Not one of my better days

Writing is boring. Boring and lonely and not fun. This may be the worst job I've ever had, and I've had some doozies. It's just me, the computer and the cat, and my Black Keys Pandora station seems stuck on an endless loop of Jack Johnson clones.

Hah! I 'disliked' a wretched Ben Harper whine and got me some Junior Kimbrough.

I hate when I step away from my computer long enough to have to read a whole chapter before I can remember what the heck is going on.

Honestly, I just hate reading my writing.

And I especially hate when someone like this interrupts my ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED pity party with maturity and well-reasoned optimism, and leaves me with Don't Stop Believin' stuck in my head.

Formula 1 Fiction

So, there is the plot that naturally evolves, and there is the formula. And then there is the well-crafted plot that holds your attention yet never seems forced and that, it is to be assumed, lies somewhere in between.

I am struggling with plot just now. You read over things, and it’s obvious where the holes are. Where there is an element that should have been introduced earlier. Where things just ramble all over the place for no particular reason and you think seriously, people, do you think you’re living real life here? You’re fictional characters. Make with the snappy dialogue and steady, intriguing character development.

So, if element A needs to be introduced in chapter 2 so that it has more impact when its big moment comes in chapter 6, that means writing a new scene specifically for element A, which now means it takes us forever to get to element B and besides, the new scene is horrible, forced, the poor characters mumble their dialogue woodenly as though I’ve kidnapped them and forced them to read a script so everything looks natural even though they’ve got bombs strapped to their chests and of course, metaphorically speaking, I have.

But the new scene is essential. We need it for chapter 6. Because chapter 6 is just so sudden, and there’s much too much exposition there.

So I write it. I hope at some point it will be rewritten into something less stiff. But for now it just sits there, hoping against hope that someone will notice something is wrong and call 911. Although maybe it would be better to just go along with the kidnapper’s wishes and hope it all works out.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaaaaa.

Seriously—it’s like these people haven’t even met me.

Dan Harmon on the basics

Dan Harmon is posting interesting things about plot and whatnot at channel101.wikia.com:

Story Structure 101
Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do. ....

1. . A character is in a zone of comfort,
2. . But they want something.
3. . They enter an unfamiliar situation,
4. . Adapt to it,
5. . Get what they wanted,
6. . Pay a heavy price for it,
7. . Then return to their familiar situation,
8. . Having changed.

Read the whole thing.

In Which we write the Most Emdashes Ever

Sometimes I think I can’t be a real writer because I don’t actually want to write most of the time. I read interviews with people who say well of course I feel compelled to write at least an hour every day, every writer does, and I think they do? Do they not have Netflix?

I like to follow Catherine Ryan Howard’s blog posts and tweets because she freely admits to having announced that she was going to write a novel and then doing absolutely nothing for seven years. This is more my style.

(Though I’d never dream of making a public announcement about it. It drives me crazy when people ask what I’m doing these days and I can’t think of a way to avoid admitting the awful truth—I, um, I am trying to be a writer. Not sure it counts if you’re not published yet. So I’m not a writer, I’m just trying to be. I also clean rooms at a hotel.)

When I sit down to write, when the excuses have run out, when my internet connection has failed with only three minutes left of an episode of Doctor Who and I have stopped screaming and throwing things at the router—when I actually open the document that contains my sci-fi novel or my zombie screenplay or my chick-flick screenplay depending on which one I’ve completely, utterly and permanently given up on most recently (let’s be honest, the zombie story is going nowhere, it’s time for the secure delete on that one)—when I look at the page, and begin reading what I did yesterday, and realize that I’m actually going to do it, to try to write again—

It’s really very hard to express the feeling that descends. Not despair—there’s more drama in despair. Not resignation—there would be more productivity with true resignation.

It’s sort of the feeling one imagines you would get after being reconditioned by Big Brother.

The Winston after Room 101 feeling.

And then I write.

Unfortunately.

Origin Story

Did I ever tell you about the birth of the Awful Space Opera?

No?

Well, you see, it was like this:

I’ve been planning to “be a writer” for as long as I can remember. But, unlike practically every successful author ever, I didn’t start writing until I was an adult.

And I hated it.

Not the process, as such, but my writing. It was so terrible. So very, very bad. So much worse than every piece of bad writing I had ever read anywhere and I used to read Harlequin Teen romances.

This went on for years.

