Prompt: Look Down Your Own Mountain

Today's prompt is based on last week's post about looking back down the mountain. If you haven't read it, you will probably want to, as the prompt might not make sense if you don't know what I'm on about.

It's less of a creative writing prompt, and more of a creative writER prompt. It's designed to help combat the feeling that almost every writer feels that there is still so far to go and that they aren't actually making any progress at all.

I have prompts about how to define success so that you can look up the mountain and decide which peak you want to hit and how you're going to get there. I even have talked about setting small goals each day to help the march of progress.

But from time to time, a writer (or really any artist) needs to remind themselves of just how far they've come.

Prompt: Look "back down the mountain." Take a moment to list out between a dozen and twenty things you have accomplished as a writer. These don't have to be external acknowledgements (like contests won or scholarships) though they can be. They can be as concrete as a publication credit or as vague as writing successfully every day, the fact that you have multiple stories in your head, or choosing writing over something else you wanted. Don't write out every little thing you can think of ("When I was six I wrote a ten page story for Mrs. Delgado...."). This isn't an exercise in everything you've ever done, but more the things which, looking back, you can be the most proud of. Between 12-20 means you can't just list a couple of things, and you can't list everything trivial--you will really have to think of those things you have done that seem like your truest accomplishments. If you need inspiration, you can see my list here. Try to hit the things that feel like they cover distance.  When you are done, gaze in awe at your list and realize that you really have worked hard.  There may be more to go, and some days it feels like you're not getting anywhere, but you really have come a long way, baby.

The Mailbox: What Genre Should I Write In?

How does a writer decide which genre to write in? 

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer each Friday.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. And it's really okay to ask multiple questions.]    

Jennifer asks:

I see that you are still looking for questions, so I will ask another even though I feel like I am taking advantage of you, getting your advice for free.

What are your thoughts on genre, specifically how does one decide in what genre to write? I also see this as tied up with what a person likes to read, for instance, if I like to read sci-fi perhaps I should be writing sci-fi. Somehow in my head this also ties into what I "should" be reading and writing and then I realize that I am also asking for your permission to never pick up a Dickens novel again and write whatever I want (if I only knew what that was).

My reply:

For starters, don't worry about sending me multiple questions. I live for this shit. Without questions, my Fridays are an existential crisis of staring at myself in the mirror and spitting at the reflection while saying, "Nobody likes you!  NOBODY!"

Several people who have sent in questions have sent in multiple questions. (Seriously sometimes I wonder if I just have half a dozen fans who each click a hundred times a day.) I often end up answering questions people have asked me in person or on Facebook or something to kind of fill in for weeks where I haven't actually gotten questions though my e-mail. There's still a lot of jazz hands going on at The Mailbox. I haven't actually been inundated with questions since last summer when I had that article going viral.

I'm lucky if I have the first fucking clue what I'm doing a week out.

But let's get to your question...

There are two answers to this. One would be irresponsible of me not to tell you as a writer. The other would be criminal of me not to tell you as an artist.

Let me let you in on one of the tragic "business-end" realities of being a non-uberfamous writer: it is reDONKulously hard to cross genres as a writer. This is one of those things they tell you early on if you take some sort of business of writing class or that comes up when there's some kind of Q&A with an agent or publisher.

You're basically going to be "locked in" to whatever genre you first gain traction in. Not that Stephen King can't write a fantasy saga or the world wouldn't read the shit out of J.K. Rowling's gunslinging western, but this is kind of like how Marky Mark was an "actor" before he became a "no, seriously" actor. When you're that big, you get to do whatever you want.

For most working writers, crossing genres is a no-no.

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of li-- No wait. That's crossing the streams. But crossing the genres is still a no-no.

It's such a no-no, in fact, that you will have more trouble finding an agent and a publisher to take a chance on your cross-genre work than you would if you were a brand new author.

More.

Think about that for a second. MORE.

Sounds totes ridic right? Published author. Built up fan base. Probably some kind of pre-established promotional infrastructure. But if you're writing science fiction and you show up with something that's clearly more in the literary genre (banal events, deeply troubled characters, ambiguous ending, focus on linguistic flourish over story, etc...) your agent and publisher are probably going to take a pass, and any new publishers and agents are actually going to consider your existing audience a strike against you. You may even have trouble with your old publisher and agent if you go back to writing in the original genre.

