Below is reposted the article, 50 Iconic Writers Who Were Repeatedly Rejected , from OnlineCollege.org (credit given, though I've seen the list or a list very similar to it elsewhere.)

Enjoy and submit. Then submit. Then submit. Believe me, there's someone out there who likes what you write. It may not be the best market at first, but it's a market. That aspect of your career WILL improve with time.

50 Iconic Writers Who Were Repeatedly Rejected

What is Luxurious Writing?

I think we all strive for some that I call luxurious writing. There is a certain polish to professional (or merely experienced) writers' work. This polish comes across to a reader as a clear sense of being unhurried in the telling of their story. The author's state of mind during his writing is communicated in smooth sentence structure; natural, unforced sentence variance within a paragraph; and an easy flow from one paragraph to the next. A skilled writer spends necessary time on key details and shows the discipline to give only brief mention to needed but minor details.

None of this is new or complex. But how one achieves luxurious verse in his own writing is no simple thing. What can be done to assist one toward reaching this goal?

It has been said "I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand." For learning writing, I would suggest a little bit of each approach. One method may prove more effective than another but all done together is certain to help the most.

Hear Good Writing

Public radio and C-SPAN often features authors reading aloud their own works. You can visit authors on their book tours. I would suggest attending authors' tours regardless of the benefit to one's writing. If you don't now or have never toured with your own book, chances are if you're serious about this whole business of writing you will. You can buy audio books. Regardless how you get to hear writing read, listen for the songlike quality of the verse. Even plays and movies can both inspire and instruct if the listener is active.

Read Good Writing

Read in conscious detail writing you enjoy and find easy and enjoyable to read. Study it. Dissect it. What about works for you? Not all writing hits you the same way. What are the differences between writing that you connect with and writing that you don't.

Then Go Do Good Writing

Not only will you want to start on your own work after hearing and reading good writing. You may want to take some of that good writing and simply copy it. Many who have written about writing have made this suggestion. Coming from a background of painting, I can tell you there's no better way to truly understand a painting than to copy it. In so doing, you're not trying to rip off the author: what you're trying to accomplish is, in essence, ride in the passenger seat next to the author. By simply typing out good writing, you experience it to a degree. You get inside and feel the flow. You experience first hand the point at which the author decided, "That's just right. That's how I wanted to say so and so." Writing, in this regard, is one of the few types of art where you can go this deep, so take advantage of that fact and dive in.

Happy July 2010, everyone. These are hot days around my house and it's been hard to find good solid blocks of writing time.

Unless you're a hermit, you'll know that the World Cup has been dominating the sports world for the last month and continues through the 11th, another week. You'll also probably know that the Tour (of de France and Lance fame) begins today even though its publicity has been diminished due to more American interest than usual in the Cup.

With a personal history of being a soccer fanatic and with a son engaged in high-level cycling, these two events smeared over both of these summer months presents a very difficult quandry for me. My work and writing have always fought for my time. Now that the Tour and the Cup are here, I have a lot of juggling to do.

The obvious answer to finding writing time should be -- to an outsider -- have a simple simple solution: Miss the Cup. Skip the Tour. To that I say Fuck the You. Missing either one is not an option. My addiction has progressed too far to turn back.

Here's what I've done to help get everything done -- and allow me to include watching these infrequent sports events as "getting something done:"

• Balanced diet and little simple sugar. Sugar crashes don't work.
• Go into the day knowing that you're looking at a 12- to 16-hour days.
• Perfect the short nap. Halftimes are about 30 minutes.
• Treadmill and other workouts during games.
• Say good bye to all other TV. Since television is the devil anyway, use this busy time to refuse to watch it. I limit myself to the Cup, the Tour and BBC morning news.

There's more, but I'll cut this short since Argentina plays Germany in about 5 hours. Yes, it's just after 4am and I'm up writing.

Wish me luck.

My last couple attempts at getting the voice right in Forever By His Side, my current novella-length work, met with more mixed reviews at our last critique session. With another tweak I should have the right balance of Appalachian twang and real-world readability. This process has been a hard-fought one, taking place in the story's first four chapters. My first attempt was promising but difficult to read. My second attempt was flawed in that I attempted to tackle the voice and unplanned-for backstory at the same time. This last -- my third -- attempt revisited the first chapter the critique group read. It was largely a retelling with more approachable language. Whereas the language worked well enough, some suggested that I keep my sentences shorter. Readers, the felt, could lose the meaning of longer sentences if even a little odd syntax and terminology was thrown in. The main problem, though, with this last submission was the story itself. Too much meaningless fluff. I think I may have gotten lost in the testing of the voice. I kept too much in that should have been excised.

This has all lead to my having taken since the last  critique session on Tuesday -- 5 days -- to not write much. What has happened in the past when my work has received luke-warm reviews is that I tackle the changes before I've had a little breather, a little time to stand back from the story to see what all the critiques meant. I'm a huge advocate of writing every day, but I could tell clearly and without guilt that my attachment to this self-imposed dogma was standing in the way of good logic. It was also proving lethal to my love of the story. Over and over in the past, I've lost steam due to overworking the mechanics. I end up forgetting why I wanted to write the story in the first place.

I still like the idea of a detailed outline. For someone like me, it's a proven necessity; however, I need to do some thinking/meditation on how to keep up the fire when I hit a bump. In this time of short attention spans and instant gratification, I need to find a way to maintain my momentum. Right now, I believe I'm burning too hot at certain points of the work when I should work toward an overall even heat. Hrmm. I may be onto something.

This is probably a good time to think. Keep writing. 

This morning, early enough that it could have still been night time, I stood behind my house as I do multiple times daily to watch my two small dogs drag their paws in a seemingly needless search for the perfect spot to relieve themselves -- a constantly rubbing aspect of working from home. With as much time as they give me and with so few details available in the low light, I often watch the clouds cruise by, usually on their way north. I live on a hill, so the clouds often appear on a course that should smash them into houses further up, only dozens of feet overhead.

The scene is often dramatic. On quiet days, the clouds hang impossibly heavy overhead, drifting like an iceberg. On wilder days they scream by, broken into racecar-sized clumps behind which the Texas stars blink in and out of view. It was on one of these more dramatic days I felt the call to write in the serious fashion I have dedicated myself to in the last four years. The call came in the form of a puzzle. I put a challenge to myself to describe in satisfying and concise terms what all I saw and experienced in that unique sky.

