Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Seema blogged recently about what makes a successful blog, but I think a bigger question is What makes a successful blogger? Forget about the fame - what makes one blogger happy and the next one frustrated?

I was writing to a friend who’d burned out on blogging about the flood of information that any blogger faces. Even if you’re just blogging about your own personal life, there are 24 hours a day of that to be distilled into a few paragraphs of blog. The secret to blogging joy is being able to write exactly as much as you want to write to convey what you want to convey.

Maybe you have deep ideas or maybe you have cutesy links, maybe you want to keep your finger on the weak pulse of the MBTA or be an alpha geek content provider. But there will always be more ideas, more links, more T derailments, and more geeking. You have to draw the line somewhere, and do it without guilt.

That’s where the little psychopathy comes in handy. Once upon a time, blowing people and responsibilities off was considered impolite. Now it’s expected and necessary. The internet is a world of procrastinators, where only the most interesting things get done, and whole websites, fandoms, and people fall by the wayside when the interest wanes. You won’t be happy on-line unless you can put off answering email or blogging that so-so blog entry indefinitely (which is to say, forever). You need to be one with the asynchronous nature of the net, which is to say, you have to be able to procrastinate your troubles away or you’ll get an ulcer.

The net belongs to the slackers.

I sent in two entries to a writing contest five months ago. I included SASEs with both, and neither came back. The website didn’t list the winners, and I didn’t hear from them when the judging happened, so I assumed I had lost. I just got a bunch of my forwarded mail, though, and in it was a certificate for first place in one of the categories, and a prize (of as yet unknown monetary value). There was no actual notification with it, though—no cover, no list of who won the other categories or places, nothing.

I’m happy, but it reminds me of the time a magazine published a story I’d submitted without telling me. The publishing industry is infinite in its weirdness.

I’ve been so enjoying on-the-fly spellchecking in Safari that I wanted it in Emacs, too. Flyspell was mentioned in an aside in a MacDevCenter article, and I have it running now. It took me a while to figure out how to set up the hook to run it automatically (because I forget geek stuff faster than I learn it) - I found some examples in people’s on-line .emacs files: Thomas Krennwallner and Anoop Johnson.

If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish…
–JRR Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories” in Tree and Leaf

Now I want to write a story about fantasy perishing.

Word count of the decade: 500,060

Yes, with a recent push on a Stargate novel, I’ve officially half made it to a million words of fiction, in just under four years.

Although my word count was once calculated using a basic application of wc, it’s now maintained in a baroque OmniOutliner file that also tracks what’s fanfic, original fic, published, submitted, in progress, or abandoned - plus dates. (Yes, Colony is still in progress.)

Now that I’ve hit the big 5-0-0(-0-0-0), where do I go from here? The other half of the million words is the obvious answer, but I tend to live in the moment - I can’t have a goal that’s another four years away. On the other hand, 500,000 words is barely a start to a standard fantasy epic. Even Atlas Shrugged is longer, at 645,000 words “by the printer’s count.” (Yes, I think inserting a 55-page political speech into a novel is cheating.)

If I hiked my daily word count from 1,000 to the NaNoWriMo level of 1,666, I could write the other 500k in one year. Or I could write a 900-page political speech…

This is my 900th blog entry - if only it counted towards my word count. I’ve been editing, which is a zero-sum game as far as Total Lifetime Word Count goes. The TLWC is hovering around 500,000, not counting non-fiction or filk. I’m halfway to that elusive first mill.

The title is from a Guardian interview with Ursula K. Le Guin. Thanks to an old rasfcer for the link and the HP quote:

Q: Nicholas Lezard has written ‘Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.’ What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I’d like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling’s writing style
UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.

Most of the interview is about her own work, including that seminal work of mpreg, The Left Hand of Darkness.

I found out about ENC Press from an article by Julia Gorin. ENC sounds like a good place to sell your politically-incorrect genre-busters. Unfortunately they’re closed to submissions this year, but the catalog and coming attractions look interesting.

I had a few things I meant to blog about - the perennial issues, sci-fi and taxes - but I’m having a sudden attack of writing guilt. I was accepted by a summer writing workshop so now I feel like I ought to, you know, write something. Maybe I’ll even get back to posting my daily word count.