And those money grubbing publishing industry people know what they're talking about too.  Fans of yours probably WILL be upset and abandon your "brand name."

Turns out all those readers expect pretty much more of the same, and they will become strange and disillusioned--pumped to the gills with bile and haterade for being forced to buy a book that was not what they expected. And can they trust your future books to be what they want or have you shaken their trust in the universe down to the foundations?

I'm on page 250 and the zombies still haven't shown up!
And this Trevor dude just kisses her and talks of undying affection.
When is he going to get his gatling gun arm, already?

A writer is kind of like a brand, and a writer who crosses genres is a bit like a McDonalds with lobster thermidor on the menu.

I'll pause here to tell you a little anecdote. Usually once or twice a month, someone takes time out of their day to tell me that, whatever the poll is for that month, it's all wrong. I have included in my SciFi authors, a writer who is clearly in the fantasy genre--how dare I! Even though the polls are reader generated, and I usually let people use their best judgement, some people decide they really need to get up in my grill and set the record straight. The take home here is not that sci-fi readers are sometimes scary about being prescriptive (they are, but they'll hurt me if out them), but rather your readers will have a sense of what genre you're writing in (perhaps even if you don't), and they will be very sensitive if you try to step out of that.

There are a few exceptions to this: you can probably write across the fiction/non-fiction divide without too much trouble, and that means something like a memoir will probably do okay, even if you're established in writing detective fiction. Also, readers seem to be pretty comfortable with writers crossing the sci-fi/fantasy genre without any trouble as the dovetail between those fandoms is enormous. You can also use a pen name. And even if it's the worst kept secret in publishing who you really are, that will––for some reason––take the curse off of it.

Are you getting the feeling your author name is your brand? You should be.

But for the most part you should be aware that in terms of your marketability on the business end of creative writing, be ready to basically be expected to stick with whatever you start in until/unless you become a household name.

However...

And this is a big "however." It's a huge "however."  Perhaps the biggest "however" that exists within the arts.

What do you want to write?

The only thing you should be writing is what your soul burns to write. Write that book that is dying to get out of you. Write the book you're aching to read.  If that's science fiction or fantasy, write that. If it's one novel in each of six different genres, write them. Hang the industry. Trust that with passion and determination, you will somehow find a way to make the business end work (especially with all the exciting e-pub and self-pub developments in the industry).

Too many people have tried to write what sells or what they think would be popular and simply couldn't make themselves interested enough to really keep writing. They ended up with two chapters they thought were going to "make so much money" and a strange aversion to their writing desk. It's hard enough to sit down on the best of days and grit out the work you absolutely love; imagine writing something your heart isn't into. Imagine if your readers pick up on the fact that you just don't really care about what you're writing. Imagine if your lack of passion comes through each page, every paragraph, every line.

Because it will.

Writing isn't lucrative. It's not glamorous. The only reason to do anything as a fiction author is because you really, really want to. If you happen to write something that's popular, wonderful. If there's a way to market your book with a few tweaks, that's up to you. But the only question you should start with is what book are you simply dying to read that hasn't been written yet.

Now go write it.

Down the road, if you're writing novels for a living, maybe you have to make a slightly different choice–put that cross-genre book on the back burner or publish it under a pen name or something. But for now, just write what you burn to write.

Now as for your reading follow-up question, that's a little easier to answer. You probably don't want to limit your reading diet to the same thing you write. You can "concentrate" there but it will be really good for you as a writer to sample vastly different word-smithing as often as you can. Art is fundamentally about looking at things in new ways, and a writer is no exception--as many fresh perspectives as possible are absolutely essential.

(I mean imagine if Picasso never got into African art because it wasn't what he was doing himself, or never studied that "cubism stuff" that was going on in France because he was dedicated to his blue period.)

You should read constantly both in and out of the genre in which you write just to have fresh ideas, non-derivative devices, and a sense of your genre's style.  It's like hearing your own accent. It can be hard unless you spend some time listening to other accents.

Most writers you probably love are incredibly well-read. They may know their genre (though it's often funny how many of them don't) but they usually have an amazingly broad sampling of many, many other forms of writing as well--from classics to other genres, to non fiction. Stephen King probably could teach a Literature Classics course to grad students without missing a beat (and with lots of focus on the grisly deaths), but from what I know about him, he probably wouldn't know what the latest Koonz novel was about.