Begin with the speed of flight? Begin with the impossible mass? The poetic feelings the scene inspired? Begin with the shapes or colors? Perhaps begin with the stars behind or the houses on my side of the bank? Over and over and for days, I tried unsatisfactorily to sum this one thing, the clouds moving behind my house. Like too much water through a pipe, I could not describe one thing without leaving all the rest behind. But those details were equally important and individually addressed I could make them so. Taken as a whole, though, I was not up to the task. How is it done, I asked myself.

At the time, I had a strand of a story idea. I've heard many of us do, writers and non-writers alike. Instead of sitting down and writing what I possibly should have, my best attempt at describing that elusive cloud bank, I wrote the first peculiar version of my head-on-a-stump story. It was only a chapter, and a poorly-writen one even if at the time I was inspired, but it was a beginning.

As with any art, the path from initiate to master is one of years leaned solely toward a single goal. Some have said in writing that journey is no less than a million careful words. Lazy words don't move one toward the goal. And as with any art, that goal is achieved in steps, not as a gradation or a gently-rising hill. Along the way are apparent setbacks -- many or perhaps all of which reveal themselves to be steps forward when viewed from a future, wiser standpoint -- lapses in faith and dreadful mountains of rewriting. Accepting that those negative aspects are as necessary as weather along the way is probably the most important lesson to learn early on.

The fact that I was taking on  the various aspects writing one step at a time only recently became clear to me. With my first real story, a novella called Southern Sun, I focused almost entirely on character and emotion, neglecting every other important aspect of writing. The reader was left with a fantastic character dropped in a white featureless place and left to perform vague tasks in awkward order. In my next real story, a children's work called Hilmer Gibb and the Honkin' Huge Bib, I brought in pacing. The reader enjoyed couple of fun characters doing things in a fun, reasonable order but the things they were doing didn't end up leading much of anywhere. With my current piece, what appears will be a short novel or more likely a novella, Forever By His Side, I'm closer than I've yet been to including everything one needs to successfully tell a story: Character, plot, pacing, emotion. Ironically, seeing as how my path toward becoming a skilled writer began with a challenge to describe my real life setting, I still haven't been able to integrate setting into the story in a satisfying way.

I never set out with a specific goal to incorporate these writing elements one at a time and I believe there is a certain organic correctness in not going so. I believe that writing should be discovered in order to find ones personal style. That is not to say critique is not important. On the contrary. It is the most important tool -- the fuel -- that drives one's career forward. I only mean that one can't know prior to setting out on the journey in what order the aspects of writing should be addressed. In fact, at the time of writing, one can only write the best as one knows how and from that perspective look back and notice how those aspects integrated themselves.

Once I have satisfactorily incorporated setting into my writing, I may then be in that golden position any artists strive for, that of beginning the long process of forgetting all the crap I've just described: the unlearning. It is a sought after place because -- again, I only believe because I haven't myself been there -- not until a writer can NOT think about his writing can he truly call what he's doing writing. Only when one can concentrate on his subject without awareness of his craft can he produce without a screen dimming his view. Knowing that I am not even to the top of the climb could be daunting, especially since I am 42 years old, but I find it inspiring. I imagine the real fear will be well after the learning, after the unlearning, when I have reached something that resembles mastery. At that point, I will only have me and the subject and there will be no excuses. I'll finally be naked, faced with describing that speeding wall of clouds.

Disclaimer: I've heard that some authors do this, so I'm not pretending I'm the original inventor of using a unique marker in any written works in progress.

Rarely will you sit at the computer and finish a piece in one sitting unless it's a flash piece or a short article or blog entry. For everything else, one needs a way of finding where you left off at the end of the previous writing session. Sometimes there are even multiple stopping points.

For instance, you write along and realizes new turn would be cool. But it requires you add a certain something higher up in the manuscript. You want to go back and add the detail. No problem. That is, there's no problem if you've stopped at the end of the manuscript. In that case, fine. Add the detail and skip to the end of the document. No trick needed.

But when is that the case? That you write a piece from beginning to end. If you're like me -- ever like me -- where you write as much as you can and later have the need to start writing from the middle of the manuscript. You insert a chapter or scene. You're right in the middle of everything. Now, when you have to add detail elsewhere or if you need to leave the document entirely for quick research, you need to find your place quickly when you return.

Remember: As in reading where anything that takes you out of the story should be avoided, anything that takes you out of the writing should also be avoided. Sidetracks like research and tweaking the details are necessary, but they need to progress with as much speed and fluidity as possible to keep in the zone.

So how do you get back to where you started? My answer?

swh which stand for Start Writing Here

I have not discovered those three letters next to each other in any writing. There may be a company or program out there with those letters, but how often will that really come up?

So all I do is type swh and I'm off to my edit. If I forget to go back to that marker, no harm done. If I have a number of them, I can search for them and close all the holes I left. And since I've come back to an swh and have forgotten exactly what I was working toward at that point, I've recently begun added a quick stream of consciousness note that is sure to jog my memory when I do eventually find it again.

swh:Wady concentrate faint shadows appear slowly mesmerizing OR swh:research bicycle-chain tool

If I do that, I make sure to add a return at the end of the line so I don't risk confusing the note with the text that may exist close by.

Try this or find your own marker. swh is surely not copyrighted. Just make sure you don't forget what tag you've chosen or you risk missing it in the manuscript.

If I've learned one thing about myself and my writing, it's that I cannot move forward if I can't solve a plotting problem or if I can't figure out what a character would do, say or see given a strange set of circumstances. I am overtaken by a feeling of dread until I've passed whatever obstacle I'm facing. I'll hash, rehash and re-rehash scenarios until doing so dominates my workday, intrudes upon my family time and derails my writing progress for sometimes weeks at a time. I'll write during these problem times, but the writing will, more often than not, consist of crap that I know while I'm writing it will never see completion. I have little doubt this is my single most problematic writing behavior.

Given a problem that requires an idea, like most creatives, I can come up with something for just about any set of circumstances. The difficulty comes in when I need to juggle many different ideas or when one idea affects the behavior, setting, rules, etc. of multiple other elements in a story. I envy those who can do such juggling solely in their heads. No. I don't envy them; I question their honestly. Come on. Really. Who can do that?

So, do I accept it. Hells no. I solves it. Here's how I've found works for me.

But some background first.