I decided to get a job at a newspaper, because one had to get a job somewhere, and I figured I needed practice. Writing for a newspaper is fun. If you like that sort of thing—the person I replaced and the person who replaced me both hated it, but I had a wonderful, wonderful time. But I soon realized it was the wrong sort of practice. Journalism and writing fiction are very different things. If you want to write fiction, eventually you have to just do it.

So I did. For maybe ten minutes. Then I got stuck. But I had other ideas—I never, ever run out of ideas—so I decided to try something else. Got stuck again.

After spending a week or two beginning unfinished projects (mostly comic screenplays—somewhere between the ages of ten and twenty I outgrew my passion for historical romance novels), I realized that something had to change. And that something was: Standards. I needed to get rid of them.

You see, my writing is still dreadful. Even after struggling along with it for two years, it is vile. (Every now and then someone reads this site and says, hey, you’re a good writer, and I really appreciate it, I do, but if you read any of my fictional work you would take it back.) But squirming at my lack of talent was holding me back.

The only way to ever get anything done was to embrace the hack within.

So I decided to start a side project, the Story With No Standards. To establish our low expectations, I began with the universally acknowledged Worst Opening Line, courtesy of Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” I typed cheerfully.

Immediately I was transported back in time: I am in my grandmother’s yard, standing on the trunk of the collapsed apple tree, the one that we always used as a bridge across the creek, and my cousin is telling a terrible joke, based on Bulwer-Lytton.

I was probably nine, which would make him ten, but that’s not really an adequate excuse for this joke.

So I added the joke: “It was a dark and stormy night. They were all sitting around the campfire. The captain said to the mate, ‘Tell us a story.’ And the mate said, ‘Okay. It was a dark and stormy night. They were all sitting around the campfire. And the captain said to the mate…’” (I’m not sure when you’re supposed to stop telling the joke—my cousin seemed to think you weren’t.)

So—I had a dark and stormy night, a campfire, a large group of people led by a captain and his mate, hello, shipwreck! No, make that spaceship wreck!

And that is how, with no planning or preparation whatsoever, I became a writer of bad science fiction.

Sorrows of the armchair critic

When I turned six, a boy a year younger than me gave me a handmade birthday card. I told him birds and clouds don’t really look like that. 

Also, I wasn't really sure how the black birds on pink paper motif had any relevance to celebrating another year of maturity. It all seemed sort of random. I wasn’t trying to be mean; I just thought he might like to know. 

It is very, very hard to switch to being an author when you’re a critic at heart.

It’s my party and I’ll have dragons if I want to

I don’t care what anyone* says: The flying reptiles are BACK ON.

My whole life, I've wanted to live in a world with pterodactyls, and I edit them out of a schlocky fantasy novel because they're “stupid?” Who exactly are we kidding here?

Of course, this means extra work. Because I have actually  made a lot of progress in cutting the giant lizards out. And some might say my constant waffling makes a highly convenient way to procrastinate on finding some kind of conclusion for the plot. Maybe it is. Maybe I just want to avoid getting deep into that tedious escape sequence again. I don’t care.

HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS.

*Including me.

Vision vs. work

Brilliant ideas are so much fun when they hit you. How is it that executing them is always so tedious?

Excising the dragons has been—tricky. For such a thin plot device, they are remarkably well-knit into the story. I keep coming across new vicious flying lizard attacks that I had forgotten about, and then I have to drop everything to figure out what should happen instead.

On the plus side, I got a new computer! One with a functioning hyphen key! And a caps lock! Which I had forgotten turns on accidentally at least seven times a day!

Earlier today, I accidentally spelled 'fishing' with two S's. I am convinced that this is an improvement: fisshing, fisshing, fisshing. Doesn't it look ten times less dull that way?

Thinking out loud

Deep breath. Okay. This is a little out of left field, I know, but, I think the Awful Space Opera needs ... a protagonist.

Crazy, huh? I know it surprised me.

I was reading a review of Screenwriting Tips, You Hack when it hit me like a ton of bricks: I can't follow any of these tips about the protagonist until I figure out who the protagonist is.

At one point I believe it was what's-his-name, the weather nerd. But somehow he never took hold.

Poor Little Rich Girl, on the other hand, seems very nearly interesting. Okay, mainly she has the most interesting storyline, which is really things happening to her rather than because of her, but it's something. And if blondie and the tough guy are Princess Leia and Han Solo, which I don't think they can avoid being, not without me discovering some lost writing talent in my sofa cushions, then the PLRG is clearly Luke.