I suspect you might be able to skate by with a blank spot like Dickens--I have a troubled relationship with many Victorian authors myself--but in general, you should expect to read a lot outside of your genre.

It's Really Okay Not to Write. Really. (Part 6)

The Pencil rules you.
All hail the pencil.

Even if you're writing for money, it doesn't have to be your day job.

Intro and Part 1- The Journey Begins  

Part 2- Chesslectric Boogaloo

Part 3- The Search for Sporadic

Part 4- Live Free or Write Hard 

Part V- The Expense Strikes Back

Part VI  The Half Blood Prints

-or-

It Doesn't Have to Be Your Day Job

Okay so you've decided that you want to be a writer. Really.

Wait....really?  You know you don't have to. No one is going to stand over you. No one is going to yell at you. It's okay to sort of casually imagine how rich and famous you would be without actually doing all that work (that likely would never make you rich or famous anyway). You don't need to go around looking for permission not to write or talking about how it feels like a chore or finding other writers who tell you it's okay to not write. You can even enjoy books and appreciate language and occasionally jot something down for sheer pleasure without it being about being a Writer with a capital W. There is no reason--

No?

You really want to do this?

Really?

Okay.

Fame? Fortune? Groupies? They will be mine.
I am the premier rock band recorderist.

You're not just doing it because someone told you were good at writing--probably back when you were in junior high--and you feel a responsibility to pursue your talent. You figure it's the best shot you've got at being rich and famous since you throw up during public speaking and the only instrument you learned to play was the recorder back when you were five?  This isn't how you plan to break into your real dream of being a big Hollywood director or something, right? You really want to write?

Really?  Okay.

You don't have to do it every day though. You can just do it when you feel like it.

Lots of people have hobbies that they do when they want to. It's okay to do it only when you're in the mood or you're feeling inspired. Lots of people play baseball for fun or enjoy video games when they are in the mood for them. They don't sit down every day and do them like a training regimen. It's okay to decide that you're only going to do it when inspiration strikes you like unicorn puke.

Have some fucking inspiration, motherfucker!
Photo by fluffycatheven

No?  You want to go beyond the capricious desires of your muse, and pursue writing with a greater dedication, treating it more like work. You want to improve and practice and do it even when you'd rather not, and be the best you can be.  Are you sure? Because at this point you're probably starting to be a little obsessive about it. You don't mind being like a cat lady, except with writing?

Okay then.

But of course you know you don't have to make money from it. Lots of people practice at arts and crafts to get better without thinking that they are going to make money from it. I knew a guy who rehearsed in his community choir three nights a week and practiced almost an hour a day with no intention of being a professional singer. It's perfectly okay to just write for fun without holding to the idea that some day it will make you money or be your job.

It's okay not to enter the business side of writing--which involves all kinds of non-writing crap like promotions and agents and publishers and learning the industry, but also involves a whole new dimension of not just writing for pleasure, but putting your work out there for all to see, getting feedback (most of it probably pretty negative) and just a grinding demand for constant productivity.

No? You still want to try.

Okay then.  Here's the next thing to consider when you're thinking about how it's really okay not to write. (Really.) You still don't have to make it your principle source of income. People who write have a strange sort of tendency to wish that was their main and only job. They never want to make a little money--they always want to be full time writers. You already know you're not going to get rich or famous probably ever, but certainly not by working three hour days and sipping espressos in the French Rivera. No, this is going to be actual, real work. Every goddamned day.

Lots of crafty people have little sideline businesses making soaps, knitting Jayne hats, or making jewelry. They do it on the weekends or maybe after work, and it's mostly a labor of love but they manage to make a little money doing it. They are interested in improving and doing it for money, but after they update their Etsy site or spend a day in a booth at the farmer's market they go back to their real jobs as accountants and lawyers and telephone sanitizers and make the real money they need for things like food and rent. It's okay to do it as a part time job.

I have given up my practice to sell
speckled ceramic frogs on Etsy.

Because the shit thing is, if you want writing to be your day job, you have to do it every day. And the real ass noodles is that you probably have to take a pay cut, even if you work more than a full time job.

