Writing through the doubts again.

My confidence in my writing is shaken, but it doesn't seem to keep me from writing.

When I first started writing, 40 years ago, I was in the midst of the deep depression.  Writing was a way of escape.  I dreamed of success, of course.  But the writing itself took me out of myself and was therapeutic.

I was happy as a clam writing this time, dreaming of further success, knowing the odds were against me, but still...

Anyway, I think I'll just have to work myself through this disappointment for a few months until I get over it and once again regain my delusional self-confidence.  Then not expose it for a couple more years while I just write.

I'm shocked!

Shocked, I tell you!

To find that the guys on Duck Dynasty have homophobic views!  (I was so sure they were liberals!!)

That Gov. Christie would play petty politics!  (Even more shocked the politics are dirty!!)

That Disney sugar coated the true story of Mary Poppins!  (Even more shocked that Disney has sugar coated the story about sugar coating the true story of Mary Poppins!!)

That the Nook isn't selling well!  (And even more shocked that a $38.00 tablet from Asia is supposedly in the works!!)

That Santa Claus isn't imaginary, because apparently he's been seen and he's a big fat white guy!  (Even more shocked that he isn't anything you want him to be!!  By the way.  For all you kids out there, the Easter Bunny has brown fur.  He just does.)

That the Bitcoin seems to have radically different values from minute to minute!  (Even more shocked that gold does!!)

I'm shocked by all the shocked headlines on Huffington Post and Slate and Salon and Business Insider and Buzzfeed and all the others.

Shocked I tell you!!!

Filling my computer with books.

I'm basically filling my computer with books.  (Cloud backup).

I'm actually starting to lose track of how many books I've written.  Some of it is in a grey area -- does completely rewriting an old book from beginning to end make it more or less a new book?

How about if I just keep track of how many books have a solid first draft and may someday be published?

It's a lot.

And I'm just going to keep going.

I'm 50,000 words into Deeptower.  It has come very easy.  The plot just came together, the characters.  It helps that I did most of the world building in Deviltree.  There is no way this book isn't going to be finished, now that I'm this far.  I have the ending in sight.

After that,  I've got at least three or four series going that could be continued. 

The Spellworld fantasy books. (These books are an inchoate mess, contradictory, premise faulty, and of different tones.  But I think they are the same world.)

The Cobb and Co. dark fantasy books.  I really like the characters and the premise and have a number of ideas for books.

The Virginia Reed historical horror books.  I ended up liking the main character so much that I want to continue writing about her.

The Deeptower books.  The whole premise of a mystical well that connects worlds is designed to be a series.

I've finished The Vampire Evolution Trilogy, with the third book hitting the airwaves in about a month.  I'm thinking of binding all three books into one book, and offering that along with the single books.

I'm torn between trying to write something completely new, or continuing writing on the worlds I've already constructed.  My inclination is to continue on the different series until I run out of ideas.  Use them as practice.  Keep learning to write by writing. 

Truth is, I don't know what I'm going to write next until it happens.  I had no idea I was going to write a sequel to Deviltree.  I didn't know that Death of an Immortal was part of a trilogy.  I started writing Wolflander, my sequel to Faerylander, while the first book was still an unmanageable mess.

I'm just guessing, but I suspect my next effort will probably be another "Lander" book, but it could be the middle book in the Spellworld series, or possibly a complete rewrite of the first book.  I'm trying to fit in a rewriting session between each new book.

I don't know how long this will continue.  I have a memory of being completely stumped after my original third book was published.  The 4th and 5th books were just wandering in darkness, and reading them these many years later, I'm astonished by how much of a dropoff in quality there was between Icetowers and Bloodstone.  The 4th and 5th books just can't be saved,  even for someone as prolific as me.  Truth was, I just didn't have a book until Deviltree came along.

The period of time between buying the store and this latest writing period (25 years!)  wasn't really a blockage.  It was simply a recognition that I needed to make a living.  It was a suspension of writing -- that just lasted a whole hell of a lot longer than I expected.

So I know that I could hit a roadblock at any time, so it seems to me to make sense to keep filling my computers with original material as long as they keep coming to me. 

