed to remove the clutter from my side of the bookshelf and make decisions about  books that had never made it to my side of the shelving. I also needed to determine, which of the partially filled-out notebooks I wanted to keep. She suggested that I remove the pages that I actually needed and toss/recycle the unused part of the notebooks.

So which to address first? The books I hadn't seen in a long time, or the notebooks I hadn't seen in a very very long time?

No doubt: the notebooks.

These notebooks recorded my first step into serious writing back in 2006. They were filled with song lyrics, poems, sketches and my thoughts, not just the story ideas and false starts I thought they contained. Compared to then, I am a picture of discipline and organization. I know the steps. I know what real writing takes. I'm only recently getting into the real business part of things by blogging, corresponding, critiquing with some skill, and attending conventions. I had forgotten how clumsy and slow my first couple years were.

So I set into reading them. Gibberish. Shit. Confusion. But tucked in between these toilet paper pages were the odd nugget. A story idea I had completely forgotten about. A story idea I must have known at the time I didn't possess the chops to tackle. The beginnings of stories that I would pick up later. Others which I'd never finish. And there were some that became finished stories, though different in most cases. I ran across my first notions of Mr. Salley, a character I wrote for more than a year -- a real favorite I think about often. I found the early outline for my children's novella, Hilmer Gibb and the Honkin' Huge bib. For an hour, I was an archeologist digging in my own past.

I daydreamed...

It was good to read these old scraps. They record my thoughts at a time when my days felt dead end. Through this writing, I turned that trend around. I remember it not mattering what I wrote. I remember recording. Anything and everything. No filter. Anything but the nothing that I was doing.

Sitll, it's difficult to reconcile the work from those days with my writing now. It's vastly better. I considered ideas that I know now could never be stories. Flash or vignettes, maybe, but not stories. Not saying that there's anything wrong with non-stories, btw. It's only that everything is so laid out now. There's real pressure to produce, to get my word count up. Finish pages, stories.

Submit.  Focus. Order. Achieve.

I'm editing for the better part of four hours yesterday morning. Three chapters of Forever By His Side. Then I critiqued a peer's 15 or so pages. Then, before hitting the bed, I applied the morning's edits and sent them out prior to Wednesday's critique. All this, so I could free up my mind for writing on my nose-picking story this morning.

It's a lot of work, but I can do it. It's not about the enjoyment. It's grown-up time. I can't say I dislike knowing exactly where I am, the sort of writer I want to be, and how to get there (within the realm of what I can control, of course) but I tip my hat to the freedom of those earlier days. There was a bliss to that waste. And even if the early writing was, at times, horrid work. It was some pretty valuable stuff to read again.

WARNING: THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WRITING. That should be okay now and then.

When I found my son might be involved in an outdoor event tomorrow, I got right on the Internet and looked for the address. You know, to scope out the place from space. Ooooh. So I find the place and immediately click Google's "Search Nearby" link, something I've been in love with since its introduction. I'm trying to find a place I can camp, write until the boy tires or gets bored. Someplace I can keep half an eye on him.

So the result to the right comes up

I look. I look again. And just to make sure, I look a third time. I decide I don't know where to begin.

Now, I've seen folks, innocent out-of-towners usually, come to our fine land and start up a business. And sometimes they'll unknowingly choose a name that sounds suggestive or otherwise humorous. Anything from Juan More Taco to Lee How Fook Chinese Restaurant. You've seen them. But isn't Nazi pretty much cross-culture?

It would have been funny regardless of the business. Imagine Nazi Mattress. Nazi Burgers. They literally could have chosen Nazi Salon. But Nazi Hair and Facial? I mean the main Nazi was known second best for his head and facial hair, right?

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, though. Maybe it's a shop for submissives who fettishize Hitler.

Anyway, happy Saturday. Write a lot and well. Keep your eyes open for the crazy shit you see. Sometimes life spoon-feeds you.

Okay...so I'm not a "brother" in the ethnic sense of the word, but that's hardly the point.

Yesterday was a doozie. Tried to get a lot of work done at the coffee shop, but social interactions slowed things down for most of the morning which made doing my actual work had to be compressed into too little time. Then there was some trouble at my younger boy's school. Then I had an appointment. By the time I got back home, I was pretty wiped out mentally.

Today doesn't look like it's going to be that bad but who knows until everyone else is up. My wife has been off all this week and, as yesterday was the last day of school, both my boys are going to be lingering. I hope I can get something very substantial -- and billable -- done today or it'll be a working weekend.

