One of the best things I've ever read. Ever.

"Sugar" writes an advice column over on The Daily Rumpus, and I've been going through the archive. This column, "Write Like a Motherfucker", is...well, it's true, and it's inspiring, and it's devastating, all at the same time.

Direct quote from the column:

"Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."

I hope I'm able to write as well as her someday. That woman is amazing.

Time theft, sensitivity, and ass-in-gearedness.

Okay. Haven't gotten much writing done in the past week. Not much of a surprise there - I was full time at the bank, and then we had a holiday weekend. I haven't had three days off in a row in...a few months, so it was pretty much a given that I was just going to clean, hang out by the river with my boys, and play video games.

I think, though, that I'm way too specific about the circumstances I need in order to be able to write. On the one hand, it's fine to know that you need a certain level of organization, quiet, or whatever, but on the other hand, using the fact that EVERYTHING IS NOT PERFECT AND I CANNOT ART UNDER THESE CONDITIONS as an excuse is just sad. And it's totally what I do. So once I get a work area put together at home (right now I have no desk, no special area, no nothing, really, and woe is me), this business of not writing has got to stop. I mean, when I was using my work desk (not, ahem, the best thing to do, just so you know) as my Special Writing Place, I was getting a shit ton of writing done. It was great. I'd go home at the end of the day raving about how productive I was. Not at, you know, working, which is what I should have been doing, but at writing.

But those days are over. I've never gotten in trouble for writing at work, but now I have enough [work] projects going simultaneously that I just don't have time - and once I get going with writing at work, I really seem to get going, and it always eats up more time than I was planning on giving it. So now I have time for occasional blogging, which is maybe okay, but that's it. Technically, I probably shouldn't even do that. I don't know. I'll have to think about it.

Current projects:

1. The Story. We're still in major brainstorming mode, but this one is always ongoing, and therefore always top priority.

2. My small zombeh story.

3. The Fullmoon adaptation, which I have not properly started, but damn, has it been percolating in my brain for ages.

4. I'd like to dust off the Lighthouse story soon and start a proper rewrite.

5. The random fairytale-Tanith-Lee-ish story that I started somehow started planning in my sleep a few nights ago. Not sure if that one has any potential.

So...yep. Those are my projects.


Oh, and one last thing: there is a guy at the teller line with hair down to his waist. It's terribly impressive.