As I keep saying -- the writing of books and the marketing of books are two completely different processes.  And my inclination is to spend all my time on the former, rather than the latter. 

Even if all it does is fill my computer with books.

Is the Bend Film Festival really so successful?

Is the Bend Film Festival really so successful that it needs to reorganized, or is something else going on?

All I know is, I've barely noticed it the last few years.  It seemed like it was everywhere those first few years.  I remember the big plastic blowup stage they installed on Minnesota St., so big it basically stretched from the buildings on one side of the street the buildings on the other side, with very little room to walk by.

Of course, if they had bothered to ask any of us merchants on the street if that was a good idea, we would have informed them that Minnesota St. is a wind tunnel at the best of times, and a hurricane corridor at the worst.  I believe they had to take it down prematurely, but that's just a hazy memory that could be wrong.

Anyway, I remember the constant headlines, the many stories in the papers, the pictures of the lines (which if anyone ever wanted to frame the word "hipster" with a picture, those lines would have worked.)  Like I said, I barely noticed that it even happened this year.  In fact, I remember asking people if it had actually happened.

I don't have anything against the Bend Film Festival, but I wonder if it one of those things where they mistook Bend for a "happenin' place" and aren't ready to give up the dream so the event sort of slowly dwindles into chaos and irrelevance.  Often, a charismatic and energetic founder gets it going -- and being charismatic and energetic, flakes out after a couple of years and no one ever really replaces them.

I often hear "numbers" that seem to contradict what I'm seeing.  The buses, the Cascade Music Festival, the golf tournament.  Everything seems to be hunky dory right up to the point they're not.

Meanwhile, though, we still have a spandex race every few days, so we got that going for us...

Impulsive is bad in a good way.

My Dad used to say,  "Do something, even if it's wrong."  Which I always understood in an intuitive sense, if not a rational sense.

At the same time, I love my routines.  I was telling Linda the other night that she goes to bed at radically different times, anywhere from 9:00 to 1:00.

"I like to do things differently, even if they are little things."

Me?  I'm the opposite.  Everything the same, all the time, as much as possible.  My theory is life will throw you enough changes, even when you don't want them.  I don't need to add to them. 

Anyway, it doesn't make me exactly spontaneous.

Sometimes, though, I do get impulsive.  Often it's because I'm out of whack for some reason; sick, sleepy, tired, drunk, whatever.

So I'll so something that I ordinarily wouldn't do.  This often has some beneficial results -- and occasionally disastrous results.

I woke up from a bad dream early yesterday morning and had an idea.  I got up went to my computer and did it.  It seemed like a really good idea at the time.

By evening I was regretting it.  For one, I did it badly -- I didn't think it through enough, and then I looked like a ninny going back and changing it several times.  For another thing, as the hours passed it seemed more and more cynical and crass.  What had seemed a brilliant idea of cooperation and mutual benefit, now seemed like a craven attempt at bribery.

Here's the thing.  It could still turn out to be a good thing.  It was a different approach.  My old approach wasn't working.  The worse that can happen is nothing and I was already getting a whole lot of nothing.

If I had put it off, I probably wouldn't have done it.  If I had thought about it longer and tried to get the whole proposal right -- more thought out -- I probably wouldn't have done it.

Sometimes I just have to do something badly impulsive to do anything at all.

The crunch point.

I'm ahead of last year, but I'm realizing it doesn't matter.  Just two or three bad days in the latter part of the month and that increase can disappear.

This period, from the 15th of the month on, is out of my control.  I've stocked the store, I'm open, that's about all I can do.  I will do at least twice the business than I normally do.  I hope.

This is probably the most stocked with games I've ever been.  I may have a bunch of Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride left at the end of the year, but they are such evergreen sellers that I'm not worried about selling them later.

A couple games are unavailable again -- the same games that disappeared last year, and I know the chainstores have scooped them up.  I told my game rep that I thought it was a stupid idea to stiff the game stores during Christmas, but they do it anyway.

But really, it's only one game, Pandemic; I managed to pick up plenty of copies of Ticket to Ride from my comic distributor instead.