Whenever I come up with an idea for a story, I'll judge whether it's worth pursuing. Maybe the idea too similar to something else. Maybe it's smaller or larger an idea than I want to pursue at the time. Maybe I find a conflict that I recognize right away as unworkable. I've gotten pretty good at filtering for those things. But when I have found that workable idea of the right length, I start right into a story synopsis. Here's a piece of a synopsis to give you the idea of what sort of writing I do at this stage:

An Appalachian grandmother speaks to her granddaughter on the front porch on a warm Fall day. “You’ll have to pick daisies for me at the Greening Festival next Spring, Wady.” “We can pick ‘em together, Mammaw?” “No, Cherry Blossom. I won’t be goin’.” “Why not, Mammaw?” “I’ll have seen my fiftieth year come . I’ll be headin’ up the mountain to sit next to the King.” Confused look. “What do you mean, Mammaw.” A beautiful woman in her late twenties “Don’t scare Wady with that talk, Mama. She’s only eleven.” Mammaw puts her hand on Wady’s and gives her a wink.

No real structure. Just writing without breaks between staging. Nailing down the dialogue styles if it and disregarding characterization when it doesn't. All I'm doing is going from important moment to important moment. Each paragraph tends to be a beat, but even that is not key to stick to if it's slowing you down.

I wrote this way for a while until something wasn't hitting me quite right. I had originally wanted Wady to follow Mammaw to a mountain where she finds a disturbing secret. But I couldn't get her there without being told to go and the person I needed to tell her to go would be dead. And there was the issue of a "gift," a talent that needed its rules defined. In a moment I went from full-bore synopsizing to a two-headed problem. I could feel the brakes apply.

Story problems are usually a matter of choices. The story could go this way which would mean this and this would happen. Or it could go this way, in which case this and this and this would have to happen. Just thinking about it, as I've mentioned above, tends not to get my anywhere. At this point, I skipped past to the bottom of the synopsis document and, on a new page, started talking to myself. I start by asking questions. 

What is the gift, if not sight
If sight, how does this sight manifest itself

What was the pact and how does it relate to the gift AND the pennance?

What does any girl want? Love. But she must only bargain for it if that love cannot be attained. Love cannot be attained if the object of her love is taken or finds her unattractive. For this story, the more disturbing the better. Moonshine. Underaged sex. Mistaken love. A terrible wife. A wish for her death. A special death that relates to the pennance. “I will give you what you can’t have, but your blood will sign the name of each of the first-born women you who come after.” “I accept...who wouldn’t want to have what they can’t?”

During this synopsizing, I always arrive at a point where something doesn't work or I need to really nail down the rules that are going to be followed. Sometimes, a better idea will come from what I've written. In the case of the story start above, I realized pretty quickly that the backstory was going to be the real thing to read about.

So I left the part of the initial synopsis for the time, the one set in the present, and started a separate synopsis six generations in the past. I knew not all of the story in this section would be used, but I believed it would be necessary to know the history well:

While she’s out on a walk, Ruthie, a 14-year-old Appalachian girl (6 generations ago) finds a girl her own age standing by the edge of a pond. She asks Ruthie where she came from and what she’s doing and doesn’t her family worry about her out so far and blind. I’m Lurlene. What’s your name? Ruthie. Ruthie asks why she ain’t never seen Lurlene before. Lurlene says she’s blind, that she ain’t never seen no one before. Lurlene asks Ruthie if she wants to play an Appalachian game where they hold hands and spin. While spinning, Lurlene asks if she ever loved someone. Ruthie lets go, shocked that Lurlene can see inside her soul. Lurlene asks again. Yes, she loves a man right now. Thought so Lurlene says. Lurlene asks her about him. Ruthie waxes poetic about him. Lurlene tells her she used to love a man so badly that it ached like a sore tooth. Again Ruthie is amazed that they have so much in common. Lurlene asks if the other girl wants to see something. Ruthie says yes. Lurlene leads Ruthie to the edge of the pond where there’s a paw-paw tree. She looks long at the tree and eventually says...

Tasty. Better.

I ended up bringing this backstory to a natural end. By the time I was finished with it, I realized that none -- or little -- of the original synopsis was going to work. So it was back to the bottom for more brainstorming that could tie this clearly stronger backstory to a new setting in the present time. Mammaw's role had changed. What Wady had to accomplish was better defined. I needed the revelation of the secret to occur in the specific place I had worked out in the second synopsis.

Right now, I'm probably 90% done with the entire synopsis -- both past and present. I'll be going into the writing with a clear sense of where the story is going and what turns I need to take at what points and where and how I need to add important physical details. I expect the writing to flow well once I get started. Without these plot distractions, I'll be able to better concentrate on style, the stuff I believe really sells the story.

Toward the end of 2009, I resolved to make Wednesdays my submission days. I had done little submission throughout the year and that needed to change if I wanted to move forward. Wednesday, January 6th was my first opportunity of the new year to put my plan in motion.

As a first step I decided to reevaluate my submission process to-date and straighten out what was not working. Here were the previous shortcomings. 

The problem: Discipline
Submission is no fun. It is akin to preparing resumes, a job in itself. Each employer (publication or agent) asks for different formatting (guidelines). They have specific contact people (submission emails). And each is looking for the just the right employee to fit their needs (story). Its a lot of thankless work. One may not find out the result of his work for months. In some cases he may never find out. Wouldn't one rather write?

The solution: Just do it.
Simply put, submission is a necessary evil. It's an unavoidable task if one wants to get published. No sense having my finished works lying around collecting dust. There are no other options.

Despite there being a good deal of transferring info into the new format, what I ended up with was something far more useful to me given the way I think.

And I addressed the process I had found so frustrating last year. Instead of finding one publication then putting together all my materials for it, I took the advice of other writers. They suggested I take one submission day and either only gather publisher/agent info or only submit to publications/agents for which I had info. Don't try to combine the two tasks on the same day. They're different tasks and are best separated. Shifting gears over and over slows progress.

By the end of my Jan 6th session, I gave into temptation and submitted to a publication instead of only gathering company info. But the publication seemed perfect for a certain story I had been sitting on, so I made an exception. In this case, the publication's submission guidelines were particularly lax and that translated into a submission that didn't require much outside of sending the short story. If the same situation arises again, I'll probably do the same thing since there was little shifting gears necessary.

I'm already confident my new approach is the correct one because, unlike every moment I thought about it in 2009, I am not dreading my next submission date in four days.

