View From the Bushes

When I was a boy, I wanted to be a ballerina. A stern talking to by my father changed my mind, and for many years I was left adrift in a sea of indecision and tutus. Eventually I decided what I really wanted to be was an author. Like most of us, I was in love with the idea of writing, but had very little affection for the actual hard work of sitting down and spitting out words on to a sheet of paper. I think a lot of role-players fall into this category, people with great imagination and a so-so work ethic. :)

This is not to say that I was complete failure (it just hurts too much to admit it). After I started high school, I began to actual write, not merely daydream about how cool it would be to be a "writer." So I started reading all this stuff from other authors telling you how to write. And it's pretty depressing, because they all basically say that in order to be a writer you have to write (and everyday at that, oh, the humanity). Which, if you're anything like me, despite its complete obviousness nevertheless comes as a cruel blow, because as I mentioned I liked the idea of writing but I still wasn't very fond of the actual process of forming words into sentences.

Gradually, I got better at it. One of my big breakthroughs was when I realized that writing a 10-page short story was easily ten times as hard as writing a ten page chapter in a novel. That's when I switched from (trying) to write short stories to (trying to) writing a novel. I got about 100 pages into it before the financial responsibilities of having children forced me to sell out to the "man" and become a webmaster.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero,
Ross