Let me hit you with some sobering news: most fiction authors can't quit their day job, even if they wanted to. The money short stories pay out is probably not worth the time it took to write them, and royalty checks are dribbles until an author has several popular titles. Basically until you're regularly writing bestsellers or sell movie rights, you are likely going to find that your income isn't really able to support you.

Even the writers who sort of make money writing are usually faking it a little. It's some creative writing and a lot of jazz hands. They work as anthology editors or for literary magazines or as writing teachers or editors, or they are writers of a non-creative type to pay the bills. While they can say "I'm a writer" with a professional sense of pride, and probably care more about their creative endeavors, if you broke down where the paychecks were coming from, you'd find that their other job really paid the bills.

People who LOOK like it's their day job are probably faking it too. (Well, most of them anyway.) They have spouses whose income is large enough that they can afford to make a pittance, they are living in a situation where they basically have no expenses like with parents or on trust funds, they have some kooky set up like I do (where I am a househusband to a couple I live with) or they are mainly keeping the boiler lit during the winter months at a remote haunted hotel in the Rocky Mountains where evil twins and gallons of blood like to ride around in the elevator. They have managed to set something up where it's basically okay that they're pulling in less than minimum wage because it's more important to them to spend as much time as possible on their craft than to have big paychecks.

(In fact, if you really want to be a full time fiction author, you probably have to give up your expectations for an ordinary paycheck altogether. I had a mentor--an absurdly talented writer--who worked some sixty hours a week teaching at three different institutions plus a writing workshop for three hours a week (plus prep) who often felt vaguely dissatisfied that his writing career wasn't going anywhere even though he felt financially unable to give up any of that teaching time to dedicate more to writing.)

The reality of writing fiction is that it's brutally hard to make a living doing it, especially if you can't spend several years to a decade doing it in a less-than-day-job capacity. This recent Guardian article says that writers make an average of £600 pounds (a little less than $1000 USD) per year.

I've been writing 5-7 entries a week on this blog for very close to two years. My numbers are pretty good for a solo blog running for only a couple of years. A thousand hits a day is damned respectable. I make roughly $100.00 a month. Nice right? A little more than the average I sited above. Except that's about 25 hours or so a week I spend on it so, lemmie do the math here....hmmmmmm.....carry the one.....move that over....imaginary numbers.....square root of 9.....humanities major here...I took math for liberal arts.....

Ah yes! About one dollar an hour.  Or roughly 1/7th the current federal minimum wage or less than 10% of San Francisco's municipal minimum wage.

Don't get me wrong, the hundred dollars is a wonderful reminder that I'm making progress, but there's no way I could live off of it. Even at ten times that amount, I'd be struggling in most major cities.

So it's okay if you don't want to try to get to some point where you can quit your day job. That's going to take a long time, a lot of passion, and more work than you probably ever wanted to give this stupid friggen hobby. It's really okay for you to just work it as a sideline gig.  Maybe publish a short story here and there and enjoy the money it gives you to buy a video game or catch a movie. It can be a nice addition to your real income.

It's okay to not want to live in a room of a couple at forty and not have a car because you are passionate about your art. Even if you want to dip your toe into making money as a creative writer, it's okay not to give it your day job's worth of effort.  It's really okay not to write that much.

Really.

Go to Part 7 The New Blood

Don't Forget To Vote!!

Our poll for the best contemporary science fiction author rages on.

In all the hype and pomp and circumstance of the new year and all the scheduling changes and baby stories and new blogs I'm writing for, please don't forget that the January poll only has a little over a week left in it.

There was a girl power thing going on for a bit, but then Pratchett burst from mid poll to the top. Currently Pratchett and Le Guin are in a dead tie.  However the entire top half of the poll is so close that even a few votes could change things completely.  YOU could play kingmaker!

Though I have no way to "check,"try to keep in mind that the cut off line between contemporary and classic is 1970 (chosen fairly arbitrarily), so for the authors who wrote across that divide, please consider only their works on the post 1970's side.

If, for example you thought that without Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin's career was unremarkable, then you wouldn't vote for her since that was written in the late sixties. Also, you need to read The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven for goodness sake!

Like our last poll, everyone gets FIVE (5) votes.  However, there is no way to rank your responses, so using all five votes will "dilute" the effect of each of them.  If you have one or two favorites, you should only vote once or twice.