I've already covered my Wednesday commitment to submit. Doing so feels good. Doing so also leaves me wondering what else I can do to make 2010 a better writing year. The first question is what improvements need to be made in my writing career.

1. Write faster.
   Run through the first draft. Make changes to subsequent drafts more efficiently.
2. Improve my writing-related organization.
   Set aside a time for writing. Presently, I write a good bit but the time is scattered throughout the day.
3. Submit more.
   I basically don't submit so the bar is low. My goal is to improve on the amount of submission I was supposed to be doing. I suppose, in large part, that goes back to #2: organization.
4. Read more quality fiction that will improve my own work.
   To be clear, I'm not talking about reading something and ripping it off substantively or stylistically. I'm talking about allowing the influence of well-crafted words to change my writing for the better.
5. Read more about the craft of writing and the writing lifestyle.
   One can never hear the same good advice too many times. And in the course of reading that same advice, one regularly stumbles onto one of three things:
   1. The same advice is phrased in such a way you haven't heard before, allowing it to hit home
   2. The same advice finally hits you at the right time in your writing evolution
   3. You might actually pick up something new, unlikely as that may seem to more seasoned writers.
6. Attend more writing-related events.
   There are appearances, conferences, seminars, etc., all of which reinvigorate a writer's occasionally-flagging flame. There are handshakes to be shared and opportunities to be jumped on. There are new lessons to be learned. I have done little of this in my career so far and that must be improved upon.
7. Improve my writing space.
   I nearly wrote a posting on this one alone, but decided to include all the above items because my current inefficiency doesn't come down to my work space alone. That said, this could be my biggest obstacle. I need comfort and quiet without distraction. I am committed to read more about how to make that happen then...make that happen.

So here is my plan. Do all those things.

Okay, it's not a plan, but there is something to be said for getting it all out there in black and white. Admitting we have a problem is the first step to making change, right?

So, do the same! Make a list of all the ways you can improve upon your writing in 2010. Even if you improve in one category (and don't fall back in another) that's an improvement.

Ring image courtesy of CrazyAboutCrafting

I have had a particularly difficult time writing since starting my detailed outline of my current novel in the works. This current difficulty is surprising in that the story itself is pretty much laid out for me. All that is left is the writing. I've pondered this for days, wondering what is the slow-down.

I considered if I've run out of passion for writing. While not wanting to write can sound like "not wanting to write," I knew in my soul writing is here to stay, that it is something deep within my genes. There's no getting rid of it.

I considered my ADD or my crippling lack of organizational skill was too severe to overcome, that I would be doomed never to complete a long or in any way complicated work. I looked at my detailed outline and knew that couldn't be the case. It was/is not perfect, but it's perfect enough to allow me to write without a significant risk of cornering myself with a plot hole.

I considered I may lack the maturity to sit my butt down and do the hard work. This is probably a contributing factor, something which needs to be addressed sooner than later. But as the main reason, it lacked legs. I sit for hours and work on websites, a task that, over time, has given me less satisfaction but that I do well. I also recdntly completed P90X, that maniacal exercise challenge/program from the infomercials, on my first attempt. So I have discipline. Something else is at work.

Ashamedly possessing what I've described as a "mystical bone," I took something akin to a spirit walk to look at how I was thinking about the story itself. I often wake up in the middle of the night and think or work for an hour. In this time, my creativity seems closer to the surface. Sometimes I'll come up with a solution to a design problem or I'll be "given" the solution to a POV issue that's been bugging me for days. I might realize how to handle a parenting issue. Anything. But just as often, I'll be able to see a problem that I didn't realize was there in the first place. The answer to my writing difficulty was "revealed" to me in this way.

Days and days have gone by with my writing at a constipated pace. I've written the beginning of the story five or six times, doubting the direction of these first steps each time, hearing the voices of my critique partners in my ears. Beckie would say this or Joe would ask that. Sanford would urge me to start more aggressively.

Then it hit me. I was no longer writing the story of my heart from my heart. I was auditioning every word for the people who would see it in a couple weeks. Like asking permission to take each step, it was taking me forever to get across the room or, in this case, get the story written.

One can't write effectively with eyes over his shoulder or with the voices of his audience in his head. Doing so is not joyful writing and if one writes without joy he may as well take out the trash or wash the dog.

An article in the most recent issue of Writers Digest mentioned that critique groups can sometimes stifle a writer's creativity by building in him the urge to write for those people, knowing what each of his peers picks up on.

Guilty. 

(Footnote: The fact that there is a downside to critique groups -- or anything related to writing, for that matter -- doesn't mean that one should exclude them from one's consideration, only that one should know and avoid that specific downside. One wouldn't stay home just because there is a potentially car-ruining pothole on the way to work; one would drive around it.)

As soon as I realized that was what I was doing, the desire to write returned as if it were Granola and I just got found starving in the forest. 

So my advice at this point is this. Write for yourself. You guessed it. That means keep your critique group out of it. Keep your spouse and your kids out of it. Keep your mom out of it. Keep your 5th grade English teacher out of it. Keep the invisible eyes of your present or potential audience out of it.

Writing for yourself doesn't mean you need to be selfish or stupid. You still need to integrate your writing schedule with family and work. And you still need to avoid overtly stupid writing errors if you have an eye on getting published. What writing for yourself means to me is keep the child in you who always loved writing interested in the writing.

When you sat in your room as a teen, writing the story you HAD to write, you never thought about how women's groups in Pennsylvania might accept your lead character's misogynistic tendencies, right? Well, don't set out to intentionally offend anyone, but also don't set out to appease anyone for the sake of safety or sales. I'd bet you didn't try to write the story perfectly; it was the story that mattered most, not the perfection of every line. If you're reading this, you probably want to get published and that's fine, but you can't afford to let that slow or soften your work, especially in the early drafts.

Write the story you had in mind the way you envisioned it. If you're involved in a good critique situation, you'll be able to take what you need and won't offend anyone by leaving what you don't need behind. They'll let you know if you've gone unmarketably too far. They'll also let you know if something doesn't make sense. Hopefully, they'll let you know when you're probably worrying about nothing too.

But, at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter who says what. If you knew today you'd never get published, would you really stop writing? Probably not. So you must embrace writing for yourself and trust the craft will improve on its own.

As I have mentioned before, I am writing my long-time-bubbling-in-the-background novel by using an in-depth plot outline before beginning the real writing. The process has been surprising in a few ways. Below, I describe a what a detailed outline is for me and how it can benefit one's writing as well as ways in which it is not a perfect tool. 

