another darn writing post

My buddy Bigglesby has wanted to be a professional writer for, I don't know, let's say ten years now. Recently, he's been reading some words of advice and/or inspiration from a professional novelist, and it has really lit a fire under his rectum. The last couple of times we've been together, he's repeated some of the things he's learned, and has been trying to implement them into his writing (and his attitude about writing). He even printed out a big stack of this guy's How-To sessions to give to me to read, to encourage me to implement them as well.

That's cool, but I'm a little too lazy/cowardly to take any advice nowadays.

Big has, more or less, two or three hours of free time each day. He ends up writing, on a good week, about fifteen minutes a day. That's pretty embarrassing, right? But what's more embarrassing is that I have, more or less, six to nine hours of free time a day. And I write, on a good week, around forty minutes a day.

Okay, that's on a reaaally good week.

At the beginning of this month, I challenged myself to write a story a day for a week and publish them on my blog. I surprised myself by actually succeeding (though, truth be told, it took me about ten days to get eight stories written, the longest of which I didn't put on my blog), but according to Big's writer friend, I should be doing that sort of thing all the time, and sending out my stories to contests, editors, and publishers all the time, without agonizing over whether the work could be better or needs polishing.

They guy has a lot of really interesting things to say like that, things that make me wonder if it's really that easy to sell stories. Things that make me wonder if I can change my ways and be a success. Things that make me wonder if I have a faulty brain.

Hmmm. I'm going to quit typing this and work on a story from last August now.

Rish "The Finisher" Outfi--