Springboards and pratfalls

A quick search of Amazon.ca using the words "How to Write" returned 79,549 results.  I may have purchased and/or read about 10 of those titles.  There's certainly value in learning from the experience of others; to some extent, you can learn from their own successes and mistakes.  And since there are close to 80,000 volumes out there, to say nothing of the blog posts, online articles and free-radical quotations, there's bound to be something you can learn, no matter who you are.

And Tobin Elliott, I'm happy to say, will be adding to that list, when he launches his eBook "Tweet You Write."  I'm looking forward to picking up a copy - and not just because he was my Creative Writing teacher aeons ago.  I like the whole concept of his book.  He'd been tweeting <140 character writing tips over 2011 and 2012, 100 tips over a few months.  Now what he's doing is compiling those tweets, giving some background - why he tweeted the tip - and goes into greater detail and examples of what the tweets mean.  It's like some translations of Sun Tzu's Art of War:  you're given a Big Thought and explanation, you chew on it for a few days, and then you come back for the next Big Thought.  I keep trying to convince Tobin to go to POD and make a coffee table book, or at the very least, a bathroom reader.  I haven't convinced him yet.  I'll have to wait until either the end of this year or the start of next for a copy of the eBook, I guess.  (Tobin - I can't scrawl notes in the margins of my eReader!  Just so you know!)

But you know, you could spend a year's wages looking for advice on how to write, and you could spend fifty years reading it all.  And in that time, thinking about all the rules and suggestions and tips, how much writing could you actually do?  Aside from the time spent studying (and not writing), you'll be spending all your time worrying about colouring outside the lines (and not writing).

On top of that, with close to 80,000 how-to books on Amazon alone, how likely do you think it is you'll come across two completely unique books?  There's a lot of overlap between the ones I've read already.  And how likely do you think it'll be to come across two that are in complete opposition to one another?

Added to that, there are the countless blog posts, online articles and seminars - it gets to be a little overwhelming, and I pick up very little new information.  I think I've just about hit the saturation point, and now, all I want to do is write.

I don't know about anyone else, but what I learned about writing, I usually learned by accident, and what I learned in my younger days, that's what I live and write by.   

This is not a how-to blog.  I don't have the experience, expertise nor inclination to write a how-to thingamajig.  This is just a glimpse into some of the things I've learned, and where those lessons came from.

On Character:  I totally read that wrong.

I've already written about this, so I won't waste your time.  But the point here is, I was reading Stephen King's Art of Darkness, and I totally misread a line.  Whatever the line actually was, it had nothing to do with personalities or a colour wheel, but somehow, that's the idea that got stuck in my head.  Just as colours can compliment and contrast, so could personalities.  And personalities that are too similar to one another clash like pink and red; and therefore, if as I'm writing two allied characters just don't seem to be getting along, chances are, they're just too similar for comfort.  One of them needs to change.

Then my Uncle David, a painter by profession, told me "there is no such thing as colour," which, ahem, blue me away.  Basically, colour is perceived not in the eye, but in the brain.  Your eyes receive information about wavelengths reflected back at you; but the brain interprets those wavelengths as colours.  And the way the brain interprets colours is in contrast to other colours.  By itself, a shirt may be blue.  Contrast that against a royal blue shirt, and the first shirt now looks blue-green.  To show someone who is really an arrogant snob, I have to contrast him against a haughty snob and a braggart.

Just so, in order for your human brain to make sense of a fictional personality, you have to contrast that character against someone else; another character in the book, perhaps, or against yourself. So if you don't clearly distinguish one character from another, they all blend together, and you get a flavourless, monochromatic character-sludge.

Characters in want of braaaaaaains...ngyargh...

To me, this was an important, but a really obscure, lesson in how to write characters well.

On Plot:  "You have a wonderful voice but nothing to say."

Prof Garson, if you're reading this, thank you.  From the bottom of my broken heart, thank you.

See, in my university days, I'd been super inspired to write this short story, and I was so impressed with it I ran it over to my English professor to show her.  She patiently read the whole thing, even made comments in the margins, and over a morning coffee, she spoke those infamous words:  "You have a wonderful voice, and nothing to say."

"A bit shrill though..."

In nine words, Prof Garson managed to teach me everything I needed about writing, and about living in general.  She didn't just call me down out of my Ivory Tower:  she demolished the Tower and made me dust myself off.

I had no life experience (or at least, I didn't write any of it), and worse, it was all imagery and no point.  I had no story to tell.  Now, story comes first; voice comes last.

And secondly, I've realized why I don't like to read when I'm in the process of writing a book (which accounts for why I pretty much never read).  When I read, I absorb some of the narrative style; I accidentally replicate it.  What happens is that I get a very book-sounding book.  To help me stay focused on telling a story, rather than writing a book, I tend not to read - least of all a book from the same genre or time-period.  There is value in reading other people's books (Buy Canadian!  Buy from all my friends!), but I'm too much of a narrative chameleon to read during writing season.