So what is a detailed outline?
When I began outlining, I wasn't sure to what degree of detail I needed to go but after working on it a while I hit on a decent analogy. Write in the same way you would describe the story to someone if you were sitting on a couch with them. Don't leave out any important details but instead of telling the story, you're interested in telling them about the story with an aim to keep their interest. This way, you've got a good gauge of how long to linger at different points in the story and when you need to step up the pace.  

Detailed outlining is -- or maybe can be -- a slow process.
When I began outlining, I would say I had a decent idea of how the story was going to go; however, once I got in to the outlining, I realized there were -- or would have been -- many sections that would have stopped me in my tracks. Little logic errors here and there or places where I needed to decide which of two characters should die first or, in fact, whether one of the characters in question should die at all. Solving these problems in the outline proved to require no less time that they would have during the writing, but solving them at this early stage did not require stopping my writing momentum.

Detailed outlining helps someone like me.
I've made no secret about my easy distractibility. Whereas the seat-of-you-pantsers -- which always sounds a little too Nazi tank squadron for my liking -- seems somehow to avoid or correct plot holes as they occur, I am glaringly unable to do so. In the beginning when I first began serious writing, I tried many different ways of approaching the craft in an attempt to find the process that worked for me. I found the most successful work environment: coffee house that isn't freezing or McDonald's-ish or with sub-par coffee (are you listening Starbucks?). I found the writing tools that work best for me: MacBook Pro using Pages, noise canceling earbuds, Monroe Products' "So" Chord or other non-vocal ambient music. I found that, for whatever reason, I write better when dressed for work rather than sweats and tee. I work better in the ridiculously early morning or immediately following a nap. It turns out I MUST have an outline of the entire story (or at least for an entire major section) in order to keep everything in line or I'll chase a great idea into an unworkable corner every time. 

Detailed outlining has most of the qualities of writing the actual story.
I find that, as I work through the outline, the characters come alive in nearly the same way as the do in the actual writing. That came as the biggest surprise of all. I would have guessed the outline to be cold and distant, but i caught myself thinking "my character wouldn't do/say that" many times and, in those instances, it was comforting to know the fix could not only be quick but I could just note a suggestion as to the change. I didn't need to take time to nail down the exact wording. I found this part of outlining similar to a playwrite's staging notes: "Chetan backs away, stumbling back in his terror at..." And in the event a whole section does go off track, it's way easier to redirect/correct an entire chapter than the long-form story.

Detailed outlining keeps the story moving.
Somewhat akin to guiding oneself away from tempting tangents, outlining in this way moves the story from one gripping moment to the next. When all one has are the basic events and the important items to remember, one tends not to ruminate unnecessarily in any one place for too long.

Detailed writing -- I've been assured -- makes the actual writing easier. 
Chris Roberson (who can be see here doing childish cartwheels) encouraged me to consider detailed outlining when he spoke to the San Antonio Writers Guild in mid-2009. In that talk, he said the main benefit of outlining, past the reasons I've already mentioned above, was that once the actual writing begins, one cruises. He said that it is not unusual to pop out 20 pages -- good pages -- in a day because all the questions are answered. The path is cleared, so all one has to do is walk it, or in this case, run it. And to confuse things with another layer, the benefit of writing at that pace is the voice remains more consistent throughout the work, something which which a beginning writer may struggle. Too often, I have taken too long on a story. When I've finished and read it back, the writer at the beginning of the work is clearly in one state of mind or skill level and in a different place by the end. Readers enjoy experiencing change in a character through a story, but I'm pretty sure they don't look for or appreciate that same change in the writer.

Possible pitfalls of detailed outlining.
It's difficult to do more than guess at the possible pitfalls of working this way since I haven't done much actual writing based on the outline work, but I know one element that doesn't fit well into the outline is setting and sensation. Since the outline works exclusively with gripping events and the bridges between them, only the parts of setting that are key to those events being possible are included. A good idea may be to note at the top of each outline "Don't forget to paint a picture," and "Remember the five senses;" otherwise, the writing may stick too literally to the events, making the story sound cold and distant. I'll have to remember to turn the heat on when I start writing.

The verdict.
I wouldn't want to work any other way when it comes to longer works. I can certainly see a place for seat-of-my-pants at some point. Maybe detailed outlining will teach me enough about what does and doesn't work in plots so that someday I can just wing it. That just isn't possible now. I almost wrote that for shorter works, a detailed outline may be unnecessary, but I think one may be even more necessary given the less forgiving nature of short works compared to long. So let me say, for works under 1000 words one probably doesn't need an outline. For anything else, please give it a shot.

Detailed patterns in line drawings by Pedro Lucena courtesty of Gentle Pure Space: Graphic design, art, and other creative inspiration.

First Drafts Are Worthless

First drafts of any work are bad. You will be terribly disappointed if you show your first draft to your classmates, teacher, wife, friends. They may smile and say nice things, but that doesn't prove me wrong; it only proves that you have nice friends. Get over it. Like unicorns, finished first drafts only except in fantasy. But unlike unicorns, first drafts should be ugly, messy, scattered things. To think otherwise is a waste of time and energy. But that is not to say first drafts are in any way useless.

First Drafts Are Not Useless

Creating First Drafts

Yesterday (Saturday) I read the short article, "[Exercise Your Pen] New Beginnings" in the September issue of Writers Digest, an excerpt from B. J. Hollars's You Must Be This Tall to Ride: Contemporary Writers Take You Inside the Story. In it, Hollars suggests writing 10 to 20 first sentences of stories only. The exercise is a break icebreaker for the artist combatting writers block and had a number of benefits.

Among these is the ability to not be so serious for a change. With the directive NOT to consider the 20 or more pages that might follow any of these lines, the author is allowed to devote his full attention to that one opener itself. That concentration focuses the mind on creating the very most enticing hook for a story.

Once one has begun writing creating the sentences, the directive not to continue with the story idea transforms from a blessing to irksome to torturous.

I created opening sentences for the stories I had done some work on already but hadn't quite developed, then I moved onto the brief notes from a small notebook I keep with me at all times. When I was finished I had closer to 30 opening sentences and I had revealed another benefit of the exercise.