I've also completely filled my wish list for books this year, making orders that will still arrive this week.  By the end of the week, it will be pretty much too late to get anything else.

So this is the start of the real season, and all I can do is keep my fingers crossed.

Risk is fun -- for the other guy.

One of the big comic retailers has bought a second store after more than 25 years of business.

Of course, everyone is encouraging.  People are funny that way.  Ever noticed how risk is always worthwhile -- as long as it is the other guy taking the risk?

Jump off that cliff?  Yeah!  Go for it?  You'll totally land in the water!

I want to write the guy a warning note, but I think that would probably be presumptuous and not appreciated.

I had four stores once, and as long as things were humming along, they worked.  The minute things started going wrong, I was like the Little Dutch Boy running around trying to plug all the holes.

But assuming that his business plan is solid, that he has the organizations skills to do it -- (which I did not) -- there are still dangers to watch out for.

1.)  Employees become even more important.  When you have one store and one of the employees quits, you can usually manage -- even if you have to plug yourself into the hole.  When you have two stores, then you have a problem if both stores have employee problems at the same time.  After all, there is only one of you.

Moving employees around is pretty disruptive.

2.) More things to keep track of.  Whatever quality control you've managed to create in one store will get stretched when it becomes two stores.  The danger isn't just that you won't manage to create the same quality in the second store, but that the second store will drag down the quality of the first store.

3.)  Inventory stretch.  The temptation is to believe that you can spread the risk, take unsold material and distribute them to each store.  But you can only really be in one store at a time, and it is natural to pay more attention to the store that you're in the most.

You cannot give second rate material to the second store.  You can't slough off the unsold material.

You'll have to take good material you know you can sell in the first store, and give it to the second store where it might not sell.  But to do anything less is to give the message that you don't care about the second store as much.

4.)  People will expect the second store to be as good at the first store -- which may be difficult to do because you've done the first store for years.  If not, they'll start drifting to the first store, which will make it even more difficult to make the second store work.

5.)  By the time you set up the second store and fully staff it, you usually are taking most of the profits to pay for the employees.  If you want a fully responsible manager, you need to pay them, and in my experience, that takes most of the profits.  Expenses just seem to eat up the extra revenue -- for one thing, it is much harder to be efficient.  Losing four or five percentage points in efficiency can really start to add up over time.

6.) Being stretched too thin.  Look, it took how much effort to make your first store work?  Well, it will take an equal amount if not more to make the second store work.  Why wouldn't it?   So -- you're looking at twice the effort -- maybe not quite that much, because I'm sure a certain amount of the first store is on autopilot, but still.

7.)  For some reason, you don't just work twice as hard with two stores, you work three times as hard  The problems compound, the extra number of employees multiples those problems, keeping track of everything is complicated -- it's very easy to drop the ball.


There are plenty more problems, but these are off the top of my head.  I found I could make as much money and do a better job with one store.  (Our second store, The Bookmark, is Linda's store -- she runs it.  So if you have a spouse who's willing, a second store can work, if you let them run it.)

I think it's the great American way, that if you're successful you expand.  It takes real willpower not to do that, to question the wisdom of it.

It's the Peter Principle for stores -- stores will expand to their level of incompetence.

A "serious" book.

Started writing a "serious" book yesterday:  Here and Gone.

I'm not sure what it will lead to.  I suspect if I continue it will look and sound quite different than what the first draft is coming out as.  Wrote about 1000 words.

It almost immediately turned into an almost genre mystery, which was not my intent.

Strangely, my writing seems almost too florid for serious writing.  And at the same time, not florid enough.  I'm thinking I'll need a style that works.

But first, honest emotion.  That's what I'm striving for.  Authenticity.

I'm placing no burdens on myself to keep writing this.  I still enjoy the storytelling of genre fiction, and also think that having a "serious" novel published is even more impossible than a genre novel.

My intention is to turn to it every once in a while and see if anything can be done with it.  For my own edification.  Practice.

The existential angst of a writer.

JOURNAL:  12/14/13.

I realize that no one wants to read my existential angst about writing.  But that insecurity fills my waking moments.  (Actually, it fill my dreams too.)

