Okay Ladies and Germs,

 

I have been a tad distracted with the monotony and constant neediness that a life requires in order to maintain itself.  I got a job teaching, and I am trying to do well at it, but that takes time.

Time that has taken me away from my real job: writing.  The terrible catch of being a writer seems to be that it takes a lot of time to be good and then turn it around to make money.  Time that would be better spent working hourly.

But writing is not an hourly position.

It is a labor of love.  You need to create content, and edit, and redraft, and revise.  The real kicker is that it’s not even enough that you need to pump all these hours into an individual project, you need to lead a tedious and painstaking campaign in order to get anyone else to see it.  Magazines that don’t allow you to send your work to anyone else and make you wait to hear ‘no’, publishers that wade through hundreds if not thousands of books per year, managers that are trying to take the temperature on the shifting sands of culture.

It’s tough to say:  These next couple hours are going to writing.  You can see how it is hard for us college grads (who are already have enough debt to make a grown man blush) to fit themselves into ever illusive role of the writer.  It’s a gamble.

But you can improve your odds with time.  I am a young man, and writing is one of the few old men’s games.  I suppose I am getting a leg up, but I am playing with time that I do not have.  So I have to love it, or it’s never going to give me anything back.

And I do.

Only it feels sometimes like my muse and I are a couple who have undergone hard times and are starting to resent one another.  We’ve been together so long, and we know one another probably too well.  We got in debt together, and we’re done our fair share of mind altering substances.  I’ve gotten fat, and she’s gotten bitter.

Well ladies and gentlemen, it’s about time I shape up.  I’m going to start going to the gym and she’s going to get back into hobbies she used to love.  I’m going to start taking her on dates (to the nice places with the dim lighting), and she is going to open up more (about the real stuff).  I refuse to lose her.  And it may be that I never will.

So that is what this blog is going to be about.  Starting this week, you are going to see chapters of the novel pop up here.  I also have an idea for a serialized work that’s going to make its way on here.  I am very excited to get this off the ground.

It’s like coming home again.

~~~

Thank you everyone for reading!  Please let me know if you have any feedback about anything going on.  And please check in Tuesdays and Thursdays to see if anything new is popping up here. As always:  Write on.

Image Credit:  http://www.euran.com/calliope.htm