The poll itself is on the left hand sub menus at the bottom. It's long and black and sleek like the ship of an evil overlord.

A Week of The Little Things

I will probably keep doing my "personal-ish" updates on Mondays (that way the mad fans who keep writing "MOAR DEETS!" can know when to tune in for the very best in cyber stalking, and the people who think "what do I care about this guy?" know which days to go fuck themselves avoid.

It's actually been a pretty damned good week if you forget about the fact that The Hall of Rectitude was attacked by an army of Scarecrows. We all ended up beating off the straw-men as best we could, but they just kept coming. We ended up having to strike down the psychic who was controlling them--she got away but we have a new villain named Doctor M.E. to worry about. But aside from that nasty business, it's been totes amazeballs!

This week there are lots of smallish personal and writing developments, that are rocking my socks right off my feet.  I keep putting them back on, but they get rocked right off again. Probably none of them would particularly worthy of their own post, but every single one is slightly epic.  I sort of want to put them on a t-shirt and strut down the street, and flirt with all the hotties in such a way that they can totally see my shirt.  So in honor of a week of little things, I give you one of my Posts With a Soundtrack(tm). Just hit play on the Youtube video, and then start reading.

• I got a Fitbit for Christmas. (It's a little accelerometer that I wear like a watch and it tells me how far I've walked). It isn't that great, in that doesn't walk for me or promise me threesomes if I hit my daily goals, but it does kind of show me when I'm being sedentary. I've been walking between five and ten miles a day most days, and in addition to getting pretty close to hitting my first weight loss goal, I find that the exercise is doing really well at clearing my head for writing.
• I had a rough week on one of the other blogs I write for. My story of The Contrarian's birth has prompted a lot of members of the Youth Crime Fighter's Advocacy Union to lodge formal protests. But I wrote another post sort of explaining it, and I kind of felt like I nailed that one. Like I sort of want to run up to my roof and yell "NAILED IT!"Actually my roof is really slanted. I'm just asking to max out my insurance deductible if I try that. Maybe I should go to Tilden tomorrow or something.
• Writing About Writing reached another totally arbitrary--yet still totally exciting--round number. It's hard to get brain-frothingly excited about 600,000 once you've passed that HALF A MILLION point, but it's still pretty awesome.  We are on our way to the big "Seven Figures. (You have to say that in a deep booming voice through cupped hands to get the right effect.)

  

  There's got to be at least one or two that aren't from my mother.

• I ALSO hit a sort of mid-milestone (but still a bit worth crowing about) on Facebook.  Facebook is sort of like the red headed stepchild of the internet--what would happen if you told someone to design the most frustrating yet useful tool they possibly could. But it has perhaps the highest glass ceiling for helping me get W.A.W. out to people who haven't seen it before.

  

  Only 4,500 of them are bots!

• Though perhaps the biggest number-based excitement has more to do with how Writing About Writing is doing on an ongoing basis. Milestones are awesome, of course, but the ongoing improvement of W.A.W.'s performance is especially awesome.  After Changing the Creepy Guy Narrative died down in September-ish, I stopped breaking a thousand hits a day except maybe for once a month or so.  Usually it was closer to 700 or so.  Slowly I've crept back up to the thousand hits a day mark.  I'm still not hitting it every day, but enough get a little bit of drool and periodically check my inbox for groupie applications.  (Not yet, but soon, I'm sure.)  

  

  Did Chaucer get a thousand hits a day? No he didn't.

• Obligatory baby pictures.  Drink them in while you can. The Brain isn't going to let me take pictures forever.  The Lair of Larceny is using facial recognition software in it's villainy these days, and the last thing we want is The Contrarian being targeted for conversion. I'm sure they'd have their hands full given his power, but he is also already skirting the line of anti-hero, so it could be easier than we think. Once he's old enough to have his facial features recognized later when he's in Crime Fighter School, she won't let me post any more pictures.  
  
• I started work this week.  That's why we've been flying a little seat-of-our-pants-ish these last few days. Things should stabilize soon, but I'm still getting the hang of how quickly things can change with a baby in the house hall. I'm pretty sure the diapers have their own psychic powers too!  However, I am 90% sure that the new update schedule can still be awesome and be Mon-Fri and I won't have a psychotic break every Wednesday.  Maybe.  The psychotic break thing might be pushing it.