If a book is written and no one reads it, does it really exist?

I think the only way I can justify continuing to write at this pace is to tell myself that I'm improving:  that someday I'll write something so absolutely wonderful that no one can deny it and that everyone will just have to read it.

It's still early, especially if I consider the start to my writing as being September, 2012.  That's when I began writing The Reluctant Wizard, after struggling with Almost Human (now Faerylander) for two years.

What is writing?  Is it the words themselves that are important -- their artistry and fluidity and uniqueness?  Or is it the thoughts behind the words?  Is the story more important?  Is it the world-building, or making characters real?

It's all the above. 

I've always had two things that impelled me to start a story -- one is just following the flow of words and seeing where they lead.  The other is coming up with a story I want to tell.

A book only works if I'm doing both those things.  I no longer follow the flow of words for very long before I start thinking of the pitfalls, or where I may be creating an unsustainable premise, or where I may be trying to write something I'm not capable of achieving.  I've discarded books after understanding that I didn't know enough about the subject.

So I'm trying both to be smarter about my choices and yet allowing myself the freedom to write.

I might be better off writing a new storyline each time, but for learning purposes and for pure satisfaction, I've been writing sequels and trilogies and series.  Which is a little crazy, since if the first book doesn't go anywhere, it's a bit like hitching your wagon to a dead horse.  Still, as I say, I really think I'm getting incrementally better with each book.

My basic strategy to get better is to just keep writing.  Fine-tune it as I go along.  I've realized, for instance, that while I can write more than 2000 words a day, that is the optimal level for me to keep the freshness going.  Writing 2000 words a day is a lot in the scheme of things -- it also means I'll probably have to go back and spend another day or two on each 2000 word chunk just to make them work.  So that 2000 words a day will probably eventually turn into a more sane 750 words a day on average.  But getting the story down while it's still alive in my mind and heart is the first step.

I've learned that I can rewrite, if I totally re-immerse myself back into a book.  That prospect looked dodgy for awhile.  And I learned that I can fiddle with the book as I go along without going off course.  My actual work process has improved, and was already much better at the start than when I quit last time.  And the technology is miraculous and has made all this possible.

This writing of 2000 words takes the whole day, though the actual writing may only be a couple of hours.  Things are always percolating under the surface.  I have to give myself time for that process to work.  (I just discovered that I only read 18 books this year!  Which is about 20% of what I usually read.   But it makes sense if you consider that each of the fifty books I didn't read might have taken 8 hours, which turns into 400 hours that I was writing rather than reading.)

I've realized that I don't need to publish a book until I'm ready.   That I can write each first draft as they come along, and go back later and rewrite them when I'm ready.

I learned that I was not that much better when I re-started as I was when I quit; perhaps worse, because I wasn't putting quite as much work into it.  On the other hand, I don't feel any older and stodgier than I was back then -- maybe less so.  I have a luxury I didn't have back then -- knowing that I can spend so much time at writing and still pay the bills. 

(I've never doubted that I made the right choice to earn a living by running a comic and book store.)

But I do think I've regained my mojo after struggling for a bit.  Rededicating myself to telling stories.  I've loosened up on the writing, letting myself write what I want to write.

Most of all, I've given myself permission to be as prolific and ambitious as I want.  Lining up a series of 4 trilogies might seem crazy -- except that I'm more than halfway through the process.

So if I consider this a long term project, I'm just doing the equivalent of a beginning writer spending a couple of years writing that first book.  Except, I have the bonus of having had a previous career where I made many of the beginner mistakes and was able to start at a slightly more advanced level.

I feel that I'm getting a little better with each book.  I'm getting more proficient.  I'm learning the relative values of the different tasks it takes to finish a book. 

For an example, each chapter I've written of this new book has the basic story I came up with, but each chapter I've tried to put one or two sort of change-ups, or flips, or curlie cues.  I don't know what to call them.  Little additions that make the story more alive somehow.

This comes from practice, I think.  I'm much more steady on my feet about pace, and yet at the same time, letting the story dictate how much dialogue there is, or how much action, or how much narrative, or how much description.