On Pacing:  "Now that's how you end a chapter."

I remember the place, but not the time.  My mother and I were watching TV, and it was an episode of Flash Gordon, one of the really old Saturday morning serials.  At the bottom of the hour, our hero was trapped in some sporting arena with a ravening beast, doomed to die for the pleasure of Mongo and the Princess of Mars.  I don't know if that was what actually happened, of course, we're talking about something I watched twenty-five years ago.  Anyhow - at the bottom of the hour, we saw our hero in dire straits, and suddenly, there was a knife chord and the dreaded words...To be continued!  Then my mother got up to go do something, and she said in passing, "Now that's how you end a chapter." 

"What do you mean, 'stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion?'"

I'm not sure how old I was at the time; I was something between nine and twelve years old.  I'd spent pretty much all of my spare time writing stories on lined paper while sitting on the living room stairs.  Since I was seven, I'd known I wanted to be a writer, and since my mother seemed to know everything about everything, I took her words right to heart.  From then on, it didn't matter if the rest of the chapter was Grade A drek, but every chapter ended on an "Oh No" note, designed to intrigue the reader to at least carry on to the first page of the next chapter.

I've written like that ever since. Well, I mean, I try to get rid of the Grade A drek inside each chapter, of course, but you get the point.

On Writers' Craft:  I'll show you mine...

"What an intriguing proposition..."

If there was one thing I learned in Tobin's class, it was "Show, don't tell."

And if you don't know it by now, for shame!  In brief:  Tell = "he was so angry!"; Show = "He closed his eyes, shut his mouth and whined through his nostrils."

Occasionally, I get to critique the work of other writers.  If a section of the narrative feels slow and whiny, or melodramatic, or pointlessly poetic, guaranteed, it'll be because the author chose to tell instead of show.  This is Writers' Craft 101, and still, it's the downfall of many otherwise decent writers.

But really, the key to good narrative it doesn't get any simpler than that: show, don't tell.  Everything else is a matter of tuning your word choice to better focus the imagery you're trying to convey, and a matter of eliminating the static caused by poor grammar.

On Research and Believability:  Write what you know...or not.

I've written about this one too, but it boils down to when and how you do your research.

I attended some free seminar during my high school years.  My mother and I went to the Chapters in Ajax, and we listened to a guy who taught us how to write a book in 60 days or less (might have been 30 days or less, may have been 9 days, I dunno - it was a seminar on "how to write a book in a stupidly short time", whatever it was).  He gave his audience some tips on creative sprinting using word prompts.  He showed us how to design a story from the skeleton out (I still use this during most marathons), and most importantly:  he told us the most effective means of doing research.

In terms of research, he said that you should write the whole story first, making guesses or leaving blanks where you don't know stuff.  Then he suggested that, instead of reading umpteen tomes about submarines, go to the children's section and read a book about them.  With that kind of research, the accuracy and detail of your story will be just at the level you need to keep a reader satisfied.  Also, the fewer the details you put in, the less likely you'll make a silly mistake.  But heaven help you if you try to write a book about submarines if you don't know the difference between a propeller and a periscope.

Granted, this method doesn't work for everybody.  Some like to sit down and learn Wikipedia.  Some people don't research at all, but they can still make some pretty keen observations and get stuff right.  I prefer this method, because to me, Wikipedia is one great big maze of fascinating diversions, and left unsupervised among its corridors, I get lost and I never write anything.  Writing the story first, creating a list of questions I have to answer, and then hitting the digital library - that keeps me on track.

I believe that even the best, most well-researched author is bound to get caught with his or her scholarly pants down...unless you're James Michener, in which case the sheer volume of details will entrance your readers into a state of drowsy complacency and they never check your facts.

So many delicious facts!

If you do too much research, it hurts the eye; if you don't do enough research, someone will throw the book at you. The moral of the story is simple:  if no one notices whether you did your research or not, then you've done your job: the research is so well integrated into the story that you don't even notice it there.  But in the end, there will always be someone to throw the book at you, so don't sweat it too much.

Lately, I've really started to balk at the whole notion of "writing what you know."  Yes, it sure makes the writing easier, talking from your own experience, but dang - if I wrote what I knew, a) it would be boring, and b) it would still be wrong.

The beauty of writing any story - including and especially a historical, procedural or science fiction story - is that it forces you to go out and learn new stuff.  If you're only writing what you already know, you won't learn anything new, all the wonder and awe is sucked out of your narrative, and you don't grow - neither as a writer, nor as a thinker in general.

On Editing:  Infinite capacity for knowledge, limited capacity to apply it

When relearning French, I discovered that at first, you learn a lot. You go from "jzuh mah pell Pat" to a half-hour long conversation pretty quickly.  After a certain point, it's one new word a week, or one grammar correction, some advanced verb conjugation, or one nuanced pronunciation...It's extremely slow going.  And in fact, at that stage, a lot of FSL or ESL students get frustrated at this point, because the day-to-day improvements are now so small and gradual that students don't believe improvement is happening at all.  Looking back over the last five years, however, my French has vastly improved to the point where I could probably conduct business without any great trauma.