The Mailbox: Little Kid's Grammar

Check out our snazzy new Mailbox picture!
No seriously, check it out!

My kid is talking wrong!

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer each Friday.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. I'll try to answer anything that is peripherally about writing, but my expertise is limited.]    

Just a quickie today since yesterday unsupportive girlfriend kicked open my door and said, "The Hall of Rectitude isn't going to clean itself." I tried to explain about the baby and how the dishes might pile up for two or even three days, but she was having none of it, and since she was wearing Dr. Cybertrobotic's power armor (well, the left arm anyway), I wasn't about to get into a fight.

Wendy asks:

I have a grammar issue I am working on and I am curious how you would (will) tackle it. I have a twenty month old whose vocabulary is growing by the minute (or so it seems.) One interesting issue popping up is the difference between first person and second person personal pronouns. He points at himself and says "you" and then at me and says "me" because that is what I say. I think he would be quickly distracted by the nearest shiny object if I tried to explain "you are me to you and I am you to you." Even I want to say "look, shiny!" and change the subject when I repeat that sentence out loud. I know he will get it in time but I am curious what your thoughts are. If anyone else has read this far and would like to add your two cents, please do. Thanks :)

My Reply:

I'm going to take a crack at this even though it's a little more of a language acquisition question than one of grammar in the strictest sense. This stuff gives me a nerd-boner, and I did some research before writing this reply, but it's not like I'm well studied or have a PhD in Kidtalkology. So just please keep in mind that I am neither a linguist nor an early childhood education expert; this just coming from as much as I know about either, and others can feel free to check me.

The interesting thing is that, in a way, it is actually impossible for a child to make a grammar mistake...at least in the way we tend to think of them. Of course they can say things incorrectly--they do that all the time much to our twisted, sadistic amusement. But they are either repeating exactly what someone around them said--in which case it's not their error. Or, they are extrapolating a rule they do know into an irregular situation. (Like saying that the plural of foot is "foots" or something.) While this is technically true of most adults as well (basically the reason we have dialects and local colloquialisms) there is more a sense that adults should "know better."

From what I know about this subject--which I want to reiterate is limited--I'm pretty sure there are a couple of different things going on. One is that a very young child's sense of the world as separate from themselves is completely different than adults. Adults (unless they're narcissistic jerkoffs who can't even walk past a window without checking themselves out in the reflection) have a sense that other people exist and have egos similar to their own. But kids don't just act self-centered; they are self-centered. That's not because they're all little assholes (even though they are), but because their brains are still developing. The neural pathways that understand the world around them are still in the formative stage. That's why peekaboo is so exciting to babies. As far as their little brains are able to grasp, you are literally disappearing and reappearing--they don't "get" that you keep existing when you're behind the blanket. Early lingual kids are a bit further along in this development, but they're still wrapping their heads around it. So the idea of different pronouns might be extra confusing. (I mean why would you need a pronoun that doesn't have to do with him? Why would a word change when used by someone else. There are no other people.  That's nonsense!)

The second thing has more to do with how you're using the words. It's like that old joke from Burns and Allen. (George: "Say goodnight, Gracie." Gracie: "Goodnight Gracie.") If you call yourself "I" and him "you" he's going to assume that he is "you" and you are "I." [It's actually amazing how logical small children can be.] It'll take a little while to parse that those pronouns float depending on who is using them.  Actually, you don't need to correct him at all, and from what I've read that might be kind of frustrating and confusing. Basically he's going to get it from assimilation not being "taught." (Human brains can't be "taught" language in the traditional sense until we are about 4 or 5--or basically around the time we start reading.) If you just keep speaking correctly around him, he'll get it. From what research I did, the phase usually only lasts a couple of months, at most, so if you just keep talking normally, he should get it without you really having to stop and teach him directly.

Hope that answers your question, Wendy!

Looking Back Down the Mountain

The biggest thing around here to hike is Mt. Diablo.  Technically there's Mt. Tamalpais, but it's a longer drive, a shorter hike, and from a totally subjective opinion, the view from the top is somewhat less effective in inspiring a reaction of: "What does it all even MEAN?"