By continuing to write, I think I'm learning what I'm good at -- and doing more of that.  And what I'm bad at, and trying to avoid doing too much of that.

I think if I can keep up the writing despite my existential angst, that I'll come up with stories that not only are good enough (which is where they are now -- I think they deserve to exist and be read, but I understand  the near impossibility of convincing others of that) to something that is really super good.

It may still end up being existential, in the sense that I may write that spectacular book and only I know that I did it.

That idea, of writing something really good and no one knowing, is the ongoing angst of the whole thing.

When you're young, you can be all romantic about the notion.  You can think you're Van Gogh or something.  Little harder to do when you get a little older and realize that the universe isn't always fair.

It all comes back to the question of -- if no one reads it, will it have been worth doing?

But I won't know that until I've done it.

The phrase I used early on still applies:  Writing through the doubt.

What else can I do?

A couple who writes together...

Linda is getting ready to publish her book, Telling Tree.

She's pretty excited.

Linda and I met in writer's group 31 years ago, and we've both had times when we were writing and when we weren't writing, sometimes at the same times and others times by ourselves.

But we've always understood each other, always been supportive.  When your significant other disappears for hours, days, weeks, and months at a time -- it probably would be hard for a non-writing spouse to understand what's going on.

When I hear hours of silence in the dining room, I know exactly what's going on.  She's at the table, totally engrossed.

She has a wonderful imagination and tells a great story.  The technical aspects, spelling and grammar, were hard for her at first, but she has learned exponentially, and the modern technology has been a wonder. 

I stay out of her way.  I'd like to be an editor, but I've learned that what I say can demotivate her, so I've stayed away.

But I intend to be the first buyer of her book!

Christmas is coming like a freight train.

It seems like I barely caught a breath after Thanksgiving.  The slow period after that holiday is rapidly coming to a close.

The last ten days before Christmas is when all the action is.  So, perhaps starting this weekend.

I'm not really out of stock of any product that I should have -- I could goose a couple of product lines just to make absolutely sure.  I could make another moderate game order, another moderate book order, another moderate card order.  Depends on how much I want to dump into January, which is the slowest month of the year.

That is, I have to save some of my Christmas "Profits" to pay for late orders -- which means they aren't profits at all.  Then again, if I have to reorder in January, the same thing is true, so it makes sense to try to sell the product in December.

I'm still undecided, and really, if I don't decide in the next day or two, I may as well skip it.

I'm much better stocked than last year -- and if the cold snap hadn't slowed business a little, I probably could have kept an extremely high level of inventory right through the end of the year.  As it is, I probably have more than enough, and all I'd be doing would be making absolutely sure.

The danger of being "absolutely sure"  can be overkill.  My game distributor was out of the Ticket to Ride games, for instance, so I ordered 11 more of them from my comic distributor instead.  Then I realized the games wouldn't get here until the Wednesday before Christmas, so I made a "direct ship" of 9 more.  Unfortunately, for whatever they didn't do the 2-day ship, so I'm getting 20 boxes on the 18th.

That might be a years worth of that game, frankly. 

Meanwhile, I have multiple copies of the game in stock already.

So -- that kind of "Making Absolutely Sure" type ordering almost always results in overordering.

The good thing is that we're financially solvent enough to carry the product through the year without it hurting us.

Stockpiling is such a temptation.  A couple of years ago, DC offered all their graphic novels for an extra 10% off.  I ordered a few hundred dollars worth of the "Evergreens" and wondered how long I would sit on them.  Well, I sat on them for a short period of time, as it turned out.  I could have ordered 10 times what I did and saved money all year.

Then again...there are no guarantees.

I arrived at a "just in time" model of business years ago, mostly because it was what I could  afford, but also because it gave me more flexibility.  Things have gone well enough over the last two years or so that I'm thinking maybe I should be investing more whenever a bargain comes along.

Sort of like floating myself a loan. 

Anyway, time for everyone to get going on the Christmas shopping!   I'm sure I'm not the only store that is facing the short period between Thanksgiving and Christmas to do my re-ordering.

Cold weather damage.

