Two New Blogs

The point of this blog was to get me back into the habit of writing daily. Alas, that has not panned out the way I intended with my posts here being a bit sporadic to say the least.

And yet, I do write every day now!

I'm either writing for my clients, working on my novels, or now blogging on specific topics.

That's right. I'm launching two new blogs, that I hope I will post in at least three to four times a week, if not every day. They are more focused than this blog, aimed at specific target audiences and exploring variations on themes. I'm hoping that will enable me to start building platforms from which I might launch some future works.

In the meantime, they're great opportunities for me to write every day and explore things I think about a good deal.

The first is "A Sane Libertarian." In this blog I will discuss a good deal of politics from a highly educated, highly interested libertarian perspective. I didn't spend four years in college and three years in grad school to never talk about politics. And since the topic is verboten at most social gatherings, I'm going to commit to writing about it. I've got a Masters in Political Theory and American Politics from the University of Virginia, I've run a political campaign for the US House of Representatives, and I keep up with politics by reading way too many blogs and news sites. Time to make my experiences work for me.

The second blog is called "A Writer's Recipes." The first post basically sums up why I'm doing this blog: I have to lose about 30 pounds for my sister's wedding in order to shrink my well-endowed top half and fit into the bridesmaid's dress that is apparently discontinued and the last size they had.... *RAGE* .... Since I have a relatively sedentary lifestyle as a writer and I really hate to exercise--I don't run unless someone's chasing me--I aim to keep my daily caloric intake below 1200. This means modifying recipes and trying out new ones to keep from getting bored. Salads every day are unacceptable in my house, especially since my husband doesn't eat them. In this blog, you can follow my experiments, successes, and failures as I change my eating profile and hopefully my physical profile as well!

So that's that. I hope you will consider checking them out! Let me know what you think of them, and if you want me to tackle any particular topics in either of them.

Comment on my last post:

JamesJan 10, 2012 06:43 AM

I'm very happy you are a writer

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you know how you married the right person.

My poor husband puts up with being married to a very frequently unstable, complicated, complex, troublesome person who would rather disappear into a fantasy world of her own creation. His wife dives into work and distraction with equal vigor, because she can justify both as inspiration or production. He deals with irregular sleep patterns, emotional outbursts, and unpredictable story telling as an idea works its way out of subconsciousness. His wife frequently disappears into her own head for days at a time, and yet still constantly needs reassurance that she is being supported (as it's sometimes the only connection she has to this world).

And yet he professes that he is glad his wife is a writer.

I have either married a saint or a masochist.

Either way, I love my husband, and I am so sorry for all I put him through. Zeus knows that I am a problem who is equally likely to spontaneously want to move to Montana and live on a kibbutz (as was brought up tonight) as to situate herself in a one room studio in London with no internet access just so she can write with no distractions. How that man talks me down from my crazier ideas and convinces me to channel them through my writing, I will never know. He has more patience than anyone I've met (as my father constantly reminds him). And I'm sorry, I put him through so much.

Mind you, it's not going to change any time soon... I'm going to be a challenge no matter what. But I love him. And I am so lucky that he loves me.

Don't Be a Writer

Good Advice

“You don’t want to be a writer. Trust me, if you can do anything else, do it. Writing is hard. I cannot tell you enough how much you do NOT want to be a writer.”

I’ve heard that same advice at conferences and conventions, in classrooms and chat rooms, in blog posts and in books. Almost every writer’s advice to other writers is to, first and foremost, give up.

While other industries will first tell you all the great things about their line of work, only writers will tell you up front that you’d be better off doing anything else besides writing.

It’s hard work. It takes years to get good at it; it takes even longer to get paid for it. No job will take more out of you. Trust me, you do NOT want to be a writer.

Did I listen?

Of course not. Like most people who choose this path, I thought, “I’m different. I’m going to make it. I’m not afraid of a little hard work.”

Have I ever told you that I’m just not that bright sometimes?

.

Not that Great at Listening

So now I’m a writer. I write for money. I write more often for no money. I write for people to read, but more often I feel like I’m writing for myself.

That’s what a writer does. A writer ignores the good advice that tells them to get a real job, to take a steady paycheck, to follow some dream that has some remote possibility of coming true. We quit our day jobs to pursue what we think we’re good at and what we want to get better at. We spend our free time writing thousands of words, most of which never see the light of day, and our working hours writing for others on subjects we might not care about just to pay some bills.

It turns out, they were right. Writing is hard.

As a writer you must constantly generate new content, for your blogs, your articles, your novels. You have to be on the lookout for new ideas, and new spin, sometimes for subjects on which you have already written thousands of words. In the last two months, I have written 41 articles on Blackjack; each one is unique and original. Can I just tell you how tiring it is coming up with new things to say on a subject you exhausted weeks ago?

And you have to write every day.

.

Turns Out, Writing Is Hard

Writing well takes a lot of practice. Everyone thinks they can write. They write emails at work. They send each other text messages and chat online. They think writing is just an extension of that.

It is so much more. Writing well takes drafts, revisions, editing, rewriting, and then maybe scrapping it all and starting again from scratch. A single blog post may take a few hours as the writer figures out that a first draft is often rambling and without direction and requires a lot of revision. I’ve done three drafts on this post, and it’s only going to be read by a handful of my friends (if they even make it this far!).

I’m still struggling with learning how to write well. Every day I discover an article I’ve written where the words lack flow, where the thoughts stumble or fail to develop fully, where the syntax is laughable.

Every day I ask myself what demon possessed me and made me think that I could possibly be a writer. That damned muse won’t leave me alone.

So to you, I offer this advice. If you want to be a writer, don’t do it. Writing is hard. I cannot tell you how much you do NOT want to be a writer.