I like having existential crises when I'm looking out from the tops of mountains. That's basically the best thing about being up there. The more existential the crisis, the better. I hate getting up there and not feeling the crushing sense that I'm the most insignificant speck of mammal dust ever to crawl across the surface of a tiny planet in a backwater spiral of one of hundreds of BILLIONS of galaxies. But also that my small and insignificant mammalian ass just crawled to the tippy top of this very big thing. And fuck you, mountain, with your big enormous self, I just will-to-powered right up the side...of your face.

See Mt. Diablo is just out there in the middle of nowhere.  Hamilton. Tam. All those other mountains are lots of peaks and so you get a great view...of the peak over there.  But Mt Diablo sticks out of the middle of the ground so far from anything else that from the top, you can actually see the curvature of the Earth--in fact, its viewshed in several directions is only limited by the Earth's curve.

Existential city!

Uh....is this a blog about Mt. Diablo or was there going to be some sort of point about writing soon?

Shut up, evil italics voice.  I'm getting to that.

If you're hiking to the summit of Mt. Diablo from Mitchell Canyon, much of your upward ascent is early in your hike along a fire access road that runs something like a 16% grade on average with bits going as high as 20.

Oh, right, this is totally about writing.

Shut up.  I'm almost there.

So if you've ever hiked trails this steep, it basically feels like you're going about as "up" as you can without actually being climbing instead of hiking. Each step becomes a tiny shuffle. And even though the worst bit of it is only about a half a mile, it takes nearly an hour and causes muscles you didn't know you had to start letter writing campaigns against your decision to do such a silly thing as go climb a mountain.

Welcome to my blog everyone: Writing About Nothing.

Damn it, let me finish!

Anyway, here you are taking steps that feel like they're about an inch each, and you've been working for an hour, and your calves are screaming, and you look up and it doesn't look like you've even really moved at all...

But then you stop and turn around.

And down beneath you, you see entire cities--cities it takes you a half an hour to drive through even in mild traffic--sprawled out and tiny lines of freeway slicing through them like grey thread. You see neighborhoods and housing tracts like colored patches in a speckled mosaic. And you realize that you may not think you were moving, but you're already looking some 1500 feet down.  You just got caught up in how small the steps felt and how far you had to go.

Okay, I think I see where you might be heading with this.  Jesus, take long enough.

Even the first time I climbed Mt. Diablo, I realized how much a metaphor for writing it really was. Writers can get so caught up in how far they still have to go, in how it feels like they're just not getting anywhere, that sometimes they forget to look back down the mountain and see how far they've come.

And I think it's one of the biggest mistakes a young writer can make.

Because it can be so frustrating not to get that perspective once in a while.

So here is my look down the mountain:

• I have been writing daily (for the most part) for 20 years.
• I have two manuscript drafts.  They need revision but they are written.
• I have at least six or seven solid ideas for other longer works including at least one multi-part fantasy saga rolling around in my noodle.
• I have a degree in creative writing. Technically that's an English major with emphasis, but I learned a lot about craft and process.
• I have been blogging for two years, and successfully writing an official entry 5-7 times per week.
• If my blog were printed up it would be roughly 1200-1800 pages.
• I have put three of my short stories here to great reception.
• My fourth bit of creative non-fiction is also getting good response, and should be completed soon.
• I made $280 in my first year of blogging.  About $1/day.
• I made about $1200 this year from blogging.  (It's only about a dollar an hour, but it's still an improvement over last year.)
• I have consistently, unerringly, and definitively made life decisions that have prioritized writing over other facets of life--including money, a social life, and even family.  That's not necessarily a "good" thing (or a "bad" thing) but it does show I am serious when push comes to shove.
• I get an average of 1000 page views every day. 
• This blog is just a day or two away from getting 600,000 page views.
• I am more widely read than most first time published authors.  By the numbers, I am more widely read than most authors who are on their second or even third book. (Provided they did not first blog or write as a journalist or something.)
• I still love writing. It still makes me content in a way that nothing else does.

There will always be frustration. I think with the exception of a handful of household names, most writers will always feel like they wish they were further along in their career trajectory or that they were making faster progress.  Some days it can really feel like the wheels are just spinning in the mud.

But don't forget, at least once in a while, to turn around and look back down the mountain.