My iPod nano is a "magic stick." It is a Heath bar of music. It is my new best friend.

If you didn't know, I'm a complete music nut since the age of...well, young...always. My folks used to listen to Seals and Crofts, the Carpenters, Leo Kottke, Dolly Parton, James Taylor, any more good ones as we drove hour upon hour across America on vacations. We'd sing endlessly. We'd make up songs. A real nerdy, artsy upbringing in many ways.

The real change for me came when I first realized how crappy my sister's taste in music was. It probably wasn't her taste as I think back on it but at the time I couldn't wrap my head around why someone would listen to the Bee Gees, Styx and Peter Frampton. And, growing up and wanting to be my own boy, I didn't want to listen to the same stuff my parents listened to. When I first heard the exquisitely produced Double Vision by Foreigner (don't laugh yet) I realized there was more out there than the crap pop my sister was listening to even if Foreigner wouldn't be the band to bite me per se.

A string of events occurred in quick succession:

• I heard Heart of Glass by Blondie and bought the single -- bite 1
• I followed my first videos show Pop Clips and discovered Split Enz and bought True Colors -- bite 2
• I heard Rush's Tom Sawyer -- bite 3
• In a religious moment, I heard Adam and the Ants' Stand and Deliver -- bite 4 (the big bite)
• I followed up on this mysterious David Bowie character -- a fatal bite
• Seeing my reaction to it, an already well-entrenched music nut friend of my sister's introduced me to early Men Without Hats, Joy Division, some unsigned New York bands that I never got their names, and Roxy Music, -- bitten deep and wholly

I would never look back. Since those early years -- late 70s early 80s -- I've amassed a ridiculous collection of music now three times: albums, cassettes then CDs.

The bottom line is, when I received my iPod on Father's Day a week or so ago, I spent the following week converting my CDs to iTunes files, correcting data, grouping, finding cover art and Geniusing the hell out the collection to make thrilling playlists.

It was a week well spent.

Regarding Black Metal and Death Metal

Along with the iPod, my family got me an iTunes gift card which I spent almost instantly on Meshuggah's Obzen and Gorgoroth's Ad Majorem Sathanas Glorium.

I have spent the last six months pouring through the black/death metal genre and have found my personal favorites:

• Best black metal: Gorogoroth
• Best death metal: Amon Amarth
• Best black/death metal from a musician's standpoint: Meshuggah
• Best recent black/death metal album: (Tie) The Dethalbum by Dethklok or Twilight of the Thunder Gods by Amon Amarth
• Best genre guitarist: Ese (Windir and Vreid) for a terrific guitar sound and style. Right to the heart.
• Vocalist: Gaahl of Gorgoroth for his lyrics, delivery and his unapologetic exit from the closet.
• Drummer: Tomas Haake (like he needs more recognition)

Honorable mention goes to Dave Mustaine, Venom and countless misguided Norwegians without whom the genre would not have existed.

Now I can return to my normal listening habits, integrating black/death metal in a natural fashion.

The WritersWeekly Summer 2009 24-hour Short Story Contest begins at noon a month from today.

Last time I entered, I was 1 of 23 participants who earned honorable mention. My story was called Into Spirit and Speck. It was a 1000-word story about a witch, who has turned her captive man into a clump the size of a fava bean, must overcome her failing memory to find where she's placed him before a dark winter storm descends.

Visit the winners page here »

This go-around should be a bit better in that I have months more writing under my belt and I know what to expect in a gun-to-your-head writing competition. I brought my last entry to critiques after the Fall contest and learned a lot about things I need to take into consideration in tomorrow's contest.

Shawn Edgell, aka Motke Dapp, of ICG Link fame just placed in the top ten in this year's Tweet Me A Story competition held by our friends at NYC Midnight Movie Madness. So a big congratulations to him.

Visit the winners page here »

Him win scores him free entry into the NYC Midnight Creative Writing Championships: Flash Fiction 2009 that begins tomorrow at a minute before midnight.

Here's his winning entry:

"I want to like you, but I don't," she said, a tear streaking her makeup. He removed her arms, placed them in the box, and mailed her back."

