Thought-Drive

I used to think that I was being spied on, that literally people had installed microphones and cameras into the places I most frequented just to eavesdrop on my ideas. Yesterday I was catching up on one of "my shows" on internet television, and one of the main characters outlined, almost verbatim, a concept I wrote down in my recently published book. I was shocked to say the least. But then, I'd  also long abandoned the notion that people would go that far to listen to me prattle in hopes of a golden nugget. After all, while Newton was brainstorming on falling apples, on the opposite side of the world another guy, little known in the West, was doing more or less the same thing. I like to think that some good ideas are more obvious, they simply follow certain observations of nature, and it's the brave, or perhaps lucky, that are in a position to write them down and show them to others, to claim that they thought of them first. Somehow, I imagine that if given the oppor...

It feels like it would be fine for me to say I took yesterday off on account of it being my birthday, however that'd be partially untrue. After all, I worked, editing the weekend's chapters and even writing a story on Bleacher Report , something I haven't done since January. I spent the rest of the day helping a writer friend move, which is to say I spent the rest of the day talking about writing while eating, driving, and moving two pieces of furniture over the course of five hours. A productive pair were we. It isn't a natural assumption that because the editing went smoothly, so did the writing, but in this case its true. Laying awake last night I came to think that I might've written something out of order, though, or rather that the book would be better served if a few of the chapters were organized differently. I can't really be sure, nor do I have the sort of test readers who would be down for "okay now I want you to read the whole thing again with...

Minutes ago, I finished edits on the chapters drafted this weekend. I wonder sometimes at the complexity of some of my sentences. I wonder about why I tend to say things how I say them. I wonder if there's a better way to say what I'm trying to say. But I guess such things are discovered in practice and nowhere else. In any event, I'm somewhat satisfied with what I produced, and am hereby celebrating my reaching the double digit mark on each of the current projects. All told, I estimate that I've drafted roughly 65,000 words since I started this nine weeks ago. I'd have something that looked sort of like a whole novel if I had focused on them one at a time, however I'm not worried at all that I will finish all three. We'll call it confidence. I finally got the review of one of the first people to read my novel when it came out. He said he would only give it to me in person, which is odd, but he's an eccentric fellow overall so at least he's consist...

Sometimes the mountain takes, advice I received from a M:tG card of all places. The graphic is of a great many goblins running for their lives down the side of the mountain. It took me years to even understand what the quote means, and every now and again I'm given a glimmer of insight into the fact that my understanding isn't quite there yet. A writing friend's prayers were answered in the form of a way out of his miserable work situation. Coupled with his romantic life taking a turn for the better, he's declared the last month or so a "religious experience." I know how close he is to quitting (he works retail), and I know how much his job (and the necessity to make money to live) get in the way of his writing, so I had no room to argue. Another writer I know finally had his book signing. He sent an email to the other authors at the publisher to talk about his experience and used the word discouraged no fewer than four times. There were even some sentences ...