It’s funny that the reason I’ve been on a reduced-posting cycle the last few weeks has been because of writing.
I don’t know a thing about writing.
By which I mean the business of writing for a living, not the process of putting words on a page in a readable and entertaining manner. (I don’t know much about that either, but I’m less useless with the latter than the former.)
I’ve picked up Writer’s Market. I’ve compiled a list of good markets for the sorts of things I want to do. I’ve even started putting together a list of agents because ultimately I want to get a few short things published somewhere, get the attention of an agent, and mostly write books. I don’t honestly like writing short stories that much.
I don’t want to write to get rich, but I would like to write well enough to make it my profession: that which I do on a daily basis to the exclusion of a day job. That’s what I want to do.
I mean, I do that – I do that now – write on a daily basis (and almost to the exclusion of my day job). The things I write well don’t necessarily work in this blog medium (a daily column style would be more appropriate), but I can produce the word count, and I’ve got the stories floating in my head.
I just have to get the machine rolling: make the changes to my schedule that means I’ll produce possibly-saleable text every day, then start submitting it. Start failing. Start falling down.
Because if I was really trying, I’d be getting rejection letters, wouldn’t I?
I’ve been screwing around with this for years, waiting to win the lottery so I could do whatever I wanted. Thing is, I can do whatever I want now. If I seriously start now and make it work, I’ll be able to look back and say “most of my life, I was a writer.”
I want to be able to say that.
This isn’t a call for ‘attaboys’ and ‘youcandoits’; it’s simple self-coercion; I know how my mind works and I know how to deal with the lazy bastard: I need to write something like this out in public to force myself into motion.
So now I guess I have to get to it.