Beyond good practice crafting opening sentences and adding a twist and some freedom to a writing session, I now have a quick go-to sheet I can use the next time I need to start a new story. Not only that, but developing the story ideas from the tiny notebook reminded me of why I had written each of the notes. Now there's a far slimmer a chance I'll let them fester inside, never to be developed into the story i once knew could be there.

I'm not talking about my ripped stomach or a peach when I say "hard in the middle". I don't have either at the moment, a fact which causes me great sadness. I love peaches and I'm sure my wife would love my having a ripped stomach.

No. I'm talking about a phenomenon that I've experienced in my art career including painting, graphic and web design, songwriting and fiction writing: that of the difficulty that shows up in the middle of any artistic process.

No matter how inspired our idea, no matter how energetic the start, no matter how tight the pre-planning, the middle twists around, tempts one to the outside edge where things get unfocused and thin. The middle is where the shapelessness of tedium allows the mind to wander. The middle is where certainty and new intelligence -- what has revealed itself to us in the process of producing art -- overlap and turn into what seems at the time a hopeless mud.

Push through and have faith in the original idea. Your abilities will rewarded with a finished work worth the effort. Once you've witnessed this magic for yourself, you'll have a success in your pocket on which to build more and more successes. For some, one time will be enough to get him over future humps; for others, many victories will have to be won before he can push past the middle point on his own.

This push is similar to running headlong into a forest with the goal of making it out alive on the other side. You enter thinking you'll go straight in, reach halfway and go straight back out. But once you're in you realize trees are in the way, there's an impassible cliff or a swift river. You have to change your plan. You might even have to rethink your path to the point you feel you're so far off track you'll never complete the trip. But the writing process is complex terrain. You'll find you've overestimated the obstacle or it will turn out the long backtrack takes you to a subplot you hadn't planned. That middle point wasn't a problem. As cliche as it sounds, it was an opportunity. More importantly, it was necessary.

The fact that there's not always a gun to your head when it comes to writing makes a middle push more difficult because, when its all said and done, one doesn't HAVE to get to a finishing point. However, a writing life is a craft. You only succeed if you practice the whole game, not only the beginning of the game until you tire or start losing. Games can be won from behind; stories can be completed despite difficulty.

Saying this doesn't offer the writer much specific advice. What specifically does one do faced with the sticky middle? My advice risks sounding boring but again, rule number one holds true: Keep writing. Solutions you might be tempted to think about for days usually solve themselves in minutes in the writing. Not specific enough? If you need an exact first step, I give you this:

Typically, identifying and solving the largest problem in front of you is all you have to do. Identify and solve. When we look at a work, no matter the medium. We're either satisfied (and that means we're finished) or we're not satisfied.

What leads us to feel unsatisfied? Something is not answered or it's answered in a wrong or distasteful way.

The good news is we can, with practice, learn to identify that the one main problem. Multiple problems group themselves together like the funny short characters in films or cartoons who stand on one another's backs wearing a trench coat in an effort to fool another, usually menacing character. Look for the one problem, solve it and move on to the next one. Eventually, all the problems will be solved and you'll be satisfied with your work. You'll be finished.

I'm a huge believer that there is no such thing as writer's block. Any sort of delay or difficulty, whatever name you give it, is only fear in some shape or other.

A smart writer -- meaning one who is dedicated to the craft, who is open to criticism and who considers himself a perpetual student --  must develop a blind trust in the powers of the calm brain. Any task that is set before us will always seem more difficult to some degree when we think about it away from pen or keyboard. Conversely, any challenge we face will always become easier during the act of writing.

At midnight yesterday, I received my prompt for Round 2 of the NYC Midnight contest about which I've been blogging for the last couple months: Drama / A Pier / A putter (a golf club). As is my normal procedure, I laced up my walking shoes and pounded the pavement, confident the juices would flow and deliver me a terrific start to a story.  An hour and a half later, I had ideas but not the one, good, big idea I needed to get started with confidence. At least that seed wasn't waving its hand to be recognized.

No one likes walking into the dark unfamiliar and I am no exception -- of course, ironically, I do walk late at night on familiar streets, as I've mentioned. I headed to the local coffee shop this morning with nothing more than crumbs in my virtual bag when what I wanted, felt I needed, was a whole muffin of a story idea. So what did I do?

I opened up Pages (Mac word processor) and I wrote. That's it. I wrote. I got my character stoned between the fifth and sixth holes on a disk golf course and turned the screws on him. That's what he gets for hiding, right? There's something about vomiting ideas into some visual form. Write it. Type it. As long as your fingers are engaged, you're on the right path. Yes, you'll be crapping crappy crap for a while, but something magical happens if you just let go. And thinking is for the birds. Some amount of it is necessary. I did some nasty thinking when the prompt came in. Confession: I didn't know exactly what made drama...drama. I searched for good definitions and examples so my mind would know where to go to dream, but that was pretty much the extent of it.

So consider this my trademarked writing law:

Writing success is directly proportional to the degree of activity in our fingers and the degree of stillness in our mind.

Said in a way that fits nicely onto a bumper sticker:

It all comes out in the writing.

Reading all of this, you might think I'm contradicting things I've written about writing in previous posts, that I sound like I'm writing by the seat of my pants. I guess that does require some clarification.

First off, I don't argue against seat of the pants writing. Nor do I argue against careful planning. But if you're facing a situation where you must sit and write, I'm arguing that you can ALWAYS do it. There is no wasted time and there is no wrong direction (provided you know the basic definitions required for the task at hand, such as my need to have the elements of drama better defined).

Especially for longer works, careful planning is necessary. It has been said that short stories, moreso than novel-length works, require it. Flash pieces -- especially flash pieces with a two-day deadline --  calls for a different process. But even in the careful planning stages I mention, there is a temptation to rub our foreheads, to dawdle and tell ourselves we're anguishing, squeezing out the good stuff.

Trust me when I say the good stuff only shows up when you're recording actual words, be they story, outline, synopsis or notes.

As much as I'd love to say it's not a numbers game, I admit it is largely that. A poor fisherman will catch more fish that an excellent fisherman who never goes near the water. If you never ask the pretty girl to the dance, she won't know you wanted to go. Wayne Gretzky once said, when criticized about the number of off-target shots he had taken over a span of play, and I paraphrase, "We miss 100% of the shots we do not take."

The same is true with submitting stories. If you don't submit, you can't get published. Simple as that. The more you submit the more chances you have to get rejected, true, but you also increase your chances of getting a piece accepted.