Adding up the damage from the cold weather.

Broken spring on our garage door opener.

Two frozen faucets (one frozen pipe?) but escaped pipe bursting.

Slower business than it should have been.

**********

I belong to a writer's group, which is having its Christmas party this Saturday.  There will probably be 20 or more people at this party, even though only about 5 people usually show up for the actual group -- the same five people, usually.

I'm going to screw up my courage and stand up and nag some of these guys to start coming to to the real group once in awhile.  If everyone went to two meetings a year, minimum, the whole thing would work better.

**********

Had a young man show up for group last night.  It was funny, he was a college English major and he knew all the correct "grammatical" terms. 

He'd be great if he kept coming, but our group is full of middle aged or older duffers and young people don't usually keep coming, sadly.  I wish they did.

Age is so ridiculous.  I really do feel like I just came back to writing after a couple of years off.  Really, I feel like maybe a 35 year old.  

I didn't come back as that much better a writer as I left off -- which kind of surprised me.  What I did do is jettison a lot of the unnecessary doubts.

**********

He mentioned that I had some one sentence paragraphs that didn't need to be so short.

I know where this came from -- it came from this blog.  Short pithy paragraphs work better in the blog.

When I started rewriting Deviltree it was interesting how long the paragraphs were -- too long, really.

So, yeah, I'm going to be more conscious of that from now on.


Or should it be:

He mentioned that I had some one sentence paragraphs that didn't need to be so short.  I know where this came from-- it came from this blog.  Short pithy paragraphs work better in a blog.  When I started rewriting Deviltree it was interesting how long the paragraphs were -- too long, really.  So, yeah, I'm going to be more conscious of that from now on.


**********

Rapidly reaching that point in the season where I wonder if I should do more reorders.  In another week, whatever I reorder will show up in the January bills, and I don't want too much of that.  Also, it will give me just a few more days to sell things before Christmas.

So I have to pick that perfect moment for the last order -- somewhere between now and about the 16th or so.

What's nerve wracking about modern Christmas's is that everyone waits until the last moment.  The last 10 days or so.  By the time you can get a good read on how it's going to go, it's almost too late to do anything about it.

So you have to gamble, try not to buy too much or too little.

It's such a weird sensation to do average business for the first half of the month.

Writing another book, I don't know why.

By the end of this week, I'll be 2/3rds of the way through another book.  This one is a sequel to a book I wrote 30 years ago, Deviltree.  It's called, Deeptower. 

I've enjoyed doing it.  It seemed like a natural thing to do.  I'm getting more and more used to writing books in a series.  There are some big advantages to doing that.  The World-Building is already partly done, which is a pretty big deal.

On the other hand, writing sequels to books that haven't sold in the first place is sort of trying to hitch a ride to a dead horse.

It seems pretty clear to me by now that my books aren't going to be found by accident online.  I've found almost no readers that way.  The books I've sold are because I've out and out asked people to buy them, and I don't much feel like doing that.

So I'm being an artist for art sakes, it looks like.

I'm creating this mass of raw material, and occasionally going back and working on them, then moving on to the next new thing.

I have a weird faith that good things will happen, if I do the work.

"We Are Not Drones."

The Inklings, a store in Washington, came up with that slogan.  I like it.

We actually hand the book to you with our own little flesh and blood digits.  Try talking books with a robot.

Meanwhile.

The SEC is investigating B & N for financial irregularities.  More on that later.

For a couple of years there, it looked like ebooks were going to run book/books out of town.  But I think that possibility is receding now.  People still want book/books.

There is no reason the two formats can't co-exist.

I sort of predicted that, based on gut instinct.  The way I thought of it was this:

I'm a reader -- I love books -- therefore readers love books.

I've thought from the beginning that Barnes and Noble would be viable if they just stuck to selling books.  But it looked like they were doing everything they could to subvert that.  Turning large sections and manpower to the Nook.  Giving every indication that they thought books were a goner.

I tell you, nothing turns off a buyer like shoving the product to one side as if it doesn't matter.

B & N doesn't love books -- readers love books -- therefore readers don't love B & N.