Visit Shawn (or Motke. He's not picky.) at www.motke.net to view his painting, writing, film work and his...his what? Hrm. Tread lightly, is my advice.

Oh, yeah. NYC Midnight (NYC Midnight Movie Madness, LLC) is holding their annual Creative Writing Championships again. Starting at 11:59pm Friday, June 19th -- that's two days away (gulp) -- we get our first prompt: a setting, a genre and an object. Writers then have two days to create a single 1000-word story. This is called a "challenge." Each challenge gives writers a two-day window. Contestants are guaranteed at least two challenges and the most successful entrants will compete in as many as four. Each early challenge scores the writer points. Those with the most points in the first two challenges move to the second round. The cream of that new, smaller group moves to the final round.

• 1st Round (Challenge #1) June 19-21, 2009
• 1st Round (Challenge #2) July 25-27, 2009
• 2nd Round (Challenge #3) August 22-24, 2009
• 3rd Round (Challenge #4) September 19-21, 2009

I'm feeling pretty good about my chances to move along the rounds. I've put in my time and have some decent chops now but the deadlines can really screw with a writer's psyche. Then there's the genre aspect. I'm not as well read as many, so I'm guessing I'll find fitting my work in unfamiliar genres most challenging. 1000 words may not seem like a lot of work, but these all have to be beginning-middle-end, full stories, edited and reedited, all within two days. That's 48 hours, some of which must be assigned to sleep.

The bad luck of it is my older son has a crit North of Austin and it's Father's Day. The latter wouldn't be a factor is my younger boy were a bit older, but he's still just young enough that those sorts of holidays still carry some weight.

Getting the story completed with Sunday's obstacles will be a fun test of my dedication to the craft. I'm a website designer, so I have tons of experience working within a deadline. Maybe the ticking clock will work to my advantage.

Last year's winner was Chelsea Bauch, a NYU grad and a writer/editor working with such notable publications as The Onion AV Club, JC Report, Boldtype and Flavorpill.

Read Chelsea's post-win interview »
Also, visit her blog, Dorkscape, here »

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.

• Start in the middle of the action.
• Static characters are okay.
• Allow only brief, telling character descriptions.
• Run with small ideas.

Sanford Nowlin (sanfordallen.com and www.missionsunknown.com) laid these and other flash fiction writing and selling tips on the San Antonio Writers Guild members at our June meeting. In his blog, Candy Skulls!, Sanford describes his [then] upcoming talk best:

What’s flash fiction? The short answer is that it’s about a third to half of what I write. The longer answer is that it’s fiction of extreme brevity, usually under 1,000 words.

The flash form’s been around a long time, but it’s enjoying a resurgence as more fiction magazines go online and feature shorter pieces.

Of particular use to me was his stating that, though flash fiction should have a beginning, middle and end, the "story" is a moment. "It is a story...of a moment, an interesting moment." My apologies to Sanford, but at that flash-fiction-worthy epiphanic moment, the flood gates opened and I found myself scratching story ideas in the margins of the page I had, until then, been jotting notes. God knows what other important nuggets I missed.

I raced home to get at least one of the stories out. As it turned out, I completed two before heading off to bed. Two complete--if unedited--stories, ready for peer review. Sanford made the point early in his talk that exactly the sort of thing I had just accomplished was one of the major attractions of flash fiction: with substantially less heartache and time, one can feel the instant gratification of completing a work.

Of course, that is not to say flash fiction demands less skill or attention from the author; that is a constant. Flash fiction requires only less time due to its brevity. The point was made, either by Sanford or another SAWG member, that editing flash fiction is akin to editing poetry in that, due to that aforementioned brevity, every word counts.

Another attractive aspect of writing flash fiction is its natural fit with the changing face of publishing, namely online-only publications or online divisions of traditional publishing houses. Online outlets are accepting more and more flash-length work. Some sites feature a new flash piece daily, so their appetite for work is steady. What can be more appealing to an author, especially one needing to fill out his early resumé?

Tweet me about Flash Fiction @ThomasMcAuley »

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.