Category Archives: Writing Experience

I’ve written three quality chapters in less than a week, 7-9 pages of 12 point TNR each.  I say quality, but only the reader knows.

It’s weird how blind we are to our own bad writing. I remember sitting in a creative writing class, reading other people’s stuff and having to lie about how good it was.  It didn’t just need edits, it was simply unreadable. And yet those same people could tell a good book from a bad one.

Until I’m published, I won’t know if I’m good or bad (or ugly), but that’s fine.  My competition for a book deal doesn’t know either, unless they’ve been previously published.

So I went to work today and hated it. I should have been born a rich man’s son.  After I got home I was happy again.  Then I sat down to write . . . and became swept away to the tune of about a thousand words.  Good, glorious content, too, else I would have just done some re-reads rather than ruin an otherwise good project.

Hmm, what else?

I explained to my wife that every time I have a good idea, if I don’t write it down I usually forget it.  I wasn’t kidding.  I think it’s because the ideas don’t come from the logical, stepwise portion of my brain. And so, like dreams, I forget them if I don’t write them down.

I’d mentioned how I used to play WOW, then quit and wrote my first novel (still unpublished, but I did it).  Well, about 4 months ago I started playing WOW again, and my writing suffered. A few weeks ago, I quit WOW again, and now I’m about forty pages further along.  I just passed page 200 the other day, and the story’s doing great.

But . . . I keep looking around for a way to escape the horror of productive writing!  I need to sabotage myself some way.  Another game?  A cool Elmore Leonard novel I haven’t read yet?  A movie?  A nap?  I know, I’ll go write on that blog I started last time I wasn’t playing WOW.