I understand the impulse, but I think it was panic.  A wrong move that didn't think through the consequences.  They made the wrong analogy of being like DVD's or CD's.  Sure, they look the same, but I believe where it matters, in the heart of the reader, they are completely different.

What do I care what format I get my music in?

But I do care what format I get my books in.  Apples and Oranges.

How was the Nook ever going to beat Apple and Amazon and all the cheap knockoffs?  They were always going to be in the middle, which is a very uncomfortable place to be with new technology.

Anyway, if I'm reading this SEC investigation correctly, what B & N did was manipulate the financial records to make the Nook look like it was doing better than it was -- I'm assuming at the cost of making books look like they were doing worse.

When you have a losing strategy, it seems to me that you don't throw out the winning parts to support the losing parts.

You stop doing the things that you are losing in.

If  billionaire came along and bought this company and made it private and concentrated on just selling books -- I think the chain would survive.  They might need to scale back, but they've got the infrastructure, and as I said, I think there will be a demand for books.

Meanwhile, despite all the doom and gloom, independent bookstores continue to make a comeback.  

You don't know what you aren't seeing.

I'm still surprised that people don't know what Cthuhlu is.  I would have thought the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon would have been triggered for most people by now.  I know that I see references to H.P. Lovecraft and his inventions absolutely everywhere.

I guess you don't know what you aren't seeing when you aren't seeing it.

Other examples in my life of Baader-Meinhoff.

***Bettie Page.  Loved Bettie as a character in a comic.  Didn't know she existed.  Found out she existed, and then she was everywhere.

***Settlers of Catan.  Once you're aware of the Euro board gaming trend, you see references to it everywhere.

***"Talking Points."  I spent the whole last election arguing politics with people and being accused of using liberal talking points.  But since I didn't go to any liberal websites and or TV shows or anything else, they actually were my own thoughts. Yes, my very own thoughts.  So I didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.

Then I started seeing those websites and TV shows and went ...."OOOhhhhh!"   Basically, they were accusing me of doing what in fact they were doing....

***And finally, Baader Meinhoff, itself.   Heh.  Now it seems to apply to everything.

***A thousand other examples, I just can't think of them right now.

A wall of good.

One of the funny things that happens when you write is that people are quick to reassure you.

"Well, there are a lot of bad books out there, so you can't be any worse than that!"

Well, since those books are published and I'm not, apparently I can be worse than that.  Thing is, I believe that almost every published book has something going for it.  Sneer at your own peril -- or show you can do better.

I was talking to a customer who said, "Yeah, you're facing a wall of "good."

I think that's right.  It isn't so much that there are bad writers out there that you can outdo, it's that there are so many writers out there who are good -- or at least as good as you are.

I mean I'd rather think I'm good but they're better, than think that they're bad and I'm worse.

If I'm to take responsibility for getting better at it, then I have to accept that.  I need to get better.

In the end, if I write a really good book, it will speak for itself -- and all the rationalizations won't matter.

Improvement that can't be seen.

I've been trying to take responsibility for not being good enough.  The only answer to that problem is to get better.

Am I getting better?

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty certain I am.  As I've been saying, I'm getting more proficient.  I'm planning my plots a little better.  I seem to be lining up scenes better.

Most importantly, I've broken down my resistance to re-writing.

But in spite of all this, it may not matter.  I'm looking at most likely doing this for a long time without much recognition.

So bottom-line, the question is, am I OK with that?

Ego wise, I've been both accepting the verdict and rationalizing it.  So that process is well underway.  I can still hope for the best.

The doubt about whether I should be spending so much time and money on it?  Just taking a two or three week break from writing answers that -- I waste that time anyway, I don't use it any better.  So I may as well use that time for my creative pursuits.

This really is a lot like when I'm trying to make changes and improvements at the store.  There is a long planning stage, a long preparations stage, a long installation stage.  During most of this time, it's a drag on earnings.  It doesn't seem like it is having any effect.  Even after it's done, it often takes time for the customers to respond.

But I always have a sense of where I am in the process, a faith that I am improving things, and even if other people can't see it, it will eventually have an effect.  And it almost always does.  There are the occasional flops, but most often what I think will be an improvement is a real improvement.