I hate those, btw. The weekends should be for writing. So, for now, I'll pretend I'm going to definitely be able to get all my work done for the day...today.

Tomorrow, I return to the last three chapters of Forever By His Side. It's just combing through for spelling, grammar, logic in preparation for Wednesday night's critique. It's too many pages -- 30ish where we have an understood limit of 20, so I may have to wait another two weeks to get the rest of it looked at. But that's my goal. To get all remaining pages critique ready. If I can do that, then I can take Sunday and Monday to critique my partners' work and squeeze in more writing on Bad Hand.

This morning, I popped out just under 500 words on that one. I figure I can get another 500 later today.

Here's to hoping distractions are few and that everyone likes what I show them.

I mentioned a couple days ago that I felt like I was going to snap like a rubber band into my next story after putting Wady and Forever By His Side to bed. And damn was I right? Yesterday, I slammed out an pretty effortless 2,300 words on a story that looks like it'll come in at 20 pages -- close to half done if that estimate is right.

Besides my repressed energy creating that slingshot effect, what else could be responsible for such output? I'm close, so I may not have the most accurate perspective, but as I see it, there are three influences: blogging, having seeing Jack Ketchum at World Horror Con last month and my current reading of Simon Logan's book, Katja From the Punk Band.

I've made a lot -- too much, I'm told -- about my blogging. And with its benefit to my writing coming into question recently, I had done a lot of thinking about it. I'm still pondering whether and where it should fit into the overall scheme of my writing career. But let me tell you, I started writing Forever when I was blogging under one mindset and finished that story blogging in another. My blogging style is much freer, much more honest, much more my own natural voice. It's a great way to get information out, but until last month, I hadn't thought that sort of deliver could only help me write non-fiction.

Enter Jack Ketchum. Seeing Ketchum speak and read last month at World Horror Con in Austin may prove to be a pivotal event in the evolution of my writing. His natural, emotional, unflinching style of storytelling immediately sounded familiar to me. I suppose he strikes the same accord with other readers. I had only read the forward (to Cover) and a couple of chapters when it dawned on me that he was mostly relating the events of the story in the same way he would describe events that had actually happened, similar to a way a reporter might. It struck me as a non-fiction way of writing. I love nonfiction. I mean, here was a long-successful writer who just told his stories.

I couldn't wait to get to my next story, to try my hand at a more unforced way of writing. But, alas -- who says alas? --  I had Forever to finish up. Soon after picking up Cover again, I found that it was influencing the way I was writing Forever. Since Forever was already a time and effort pit, I wasn't about to head down a road that might end in yet anther rewrite. Besides, I felt that I had gotten the essential part of Ketchum -- at least for the time being -- that being the permission to write truly like I thought. Exactly what I was looking for.

I returned to Katja From the Punk Band, the book that had hooked me right after the Con. It's told from first person, present tense. That's usually an annoying POV. In my limited reading experience, it's pretty limiting and often comes of quaint. I'm regularly suspect of the author's self-stroking to the point the story doesn't feel like a story as much as a party trick. But Katja is done extremely well. It may not be world-changing or masterful, but it's clean, honest and more importantly it works. It's bratty like Catcher in the Rye, one of my faves growing up while being thoughoughly modern and unforced. And it was enough different from Forever that it didn't influence my writing.

I already knew that I would sit on Forever for a couple days once I typed "The End." The two days I had been waiting for had arrived. I finally allowed myself to write a new story with a clear conscience. I had built up a stock of synopses during the past year but it was a recent one I'd put together -- one about a man addicted to nose-picking -- that I started on. It was a perfect candidate to try out the more honest style I had been applying to my blog entries. I wouldn't have much world building, much magic description, much difficulty with the language -- dialect, etc. which plagued Forever' s progress at ever turn. 

The moment I began writing, it was clear that all three of these influences were at work. First person, present tense, easy natural language, no-fret storytelling. We'll wait to see how effective the story is, but if the ease of writing is any basis on which to make a judgment, I'd say I'm heading in the right direction. If someone doesn't like the story, I have a feeling that it may be more likely a distaste for that specific POV, than distaste for the story itself.

For the first time in more than a year I actually wrote the words The End with a true belief that I was very near the end of my marathon novella -- are those terms at odds? Sounds so. I've probably driven the fact that I've been working on Forever By His Side for over a year, a crazy unproductive year that no one around me can (or should) understand. All I can say is that I knew the story needed to be just so and for the longest time it wasn't.