There is no mysterious heroic-yet-evil father.

This makes it original.

However (arrrrrgggh, I seriously did not think of this until this very moment), the Arch Villain is believed to be responsible for the PLRG's father's death.

There is a distinct possibility I need to get out of the house more and watch videos less.

Of course, that was the whole point of the India trip, or, rather, one of several points, most of which are a tad vague. But it was a reason, and, regrettably, India didn’t inspire me in the least. Except for this one temple that would make an absolutely amazing backdrop for a scene in Firefly, or something similar. I'm not going to tell you which one, as this is one of my few actual good ideas and for once I'm a little uneasy someone might steal it.

Quit laughing. One of my posts had fourteen page views last month.

Anyway, a protagonist. It has to be the girl, everyone else is a bit blah. Of course, that means she needs a bit more development. Even for pulp fiction, she needs more development.

Also, come to think of it, the antagonist needs work. Much, much, much work. As does the relationship, distant though it might be, between the two.

I suppose this is why I always start to feel lost when I get really into the escape sequence. It's two or three chapters where the PLRG doesn't appear once. She's completely unimportant here, is in fact on the other side of the planet, so even though I get a fair amount of character development among the crew, it feels like a rabbit trail. I suppose I have to switch back and forth between storylines a bit more. And make the escape sequence shorter, but I knew that before.

Have I mentioned that every time I try to tighten it up it gets longer? It's a bit like the broom in the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I love that word, apprentice. Maybe I can work it in.

They always said I was a high achiever

"I had only one goal for today."
"What was that?"
"To make a to-do list for tomorrow."
"Did you do it?"
"No."

Admitting defeat

Benaras, India

I doubt you'll be surprised to learn that National Novel Writing Month was a bust.

Internet access has been rare on the road; time to write rarer. (Is rarer a word? Danae says it is, but that it sounds like fingernails on a blackboard.)

Benaras is far and away my favorite Indian city so far, in spite of the plague of vapidly spiritual tourists. Like the Kalighat temple in Calcutta, Benaras feels like it belongs in another time. But Kalighat is only one building, while Benaras is a whole city. I guess in my imagination both places are sort of lumped together in one big dawn-of-civilization experience: It's amazing to go to the Kalighat and stand in front of the altar, piled high in rotten flowers and old blood, and realize that on this spot, every day, people sacrifice a goat to an old school, blood-dripping, human-skull-wearing, scare-the-bejesus-out-of-you mother goddess.

But my favorite temple is right here in Benaras: the monkey temple. I think it has another name, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

Sadly, we managed to reach the monkey temple during Hanuman's nap time, and so were unable to see the idol. (He has an embroidered black curtain, to keep his worshipers from bothering him.) But it's still a beautiful place. Although it's in the city, it is surrounded by a tree-filled park (for the monkeys, natch), and it feels like you're in the heart of the jungle, at the headquarters of a very jungle-themed religion, which, in a way, you are.

While taking the requisite dawn boat ride on the Ganges, we saw two separate funerals at the burning ghats. The deceased had not quite made it to the pyre on either occasion, which is just as well. One of my great fears in life is that one day I will smell burning human flesh and it will remind me of something incredibly tasty.

This should tell you all you need to know about the number of things I'm afraid of.

But, through it all, there's been almost no writing. I've done just enough to see that the Awful SpaceOpera is indeed awful.

A good way to appreciate the finer qualities of my magnum opus is to read this article, sent to me by my cousin—my story is everything the author says it shouldn't be.

Ah well. Back to the drawing board. Perhaps I should work on the Hunchback some more. Have I told you about the Hunchback? No? Well, that's a story for another day.

Mimi the Dragon Slayer

Calcutta, India

So I decided the dragons have got to go.

I don't remember precisely why I decided that the Awful Space Opera would be infested with flying reptiles, or what pseudo-scientific excuse I used to justify their existence, but they gotta go. Most likely, they made their first appearance on a day when I couldn't think of anything else to put down on paper. Of course, that is the basic backstory for the entire novel, but I think maybe in this case the problem was a lack of action for several pages, and I thought readers might start to notice how awful my prose is. Or that I lifted at least two characters from Firefly. (Not on purpose—it's just something that happens when you quit writing and devote an entire week to your DVD-boxed set collection instead.) If you want to kill boredom, you can't go wrong with a dragon attack, right?

Wrong.