Most of this improvement, for most of the time it is being accomplished,  is under the surface, and isn't readily apparent.

If I improve each stage of my writing, then ultimately all those stages will come together to produce a good book.  I have to have faith in that.  I'm certainly being diligent about the process.  And again, my experience in business is that if I'm diligent and persistent for long enough, it will eventually pay off.

I don't think this is the way it's done.

I spent most of the day within 10 feet of my laptop.

Waiting to write.

Twice in that time, I got busy for a short flurry.   I wrote my quota of words.

I also ruminated on what was planning to do, and came up with some ideas --which is almost as valuable as the actual writing.

So, more or less 14 hours near the computer, of which only a couple of hours were actually occupied by writing.

I don't think this is the way it's done by most writers.

I've gotten very much into a mode of saying to myself -- I have all day.  Don't rush it.  Let it come.

So I spend all day waiting, and really not getting anywhere.  I browse the internet.  I play a lot of solitaire.  I hit 1905 on my cumulative score, which if it isn't a record, is pretty close.

Thing is, I got pretty spoiled there for about a year, I was writing so much, it amazed even me.  Now the old procrastination habits are creeping back.

But...spending 14 hours near the computer with the intention of writing -- that's got to mean something, right?  I feel like I'm close to being good, but I need to put more thought and work into it.

But I bet this isn't the way most people do it...
 

Cancel Christmas.

 I regret to inform you that we have cancelled Christmas.

It's winter, and it's cold and there is snow on the ground.  Very dangerous.

The crowds?  You could get crushed in those crowds, we just can't risk it.  I mean, look at the traffic!  More cars on the road mean more accidents!

You really shouldn't be spending money on silly gifts anyway.

The amount of fattening foods that are consumed on the Holidays is just scary.  Really, we need you to scale that back, folks.  Forget about Christmas, it's dangerous and expensive and a pain in the ass.

Having to get the family together, and then listen them to them bicker the whole meal?  Really, for peace of mind, this cancellation is necessary.

Sure, you could bundle up or choose not to go.  But we can't trust you to make the right decision for you and your kids.

Cause --- winter! 

Missed my 7th year blog birthday.

Missed my 7th year blog birthday.

I've blogged every day since November 29, 2006.

Every day.

It isn't hard, for some reason.  I just sort of blurt out stuff and move on.

Been lots of ups and down in the economy since I started, mostly down.  Lately, a slow recovery.
None of it caught me by surprise and the store weathered the whole collapse rather well, simply because I prepared for it.  (The original Bubble Blogs helped confirm my own feelings about what was going to happen -- but I would have been convinced anyway.)

I've gone from talking almost exclusively about business and the economy, to talking about writing. (And shedding most of my readers probably because of that...)    I've been consistent about talking about what I want to talk about, not worrying about whether anyone reads me or not, not worrying about links and connections and all that.

Mostly a low-tech word blog.  Added my picture a year or so ago, but that's about it.

I really miss Bend Blogs, which was the conduit that most locals used to find me through (and through which I found other local blogs.)   I get a goodly number of hits these days (for me, though very tiny compared to many blogs) but I'm pretty sure lots of these hits come simply because of the sheer volume of material I've created.

99% of what I've put on my blog as been original content, by me.  Don't see the point of all the blogs, twitters and emails and Facebook posts that simply copy other material.  Really don't.  I'd rather read just about anything by a real person than another fucking meme.

Blogs have gone from being cutting edge, to old news.  So who cares?  Wouldn't be the first time I was left behind, nor would it be the first time I was ahead of the curve.  I don't seem to be much affected by what's popular.  (Which isn't terrible helpful when I want to sell my own books -- I'm just allergic to hype.)

This blog has become such a habit to me that I think I'd go through withdrawal if I quit doing it.  It's leaving behind a record -- I'm not sure of what.  Maybe some historian in a hundred years will find something valuable in the everyday life of an obscure writer and small business owner in the boomtown of Bend, Oregon.

Meanwhile, I see no reason not to just keep on blurting.