No, not me.
So, there’s a guy over at The Power Factory, Jonathan Munn, who’s declared a goal of writing one story per week for a year. He’s writing fantasy and science-fiction for the young adult market, a term I hate, by the way. He’s off to a good start so far. These are free, incidentally.  I love this idea, just because I love people sharing their creativity for the sake of sharing it.
Back in the day, when I was actively maintaining Fantasist.net, that was my intention, to write a story a week until I was “discovered” ala John Scalzi. Of course, that was before I’d ever heard of John Scalzi or bumped into the reality of holding down a demanding full-time job, having time with my family, and getting to occasionally see the sun and how that all took time away from writing. Well, no one’s perfect.
Okay, who am I kidding? I can’t even make a single post every week on this blog! I suppose that the other blog, Diary of a Network Geek, keeps me away. Well, that and the pesky day job. And the laundry. I wish it were something more interesting, like a bottle of Scotch or, heaven help me, a woman. But, no, it’s just life. An all too busy life that I keep churned up full of meaningless, empty activity meant to distract. To distract me, mainly, to distract me from the emptiness of life without creativity. It’s been so long since I’ve written fiction that I’m not even sure I know how.
Now, all I know, is how to tell the truth.
Damn blog.
2 Responses
jonathan munn
First of all, thanks for the kind comments and the link. Without encouragement like this, I would feel even more like a lonely voice crying [or scribbling] in the wilderness.
And to react to a few of your points…
the young adult market, a term I hate, by the way.
Yes. In fact, using the word ‘market’ near any talk about writing gets my own personal hackles up. I prefer to say that I write principally for teens [which is often called YA now]. And in fact, I was just preparing a post on why writing for teens is, first of all, important, and secondly, really challenging [and also fun].
On the issue of time… I explain my personal case on the free reads page – http://thepowerfactory.com/reads.php
I have been writing away for more than a few years and all I have to show for those efforts are the files on my hard drive, so I one day decided that the only thing to do was to push things harder, give myself a challenge, and keep to it. It is hard. There are days when I say to myself: why bother? especially those days when I’m typing up an entry late at night to get it ready to put it online. There also tends to be a sort of down each time I finish a story. So far, I just pick up the propelling pencil and the notebook… and off we go again.
Personally I do have a full time job, in fact, I have more than that as I’m now taking my fridays off from my normal job to teach, and so preparations are probably going to make a hole in the few hours of leisure that I did have. And I might also point out that we also have a [teething] toddler who needs a lot of attention, a part-time teen [who is happy to curl up with a good book], as well as the normal, gritty argumentative stuff like housework, shopping, and then there’s also trips out to the playground, the library, friends and family…
So what do I want to say?
Most of us can probably find 30 – 45 minutes a day, hidden away in there for a creative project. In my case, that means that I severely ration TV, prefering to spend that time editing, typing, blogging, and occasionally coding. And — I consider — I’m fortunate to have my 40 minutes of uninterrupted metro to and from work.
But one thing is sure… If we don’t find a creative outlet, then we tend to get bitter and twisted and frustrated. And — perhaps — somewhat lesser in our other activities.
Here’s wishing you all the best. [And don’t hesitate to react to my reaction… You’ve got my mail address now after all].
//jonathan
.-= jonathan munn´s last blog ..His Only Friend =-.
J. K. Hoffman
Oh, no, I agree!
I was lamenting the fact that I let myself get out of the habit of writing. Lately, I’ve been doing photography, which, is, of course, an entirely different kind of creativity, but it is something. And, as someone pointed out to me in the Real World just this past week, it’s never too late to start something new, even if it was something old that you’re starting again.
Glad the link and post provided some encouragement. I’ve sort of kept this blog quiet, since it’s currently more of a work in progress than I’d normally release into the wild, but I did sort of figure that even a half-baked start was better than none at all.