The Most Boring Monsters In Pulp Fiction are dead weight, and my first task in this month's mammoth rewrite was to cut them out.

That means replacing several scenes with, ummm, some other kind of death-defying crisis? Something less likely to induce hysterical laughter at all the wrong moments?

I'm thinking quicksand. With flesh-eating worms.

Editor's note: The frightened J-school student in me demands that I admit to backdating this post. Internet access has been iffy on the rails, and I am marking the date according to when this was written, rather than posted.

What we have here ...

I don't care much for foreign languages.

I love English so much that I can happily waste hours each day playing scrambled word games on my Kindle, just for the joy of the words themselves—and because I get to pat myself on the back each time I remember I can spell “prise” with an “s.”

Reaching that level of smug self-satisfaction in a foreign language takes decades of intensive study. And my ego just doesn't have that kind of time.

Danae signed up for private Hindi lessons almost as soon as we arrived. She dutifully records her teenage tutor's every word (excepting the ones that deal primarily with her complicated personal life), so as to perfect her pronunciation. 

And she has gamely embraced the infantilization that is an inescapable side effect of attempting to communicate in an unknown tongue: She sounds like a two-year old with a speech impediment, and native speakers treat her like one.

Granted, there are times when relying on a combination of English spoken very loud and extravagant hand gestures fails, but in my experience, you're just as likely to suffer a total communication breakdown with a few half-learned phrases of the local language as you are with none.

At least in English, left and right don't rhyme.

Consider the following exchange with Danae's tutor, concerning the Muslim festival popularly known as Bakra Eid, because it features the sacrifice of a goat:

“Next week am festival—Bakra Eid.”

“Bakra Eid?”

“Ha. Bakra is God.”

(Eyes become unfocused, attempting to remember the lesson when the word “bakra” last came up. God?)

“Bakra?”

“Ha. Hindi-'Bakra.' English-'God.'”

(With deepening confusion—)

“God?”

“Ha.”

“'Bakra' is 'God?'”

“Ha.”

“Uh, 'Allah?'”

“Nehi, nehi! God! God!”

“Oh, goat.”

You see? Replace all those words with wild hand gestures, and you still have no idea why so many neighborhoods are suddenly full of extra livestock, but at least you could avoid suggesting to a devout Muslim that she worships goats.

. . .

So, undoubtedly you want to know about how the novel's coming. It's, well, today is the first day during the official Month in which my computer has worked, so so far, it's not coming. Tricky, trying to keep up with these deadlines on the old Inspiron 600m. (Why the “m?” That named sounded dated the moment I bought it, and this was a state-of-the-art machine once.)

So, if you figure there are twenty-six days left in the month, divided into 50,000 words, that equals—a whole bunch of words a day. I'll try to put in a fair bit on the train to Calcutta tomorrow.

All about meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ...

Why are writers supposed to keep a journal? Does it actually achieve anything?

I know you need to find time to write every day, and a journal entry is the easiest place to start. Practice is always important, but is it the right kind of practice? Is talking about myself actually going to help me get better at channeling other people?

Frightening thought: What if this religious devotion to journaling—and, yeah, well, blogging—actually saps one's ability to write fiction? They say that runners have to choose between distance and speed, that you can't hone your sprinting and marathoning muscles at the same time. Maybe you can't keep a detailed journal and write a novel at the same time.

Debunked fake memoirs are in the news every year, and I think the obsession with journaling is part of the problem. Everyone gets really good at talking about themselves, but they find their lives lack the necessary zing for the big time. So they stick with the journaling medium and just make stuff up.

Hmmmm.

Wait a sec, I need to go edit my Blogger profile.

There, that's better.

Everything is copy

Globe-trotting is definitely not conducive to fiction writing. I need a certain level of boredom to get lost in my own imagination, and India is definitely not boring. But oh, the material ...

I have always been leery of using actual human beings as inspiration for fictional characters. No matter how sympathetic the portrayal, it still feels like exploitation. Otherwise, the neighbor who recently told me and my late-returning roommates to go on and have a good rest so she could beat us in the morning would definitely have a place in my next project.

The city of Delhi itself has a beautifully post-apocalyptic feel sometimes. (This, coming from me, is a compliment, and I hope will be taken as such). The gorgeous crumbling architecture, the ever-hungry pariah kites wheeling overhead, the very modern police officers guarding ancient ruins—all this contributes to an atmosphere that cries out for some epic plot to hurtle through its streets.

