Pace

Sometimes, as fast as you want to get where you're going, the world around you just slows you down. Every redlight along the way switches on as you approach. People pull out in front of you, then creep along at half the speed you want to go. Though you want to run down the hall or sidewalk, slow-walkers teeter into your path at strategic points, forcing you to match their excruciating pace. And there's just nothing you can do about it but smile, have patience, and accept it. That's exactly how this week has been for me. Everywhere I go and everything I do, someone or something slows me down. It's been driving me crazy...but I guess I just have to quit fighting it. What else can I do? It's much like my writing career, in fact. I've done a lot of good work, and I've made a lot of the right moves, but my progress seems nonexistent most of the time. I want it to all come together right NOW, with no further delays...but there's only so much I can do. The rest of it, like the redlights, erratic drivers, and super-slow walkers, is out of my control. I wonder if I'll ever manage not to let it drive me so crazy?

The Focus Battle

The writer's dichotomy: I love writing more than almost anything...but it's so much easier to do almost anything other than write. That challenge, of course, is one of the things that makes me love writing so much--the inner struggle that sometimes ends with a beautiful or at least unique creation. But sometimes, it's almost impossible to push aside the temptation to do other, easier things. I'll break my focus to check e-mail or a website or watch TV. Sometimes, I can even justify the sidetracking, as it relates to my writing in some way...though it isn't the writing itself. Often, the distractions are perfectly sensible, fulfilling homeowner responsibilities or obligations to loved ones. Now, especially, as the weather warms up, I'm finding myself pulled away from the laptop to tend to yardwork, car washing, etc. I'm going to have to make a stronger conscious effort to set aside the uniterrupted time in my office EVERY DAY, then marshal my forces and resist every temptation to break that time with distractions...and WRITE.

My mentor, Dean, has a saying: "Kick those people out of your office." Mostly, it means that a writer has to block out all the contrary voices in his or her head that can sabotage truly creative writing--the discouraging English teacher, the negatively critical editor, the unsupportive parent, whoever. I also think it applies to the Focus Battle. When your butt hits that chair, you have to kick everyone and everything out of your office, including the little voice telling you to check your e-mail or do some "research" on the Web.

The Focus Battle. Add it to the list of running battles I'm fighting this year: Focus, Patience, and Creativity vs. Business. More on this later from the western front.

Resolutionary War

Will I stick to my resolutions and plans this year? I sure hope so. I've made a conscious effort to do more planning than usual, in fact, to avoid some of the pitfalls I encountered in 2006. Last year was great in many ways, but I failed to achieve some major goals, especially in my fiction writing endeavors. Let's just say I got a little off track. It's one of my character flaws, actually: I have a real tendency to lose focus and drift. It's pretty disconcerting sometimes, because I'll find myself doing things that I know will derail my primary goals...but I do them anyway. It's like I become a different person. I'll look back six months later and scratch my head, wondering what the heck I was thinking when I did such-and-such instead of sticking to the plans that I know will be beneficial in the long term.

I truly hope 2007 will be different. I want to stay on-task in a big way, committing time and energy to the specific tasks that have the potential to move my writing career forward. Maybe, by creating extensive plans as I have, and posting them all over the damn place and forcing myself to apply discipline to staying on course, I'll be less likely to drift in harmful directions when my personality inevitably changes during the course of the year.

Because meeting my goals for a change would be cool.

Day One

It's Day One all over again! Recently, I started a blog on another site, only to realize I liked Blogger better...so here I am! I'm planning to move over my earlier posts from the other site to this one, so hang tight. Meanwhile, a few words of introduction: I'm a writer. My work has appeared in the following Star Trek titles from Pocket Books: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds III, Strange New Worlds V, and Strange New Worlds VI, Star Trek: New Frontier: No Limits, Star Trek: Voyager: Distant Shores, and Star Trek: S.C.E.: The Cleanup. My fiction has also appeared in publications including Postscripts, Abyss & Apex, and Sciencefictionfantasyhorror.com. My comic book work can be found in Dead by Dawn Quarterly, Commercial Suicide, and War.

And there's lots more to come, so stay tuned!

Oh, and here's my website.