If you've ever heard the saying "There's someone for everyone" then you understand that eventually, even poor work gets accepted by someone. If this is true for the crappiest writers among us, then shouldn't the best among us have a far easier time?

Yes and no. It's better, but not simple. Some poor work eventually gets accepted, but some excellent work gets rejected too. In fact, a ton of it does. I won't steal the figures I've read about some of history's greatest authors beginning their careers with thousands of rejections, but it's true and dreadful and inspiring at once.

So what do we do with this knowledge? Mope? Celebrate? No. You submit. Then you submit again...and again. I say this bravely now, but I'm guilty of not submitting often. I have not enjoyed the process so far but I have turned a corner, have kicked myself in the pants and have been submitting at least once a day.

I used to play D & D and other role-playing games before computers could keep track of all the stats for you. That meant a shit-load of dice rolls. 4-sided, six-sided, eight-, ten-, twelve and twenty-sided dice. Over and over for every imaginable reason. I've seen every roll. Once I faced an overwhelming single character, a hero, who could have easily wiped out every one of my 2000-man army and proceeded to kill me, their docile king. For giggles, I asked the Dungeon Master (just as nerdy-sounding now as then) if I could attempt to kill the hero with a single catapult shot. The Dungeon Master -- we'll call him Tracy -- scratched his chin and murmured, "Nothing is impossible. You'd have to roll a 100." For those of you who are unfamiliar with what that means, "rolling a 100" meant rolling a 0 on each of two 20-sided dice: a 1% chance of hitting the hero. I rolled two zeros. I hit the hero. I did a backflip, so great was my joy. Then I had to roll for damage. Another zero would mean the hero was killed outright. I rolled a zero. I ran around the room Roger Rabbit-style for a minute while my sobbing opponent curse me, the dungeon master and the gods in general.

You see? I had the gall to ask. That alone allowed for the ridiculous luck to occur. Let's apply that to a submission.

You have a story about dog who has died and battles evil in the afterlife. It's well-written but, you fear an unsellably oblique idea for a story. What you don't/didn't know is publication/agent A has just lost a dog to an unfortunate popsicle accident. You ponder your options. You can bury the story in a stack or you can take the leap and submit it. Now you've unleashed yourself in two parallel universes. You #1 has a crazy story in a stack and no one gets hurt. You #2 however, has enjoyed a summertime popsicle so when you lick the envelope (supposing you're not submitting electronically) you leave a tint of blue sugar on the seal. A day or two later, the depressed recipient nears the end of his/her work day but sees a blue streak on the back of the top envelope that, somehow, has landed upside down. He/she opens the envelope to read about the heroic dead dog. It's a perfect healing fit. Voila, you're published. You #2 receives a publishing credit and a $10 check which he uses to buy a pair of 20-sided dice like he used to kill a hero a long time ago.

Bottom line: submit. The more you do the easier the roll.

Another added benefit of submitting your work is that doing so forces an author to face reality. Once I finish a story, I generally feel a flush of pride. Another story complete. I could place it on a stack and think of it forever after as a special accomplishment. Or I could plan to show it at critique. That shines a light on the work and forces the author to take a closer look. After all, real people are going to read it and judge me to some degree for its weaknesses and strengths. The next level is submission. This is the world looking at your story. You're not simply getting the work ready for colleagues; this is the world. Knowing the story is going in front of a stranger who will be being scrutinizing your work for its fitness to be shown to potentially thousands of viewers forces an author to make the story as perfect as possible. Knowing this is the end goal for the story only helps the author's craft.

So by submitting, you improve your craft and increase your chances for adding items to your resume. In my mind, that qualifies as a win-win.

What Do A Lobster, A Waiting Room and the Fantasy Genre Have in Common? It turns out, not very much. Still that was the prompt my group was given in the second round of the NYC Midnight contest that ran from a minute until midnight on Friday until the same on Sunday night:

• Genre: Fantasy
• Location: A travel agency
• Object: A lobster

When I received the prompt, I deflated.

Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre I've read but not deeply and not recently. I suppose Gaiman is fantasy, but I think that's not the sort we're talking about here.

A Travel Agency
To be truthful, I've never spoken to a travel agent, nor have I used the services of a travel agency.

Lobster
I don't like the idea of lobster, the bottom feeders. I don't like their treatment, their pincers rubber banded together, the overcrowded retail tanks, their eventual live dive into boiling water.

I repeat: I deflated.

Not only was I not stoked about any of the three elements of the prompt, I found joining all three of them into a story particularly difficult. With some difficulty, I could marry Fantasy with Travel Agency. I could create a believable equivalent of a medieval or such travel agency. I could marry Fantasy with a Lobster. That was possibly the easiest combination of the three. And I could marry a lobster with a Travel Agency with a Lobster. Okay THAT would be the easiest of the three. But it was that third element that kept throwing a wrench into my thinking.

Scenario: A fellow goes into a travel agency, ends up on a vacation with a beach. Voila! Lobster. Do I introduce a fantasy creature? A secret door into a fantasy world? Introduce a quest?

The problem was not so much that I could think of a storyline; it was that I couldn't think of a storyline that fit into the 950-word flash fiction format. By the time I've done the travel agency thing, there's little more room for the introduction of the story itself.

Reading this, you might be thinking there are a hundred things coming to mind, but my thinking was this: everyone is going to go funny; everyone is go funny or cutsy. But this is a competition. I not only need to write a solid story, but the real marketing truth of the matter is that my story needs to stand out as well. I'm not talking about in a cliche' way though. I mean I couldn't simply go with my first idea. That's the one most folks run with due to the 48-hour time constraint. I needed to think a couple levels deeper and still have a good story.

I ran into dead end after dead end. Unable to sleep and finding no success dreaming on the prompt, I decided I had to walk. 

From a very early age, I would piss my mom off by skipping the school bus and walking home. On the walk home, I would sing, monologue, create poetry (that I never wrote down) or read. Even now, when faced with deadlines, I find that a long walk or a long bicycle ride is a perfect way to release the brain juices.

I headed out at 4am. In 2 miles, I had gotten a mild workout, seen hordes of bats gobble up less fortunate hordes of insects and had come up with the seed of the story line that could combine the disparate prompt elements. It was like magic. It never fails. I headed to the San Antonio Writers Guild Saturday write-in at 8am tired and not having written a word but armed with a short arc.