Along the way, I wasn't even looking for perfection -- I was just wanting to tell the story that I had originally set out to write. I think I was just working to a point where my skills could catch up. But they've caught up. I've all but finished the thing. Now it's got to go under the eyes of my critique partners. Afterwards, it editing. Editing, I am confident will run along smoothly, even quickly as I have a pretty solid understanding of what goes where and how everything is supposed to feel, look, taste -- you name it.

The big problem here is, like I mentioned in my last post, I'll soon have to take ol' Wady out back and shoot her. She deserves better. From the beginning, she's heart broken. Soon after, she's tricked and tormented. Then she loses her father, then her mother. Then she witnesses horrific violence. She's left with literally nothing by the end.

Other authors have described the phenomenon of experiencing pain and remorse at the completion of a work as "taking her out back and shooting her." I completely understand, but somehow, for me at least, that seems to not quite hit the mark. For me, it's more akin to cheating. No. Worse yet. It's akin to shaming, exploiting then abruptly breaking up with your character at their most vulnerable time.

That's the pain of moving from one story to the next if you know you're probably not going to write a sequel. You're done with your characters in the story you've finished. You've treated them poorly. You've used them until they don't have a purpose anymore. You don't try to talk it out. You don't bargain. You just tell them you're out and there's nothing they can do. What power do they have against you. They can only watch you walk away, knowing that you're going right to another relationship. Maybe the same day. You'll always talk about them, fondly even. But they'll know that you've exposed them at their weakest moments and told everyone you know about it. They'll never have the chance to improve their state.

It's beyond sad, actually. It's sociopathic.

Where do we find the strength to do it? Maybe the question is, how can we look at ourselves in the face after we have. Any maybe that's a test -- maybe THE test to determine if we're doing things right, if we're investing in the characters we write.

Does it hurt to walk away from them?

But, you know what? This morning, I wrote more than 1000 words on a new story. And I never thought about Wady during that time. Again, that's probably just like a relationship with a sociopath. You've done all this to your long-beloved, yet you're so caught up in the new thing that you don't even feel bad.

Ugh.

Looks like Forever will come it right around 17k words. I can't believe I've made it to the denouement. No...actually, I can't belive I took more than a year to get this story done. I suppose I'm in a bit of shock, right now. I've written the story over and over. Sometimes to completion -- that sounded x-rated, sorry -- but other times, only to the point that I clearly was going in a wrong direction. But today was the first time I've ever felt like I was right at the exit. Those familiar bitter-sweet pangs that finishing a story brings. The death of those characters who made it to the end. The sadness that other who didn't will never be known.

I'll finish up the story today, sit on it for a couple days, then edit the last chapters for my critique group. Then I'll sit on it for another couple days before combing through to apply all the prior changes my group gave me along the way. Man, how valuable is that -- having an accordian folder of changes along the way.

What I've done this time that has worked so well for me is to write one or two chapters -- 20ish pages is our suggested length for critique. These, we read aloud. Then each member takes his uninterrupted turn, offering his/her critique, positive followed by negative followed by a general summation. That leaves me three or four marked up manuscripts (plus my own) to go back to later when I do my final edit. I don't go back and fix those chapters right away -- I write the next one or two, pretending I've already gone back and edited the previous chapters. Proceeding in this manner keeps me moving forward. Sometimes doing things this way causes some confusion for my critique mates, but wasn't anything that couldn't be cleared up with a short statement up front when I sent out my pages.

I would write something on the order of: Ok...when you critique this, know that 'the urge' used be a rattling -- now it's more of a drumming that picks up whenever Wady nears magical elements of the story. Thanks, Joe. And 'the sight' is gone. It seems to be less necessary that she sees into things anymore after last week's changes. Thanks, guys.

So, though I'm not finised per se, I'm as close to packing up the equipment and moving off stage as I've ever been.

Thanks again, guys.

Progress today, writing from 5-9am: Again, hard to tell, but I'm guessing somewhere on the order of 500 words and some really good edits. Like I said, I'm down to the last tiny bit -- Probably just a page, maybe 400 words. I'm not to the point where I have to take Wady out back and shoot her, but I'm nearly there. Bitter-sweet, indeed, as Wady would say.

