Inspiration is for Amateurs

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work.
-Chuck Close

How do you know you’re an artist?

Before I go any further, let me just clarify that I’m using the term as a catch-all phrase for people with a creative avocation, be they writers or sculptors or dancers or painters or photographers or musicians or any of a hundred other related endeavors.

Answers will vary, of course. For some people, they just know, and that’s all they feel they need. For a lot of years, I felt that way, myself. I was a writer because I was, QED. Even when I wasn’t writing. I realize in retrospect that it was more aspiration than identity, but when people asked me what I was, that’s what I told them. Then I served them another drink and slept until two the next afternoon before having brunch and going back to work. Continue reading “Inspiration is for Amateurs” →

Moving Right Along (Updated)

Despite the continuing challenges to my schedule-making skillz, I have managed to make some progress on the Victorius Revolution, though not, of course, as much as I would have liked. On the plus side, I think I’ve got a fair bit of time I can devote to it in the coming days, so that’s good.

In terms of the story itself, I’ve got parts one and two loosely plotted out (one on actual paper, one in electronic notes; I keep intending to centralize, but when I actually have time to work on the story I’m usually pretty keen on just kicking out prose). It helps me to know where I’m going when I’m writing, otherwise my fiction turns into a game of existential Grand Theft Auto, and my characters just wander around wondering to themselves what they’re doing. Continue reading “Moving Right Along (Updated)” →

Write-a-thon Project Update

Hey all. Just a quick note for those following my current writing project (if you aren’t, and would like to, go here, and donate $10 or more). I know it’s been a little while since I uploaded any new installments. Life’s been extra engaging this summer, in most of the right ways, but proper scheduling has nonetheless proven difficult.

Long story short (ha ha), I did a bit of work on it on Friday, even wrote a few hundred words, mostly scene-setting and description, then ran into a bit of a wall, since I found myself in the same place as my protagonist, standing there ready to begin the next chapter, but with no real idea what I was doing or where I was trying to go, at least not right away. So I’ve had to step back from actual word-production and figure out what’s next. Continue reading “Write-a-thon Project Update” →

2011 Clarion Write-a-thon

It’s official. As per my secret plan all along, I have signed up for the 2011 Clarion Write-a-thon.

It’s difficult to express the full impact the Clarion Writers’ Workshop has had on my writing, both as career and as practice. It really was a transformative experience, on a par with anything else I’ve ever done.

So, given the opportunity to give something back, I suspect it’s not surprising that I’m not only willing but eager to do so.

(It probably doesn’t hurt that having some kind of outside frame for big projects is something I find quite helpful.)

So here’s the deal. Continue reading “2011 Clarion Write-a-thon” →

Welcome to the Soft Apocalypse

As part of my ongoing plan to achieve world domination, or at least some small recognition as a writer of fictions and other things, I’ve created this spiffy new website and blog.

As time goes by, I’ll be filling it up with all sorts of wonderful things, writing about writing and the writer’s life, pimping my work wherever it appears, and even posting stories and novel excerpts for you to read without having to pay any money for them.

Lots of interesting things on the horizon, including a reading with my writers’ group Horrific Miscue, at Seattle’s Inner Chapters Bookstore Cafe on June 30th (a benefit for victims of the Japanese earthquake), and the 2011 Clarion Write-a-thon, where I’ll spend the six weeks of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop writing a novella/short novel called The Victorius Revolution and hopefully raising a couple of bucks for the workshop, which like so many good and worthwhile things is chronically short on funding to carry out its mission.

There will, of course, be much more to come, and I expect I’ll be posting about all of the things I’ve just mentioned much more extensively soon. But for now, welcome to the Soft Apocalypse, and I hope to see you here again many times as time goes by.