The next time you're faced with a difficult challenge, be it personal, professional or creative, I suggest finding some rhythmic activity to lull your mind into its deeper workings. There's a drumbeat to how we think and that sort of activity can bring it out when you need it.

To write even when one isn't writing sounds manic and there probably is a manic aspect to it, but mania comes with the territory.

This week, Sunday (June 7th) until yesterday, proved to be a test of will. My older son attended a cycling development camp in Lubbock. Relative to my home in San Antonio, Lubbock sits in that gray zone where it's a bit too close to fly in and a bit too far to drive. So I had to drive him in.

It's a 7-hour trip one way with stops. That wouldn't be so bad if a few days separated the drive up and the drive back but, for mundane reasons related to remaining days, I needed to drive back the next day, Monday, a work day. Camp lasted through the week and pickup was on Friday, another work day. And I decided, in the interest of keeping costs down, I'd drive back the same day.

With two workdays lost, I needed to squeeze five workdays into three. Let's break that down:

• Sunday: 7-hour drive
• Monday: 7-hour drive
• Tuesday: 13-hour work day starting at 4am so I could make my Tuesday night critique.
• Wednesday: 13-hour work day
• Thursday: 12-hour workday, which leaves me 2 hours in the hole. I'll knock those out today, Saturday.
• Friday: 14 hours of drive time, half of which was spent in close quarters with a teenager who needed to relate his experience, including sharing the dorm with about 500 cheerleaders who were, in his words,"No, dad, you don't understand-" hot.

Can I get a holy shit up in this mutha?

But what does any of this rant have to do with writing? Two things, really.

1. You never stop writing, even when you're not actually writing.
   Whether or not you have a story in the works. Endless time to one's self is a perfect time to brainstorm ideas. Passing endless miles brings one into contact with innumerable settings, people and situations, any one of which can spark an idea or a character.
    
2. It turns out there really are times you can let yourself off the hook and not write.
   I'm a self-proclaimed advocate of writing every day. I've missed a day or two along the way in the last three years and have always kicked myself for having done so. The excuse never seems to justify breaking my promise to myself. But this week proved too daunting. I wrote Sunday and Monday; a 7-hour drive left me enough of my faculties to produce decent work but the remainder of the days sapped every ounce of energy I had. That being the case, I still had my head in the game.

The Factory Effect

After sitting at the computer for 13 hours (which is really a 15-hour commitment with breaks and lunch) one might not have the energy to put fingers to keyboard another moment, but something curious happens during drudging tasks that I like to call the factory effect.

I used to work at the Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville. My responsibilities there never didn't include hour upon hour of mind-drubbing simple, tedious tasks. My mind was basically turned off for eight hours at a time. During that spell in my life, I was performing in a band. I was always writing music, humming to myself, tapping out rhythms, etc. I found that when I got home at the end of the day, all that churning over a tune or rhythm translated into a couple hours of intense focus and creativity. I wrote some of my best pieces after work.

I find this phenomenon to hold true in any artistic endeavor. Waiting rooms, long drives, family obligations, time at work. These can all be used to our advantage. These are times to wind up, to pull the bow string back. When that energy is released, you can run for miles.

I was initially going to title this post "The Value of Hand-writing Your Story" but I realized even before my fingers hit the keyboard that there is value in changing up your method, locale, genre, preferred length of work and more whenever daily writing takes on aspects of being a chore instead of a beloved outlet and means of self-expression.

In recent weeks, I have to admit, I've had a difficult time keeping the passion flowing into my writing. I suspect that the recent stumble onto a story idea that is too similar to an existing one--that was actually made into a movie, for God's sake, that I had heard NOTHING about--is behind my diminished focus and direction.

So, did I give up writing every day? No. Did I suffer from writer's block. No. So what did I do?

I struggled, first of all. It wasn't easy but what I found worked for me was identifying and changing up every aspect of my writing. Instead of writing at my writing station--which is nothing more than turning my chair 180° from my work work station to face my laptop--I moved my laptop downstairs, onto the back patio, to various coffee shops, and in my car using an inverter plugged into the cigarette lighter. Instead of whittling away on my novel-length works, I went to the opposite extreme, challenging myself to write Twitter-length (140 characters, not words, characters) stories and slightly longer flash fiction pieces. And in the last week, instead of using the laptop, I've been writing longhand in one of the composition notebooks left over from my recent engagement at Eisenhower.

As a result of these changes, I was able to keep writing every day. Trudging along the way I was, I was risking a genuine burn-out. Now I have emerged, eager to get back to my old ways soon, not quite yet but soon. I'm actually liking the pace and method of writing longhand for the piece I'm working on. I think, in the interest of consistency, I'd be wise to finish the first draft in the same manner I started. Doing so is nowhere near as fast as far as letters per minute is concerned but there's something more focused about writing this way.

So my advice to you is try to recognize early when you're entering a burn-out phase and stir the pot in any and every way you know how. The works you're in the middle of can probably wait and would probably be better served if you did. Deal with the burn-out first then return to work as usual but exercise care not to make your burn-out an easy excuse to get sloppy with your writing. Your focus is still on the craft even if everything around it has changed for a time.

Allowing enough time for writing while holding down a full-time job has got to be the hardest part of a committed writer's lifestyle. Add to the mix quality family time, exercise and time for self-reflection and the task becomes even harder.

Solutions: quit the full-time job; reduce the quality of work at the full-time job; get fat; do coke; go mad; suicide; bag up the family and drop them off a bridge; quit writing. All of these are poor solutions, especially the quitting writing, so what's a girl to do? (Sorry, I've been writing the Mr. Salley story for too long now.)

I've read versions of this advice a number of times in different sources, so I'll skip the credits. Basically what they all get at is how important it is for a new writer to map out what you do everyday for maybe a week. After the week, take a look at the blocks of time that you've wasted--and there will be more than you could have imagined.

Taoists (yes I am) believe that you can't save time, no matter what infomercial tool you buy, you can only waste it. That reminds me of another rule that I should add to the list of writers' rules that I've tried to compile in the past. You know, it's the one that starts out with write every day without exception.

New Rule: TV is the devil! Avoid all of it (except project runway, bbc news and english premier league football, of course).

Now that you've identified what the devil is, you can walk around him, work around it. Voila! You now have time for writing. By eliminating TV from your life (with the previously-stated exceptions) you've not only freed up time for writing, you've freed up your mind, you've saved your job, your life, your family and a trip to the bridge.