One element that definitely belongs in a film, rather than a novel, is the beautifully enunciated station announcements on the metro. If the authorities were not (with reason) so paranoid about attacks on public transportation, I would try to capture the perfect Anglo-Indian elocution of the two announcers on my voice recorder. But the recorder would have to be held right against a speaker to get decent sound quality, and I am too much of a coward to do anything so peculiar in public, for fear of being hauled away for questioning.

Here endeth my observations for the week. I'm still debating whether or not to attempt National Novel Writing Month this year. It would be very hard to do, combined with the commitments I've made to do some volunteer work in November. But I hate to put it off a whole year.

I might just cheat: Instead of starting a new project, do a rewrite of that awful novel I abandoned four months ago. (Was it four months? Who knows.) I'm not sure I'll even have time for that. But perhaps it's worth a shot.

Channelling the Duke

I was indulging in a two-minute hate directed at the utterly humiliating number of Discworld novels I have consumed over the past several months, weeks, days, sometimes hours. I have no income, therefore I have no entertainment budget, but thanks to my Connection (the Kindle I received as a very ill-considered Christmas gift), those $8 e-books just keep appearing in my hand.

I was in the middle of the above-mentioned self-flagellation (how many G's in flagellation? I think just one.) when I started to read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and it hit me: I am not alone. Wasting one's time, money, talent and physical and mental well-being on brain-rotting substances is traditional in my chosen profession.

It's practically required.

I wouldn't be much of a writer without an addiction, would I?

Sennyways, good old Hunter turned his addictions into literary greatness. Or at least literary coolness. Which would be just fine. As established in previous posts, I've given up on greatness.

What, then, does this mean for Terry Pratchett and me? It means I must somehow make sitting around reading lightweight fantasy comedies a key ingredient in my Art. To follow in The Duke's footsteps, it is first necessary to splash all one's flaws down on the page.

Or at least successfully pretend to. It's probably safe to assume that if Hunter had opened up completely, his self-destruction would begin to be too depressing to sell. So what we're after here is not so much a confessional as a con.

A substance-abuse based con, turning bathos into style, contemptibility into cool, mediocrity into the superfly stylings of a brand-new literioso hep to the real score.

Yeah, that wasn't it.

How about this?

I was sprawled in my grandmother's plush rocking chair, lost in trying to plot out my fourth un-optionable and un-finishable screenplay, indulging in a two-minute hate for my [I AM TOO TIRED TO THINK OF A CLEVER WORD FOR MY SHORTCOMINGS. ADD SOMETHING LATER. SHOULD INVOLVE IMPOTENCE.]

I had had more than enough time and money to finish all four, courtesy of Visa and Mastercard, but the funds had already been spent on Discworld paperbacks and new shoes. (The shoes were on sale.)*

The sun blazed in through the chintzy curtains, highlighting the tired leaves of two once-proud orchids. I hadn't misted them in days.

Suddenly, a flock of overweight comically pontificating wizards flew across the pages of my unassuming shoot-'em-up space opera, dexterously illustrating the most incisive, acid-tongued conventional wisdom to ever come from a couple of knock-knock jokes and an old-fashioned dirty limerick remixed with a dragon and an ironically self-aware technology reference.

I screamed like a girl.

The cat looked up from the sunny bit of the carpet in front of the orchids. “What the hell?” her bloodshot eyes seemed to ask.

“Oh nothing,” I said, trying the shake the trite social commentary out of my head and off my defunct Dell Inspiron.

She hadn't seen the wizards, but she would.

“Whatever,” she said, rolling over to catch the fading rays. “Anyway, you are a girl.”

Moving on, I would have to illustrate the tragic waste of my innate genius through the corrupting influence of fantasy adventure novels, sci-fi TV series, an astounding number of sitcom reruns, and even (shudder) used Star Wars Extended Universe paperbacks; to show, not to tell (never, never to tell!), that the true culprit is not the drugs, my laziness, or inability to finish anything, but The System.

Do you have any idea how easy it is to buy a book on an e-reader? Do you? Easier than buying crack, that's for sure. To download The Hogfather, you push just one button. Just one. Just like the rats in the cocaine experiments.

Why didn't they have the rats have to go out and find a dealer, anyway? That would have been much more realistic.

And don't say I had to take the first step, I had to go out and buy a Kindle. Don't just act like you know my story, just like that. It was a Christmas gift.