I'm finally sewing up the ends of my story, Forever By His Side. It's proven to be at the outside edge of my abilities. It's got a world to paint in. It's got tricky mountain-esque language. It's got a handful of characters that are separated through five generations. It's got one character separated from normal reality. It's got magic to define. And it's got a pretty intricate -- delicate? -- plot. Things have to occur just so or it all falls apart. At least that's my take. It's taken me three to five rewrites, depending upon how one defines how an incomplete rewrite is counted. I even synopsized the damned thing twice.

This story and Susurrus together have made for one of my hardest years but I'm confident they will prove to be the stories that taught me my most important writing lessons. I could list all the areas that I have grown, but it's shorter to say that I've grown in every way. The shame is, I haven't been able to show much of what I've learned in writing those two stories because I've also been handcuffed by them. Until I finish Forever, I can't move on to the next story. So, like the main character in Forever, Wady, I'm caught until the very end.

And there's still a bit more work until I get to the end of the writing. Maybe another 1000 words. Probably less. And there's plenty of editing to do to bring earlier chapters up to speed with the fixes my critique partners discovered along the way. But a new fire has been lighted under me. Writing fatigue has seriously strained my resolve and had made other writing-related endeavors unwanted temptations.

I feel like my rubber band has been pulled taut for three months now. I can't wait -- but will have to -- to see what energy is released when I finally Command-S my last line.

Today's word count as of noon: 600ish but, again, mostly editing, so I'm stripping out crap as I add other non-crap.

Recently it was called to my attention that I might do well to reexamine my dedication to writing. Or at least the balance of writing versus merely writing-related tasks. You know, to put things into a new perspective. Once I really took time to consider it all, I couldn't help but realize that my pie chart was, indeed, out of whack. I could tell just by paying attention to how much of my thinking was taken up by blogging, reading, connecting with others in the writing world, and writing itself. I may not have dedicated much actual time to blogging, but it did consume my free moments. And that was time that solving plot problems or brainstorming scene nuances used to occupy.

So, in that regard, thinking as an artist, where every waking moment has something to do with one's art, I was blogging too much.

It wasn't difficult at that point to tell myself to get back to the writing. To make the time I wrote more effective. Instantly, I realized one of the reasons I had slowly drifted away from writing as often as I once had. I had started to miss my wife and kids. When the actual writing was first on my mind, I tended to write more often and for longer periods when I did. That was time I had recently been spending with my family.

One of the things that had been giving me a hard time was my guilt about not spending time with my kids or my wife. My boys are -- for all practical purposes -- 19 and 14. The older boy is in that transition between technical and actual manhood. My younger boy is in that transition between junior high and high school. I never want to miss any of their events and I always want to take advantage of the increasingly infrequent times they want to spend time with me. And, as anyone who has been married for a while can attest, no good comes from a marriage that goes too long uncultivated.

So how to reenter the true writing and retain good relations?

I think I may have underestimated my family's ability to do without me. They do fine. My wife likes her shows, browsing the Internet and reading, none of which requires me. There's a certain amount of sharing, but it's pretty minimal at those times. My older boy is out more and more often, so that's not so much of a conflict. And my younger boy seems to have no problem occupying himself with his numerous hobbies.

It all boils down to balance. I had to reorganize my pie chart. I'll just have to do the same with my scheduling my time with family. I don't have the final answer, but knowing that it is just a problem to be solved is almost enough on its own to help me feel better. To help me know that I'm not a bad dad or husband because I choose to throw myself back into the thing I love to do.

I'll just have to make all my time count. When I'm with family, I'll BE with family. When I'm writing, I'll WRITE. If I do both of those things, I'll reward myself with blogging.

Maybe I can do it all.

Today's word count as of noon: 500ish but this also included an ass load of editing to two chapters. After the Manchester / Barca game, I got another few hundred words but I excized just as many. Before bed, I got another couple hundred words and some conflicting details combed out.

After receiving a crack of the whip from my writer mom and writer aunt over the last couple days, I dragged my laptop to my younger son's soccer practice. I dismissed myself from normal adult interaction and found a quiet corner in a nearby parking lot. I poped the windows and propped up the sun shield on the front dash.

Then it was slightly more than an hour BIBS HASOK TAM. For the sadly unacquainted, that's "Butt in bucket seat; Hands (and sweating) on keyboard; Typing away madly"

Only 650 words. No...you know what. That's negative. I was in a freaking car. 

650 words! Eat me, car. Eat me, story.