Thursday, March 29, 2012

Set your sights, and aim for the top

It took a very long time of pretending to be a writer, and trying to be a writer, but now at long last I think I am actually ready to be a writer. Stephen King's prescription for aspiring writers is to read four hours a day and write four hours a day, and it's good advice. I'd take it a little bit further, and say that generally speaking, before one can really write a story worth telling, he has to have a certain "mileage" of stories he has read, and of stories he has written. My friend Ashlethas has a similar theory, that every writer has to get his junk stories out of the way before he can get to the quality. So it was for me. I don't know where precisely I am with all of that, but I do know that I have finally got an idea for a story that I want to see through to the end; and there are a few more of varying degrees of cool waiting in the wings. So between the one that I have high hopes for right now, and the others that are waiting, I should have more than enough quality material to keep me busy.

This will mostly be a blog of vague generalities and word counts, speaking of the planning, writing, and editing stages in the most general terms possible. I do this because I want to have the full pleasure of writing the story instead of just talking about it, and because I want to give you, dear reader, the pleasure of eventually reading it once I can persuade a publisher to print it, and because I do not want some unscrupulous villain snatching these stories as if they were the Sabine women. Posts unrelated to my works in progress will be rare, but they will probably happen once in a while anyway. However, I do want to keep this blog focused primarily on my works in progress -- on where I have been, on where I am, on where I am going, and on where I want to be.

My thanks to Ashlethas, who set this blog up for me, and without whom I probably would have dropped out of my creative pursuits and become an exceedingly boring individual. Read her blog if you aren't already.