Yeah. You should be sorry.

Not bad, huh?

*In true “gonzo” style, I'm calling my drug of choice “paperbacks,” because “e-books” falls flat—in this way I force the greater meta-truth into the reader's soul by glossing over the actual “true” truth. Also, because needless footwear has become the culturally acceptable shorthand for how women waste money, I say “shoes” instead of “a weird no-button blazer I didn't need, and a pair of navy sateen American Eagle shorts with a bow.” Hunter would be so proud.

Wild adventure, and other distractions

I have news.

No, I didn't get a book deal.

Or a movie deal.

Or acquire my first blog follower. Stop trying to make me feel like a huge loser.

I am, however, spending the next four months in India, which is pretty cool, even though most of my not-in-space-or-with-dragons story ideas take place in Africa. I'll go to Africa some other time.

In between shots, and travel plans, and being told I have to go somewhere else to get the next shot (who knows where), and packing, and wishing my visa would arrive already, I keep wondering about how this will fit in with writing.

I suspect the answer is that it won't.

Oh, I'll keep a journal, of course, since apparently one is required. (Reminds me, I was working on a post about journaling. Must finish that.) But I have a very strong feeling that I will not keep up with my commitment to spend some time working on either my novel or a screenplay each day (all depends on which project I've most recently decided is a completely hopeless case).

I'm a little depressed about this prospect, since I spent so many years putting off my writing career and only recently sat down and made myself get started.

I particularly wanted to participate in National Novel Writing Month this November, and I really, really doubt that's going to happen.

Still, it's all material, right?

Meanwhile, other people out there are writing, and you should get to know them. In particular, the Princess Scribe, whose review of Cowboys and Aliens is hilarious.

Writing helps for hacks

When I first decided to give up on writing something I could be proud of and focus on writing something I could complete (and possibly get paid for), I wanted to keep my plots as formulaic as possible. But, when I sat down at my computer, I found that I could not remember a single plot formula. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard these alleged formulas spelled out, except for the ones that start “boy meets girl.” As a hopeless unromantic, that didn't seem to help.

I took to googling “plot formulas,” “formula fiction,” etc. to get inspired. Would you believe that search came up with nothing?

Finally, thanks to the good folks at i09, I have a nice, simple list to get started on: http://io9.com/5817287/ten-tired-movie-plots-that-need-to-show-the-villains-perspective

I realize that this particular inspiration is not their intention. But it's working out great for me.

The Life Plan

See, I had this plan. I would work my way up through the newspaper world, getting an enormous amount of practice writing, become a foreign correspondent, just happen to be the only journalist on the ground at the outbreak of a major war in a little-known backwater country (I think China, Russia, and the UK were going to be involved. Maybe France.), win a Pulitzer, settle down, and write fiction.

Of course none of that happened. And when I decided to settle down and write fiction anyway, I made an enormously unpleasant discovery: Journalism and novel-writing are two very different things. Practice getting all the most interesting facts into a 29-word lead gets you absolutely nowhere when you sit down to write your very first novel. After setting my stories aside to focus on non-fiction for nearly a decade, my dialogue and scene descriptions were just as wooden, childish and unreadable as before.

'Course, I can write a kickass 29-word lead. Not to mention an awesome headline featuring a laugh-out-loud pun that the publisher will decide is inappropriate after we've printed our final proof and I've already turned off my computer. But I don't want to be a journalist anymore.

Malcolm Gladwell says you've got to invest 10,000 hours into a thing before you get really, really, really good at it. And his books are just so darn readable that he must be right about everything.

I have no idea how many hours I invested in my exciting newspaper career in the sticks. But apparently I'm back at the starting gate.

Yay!

I was hunting around for a rejected article to see if I could rework it to post here, and discovered that I have an enormous folder called “inactive projects.”

I had forgotten a lot of these old ideas. Some of them are just outlines, some just ten pages of random brainstorming, some actually include the beginnings of a rough draft.

When I started writing, I was terrified of becoming one of those people who talk a lot about the novel they're working on but actually Never Write. Someone who's always trying to find the time, the right workspace, the right routine. So I frantically found a way to put something down on paper most days.

But each day it was something different. Each idea seemed to peter out after one day and two pages. So, the next day, I would frantically come up with a new idea, anything to avoid having to log a day in which I Didn't Write.

But of course that leads us to yet another nightmare—maybe I am someone who Never Finishes Anything.

Failure has so very many faces.