The same applies, I believe, to improving one's writers' craft.  After a while, you don't see a point to reading all the how-to books, and you don't feel like you're improving at all.  You read all 80,000 how-to books, and you still don't feel like you've learned a danged thing.  Take heart, dear writer - as long as you're applying what you already know, you'll continue to improve.

And the application of knowledge is key.  Sometimes, when looking over Tobin's work, I catch him on things that make him do a face-palm.  If I'm going to catch him making an error, chances are, the King of Show Don't Tell has told instead of shown.

For some people, it's usage of the passive voice (though they know better),  for others, it's head-hopping, or tense shift, stilted dialogue, whatever.  For me, I still get hung up on "character sludge."  The problem is not the lack of education of the author; the problem is, every author has a fatal flaw, and it hides in their blind spot. You need mental side-view mirrors, and you need a spotter.

On Growth:  Don't make the same mistakes again.  Make new ones!

 
I can't remember the time or the circumstances, but I do remember I was on the phone almost in tears about some colossal FUBAR at work, and how it had been all my fault.  My mother, as usual, managed to talk me back from the ledge (usually starting her crisis hotline speech with "awwww, poor you").  She asked me this and that, and I bared my soul, and then she said, "Well, just remember not to make the same mistakes twice.  Make new ones!"

And I do!  I never make the same FUBAR twice.  And now, I've excelled to the point where I can create such wonderful, convoluted and concurrent calamities that one calamity will actually disguise the other!  In terms of creating technical problems, I have mastered the secret ninja art of Sna-Fu.

In short:  so long as you're learning, then what's flawed in Book 1 won't be the same flaw as in Book 2.  You learn to fix one weakness, but in your dedicated efforts to fix one thing, something else breaks down.

So, regardless of everything I've learned so far, I've found that the most effective way of improving the narrative is by having a reader tell you where you've excelled and where you've messed up - not just in one or two projects, but in all new projects.  And that takes a lot of tough love.

First readers, beta readers, whatever you want to call them, are the best possible allies you can have.  They are your side-view mirrors.  What's a blind spot to you is no obstacle to them.  Cherish your beta readers.  Adore them.  Bribe them.  Feed them and tenderly braid their long flowing locks.  And for crying out loud, don't ever argue with them, or they'll run away and never talk to you again.  Mike Lorenson and Tobin Elliot both have acted as first readers for me, and they never pull punches.  Unfortunately, neither have flowing locks quite long enough for me to braid, but I have heard tell that they like food, so I'm okay.

All the time, I hear complaints like "I can't write this, I know I'm just going to mess it up," and "I'll never get it right, so screw it."  I say, "Good grief - if you can make that many mistakes, imagine how much you're going to learn!"  If your next story is just as bad, there's not a problem with your ability to write; there's a problem with your willingness to learn and to apply what you've learned.

Make the mistakes.  Find out why, where and how it went wrong.  Come up with a strategy to avoid that problem in the future.  When you write the next story, chances are you'll have avoided 75% of the mistakes you made last time, and the other 25% you can fix in draft two.

On Writing about "On Writing"

So, you can see that most of what I've learned about writing, I learned by not learning about writing.  My education has been 20% deliberate (reading how-to's, attending seminars, interviewing authors), and 80% incidental, having little to nothing to do with writing.

And worse:  everything I know about writing I've pretty much summarized right here and right now.  I can't write a how-to, 'cause I ain't gots 'nuff material. So I leave it to others to write the how-to's.

Like I said earlier, I'm really looking forward to seeing Tobin's book in the near future.  His course was undoubtedly the most formative in my writing career (he accounts for most of the 20% deliberate education).  And if I never take another writing course again, I'd be fine with that.  Tobin has spoiled me from ever taking another general Creative Writing class.

I look forward to his book, not just because it has some new material; I look forward to the refresher.  It's like Tobin's written down all his class notes for me, in an orderly and legible manner!

And I look forward to the refresher because nine times out of ten, if I've made a mistake, I should have known better.  If I faithfully put into practice everything I already knew, I'd improve by leaps and bounds.

Now go buy "Tweet You Write" as soon as it comes out.  That's the best writing advice I can give you.

A rotten horrible challenge from Tobin Elliott

So far, I've been pretty lucky, never receiving any chain letters for at least the last two years. And then this morning, dang it...This happens.

I went and checked out Tobin's blog this morning, and he said...

I got shenked by Nate

Apparently I’ve been Shenked by Nate.  That is, Nate Shenk over at ShenkItUp who’s tagline is “Wanna get shenked?”.  He got nailed, so he’s passed this along like some sexually transmitted disease to me.  A real sick internet “hashtag you’re it!” sorta thing.

So…here’s apparently what I must do to get myself out of this mess…

• I must post 11 things about myself.
• Answer the questions asked by the tagger (Nate).
• I must tag 11 other bloggers to continue the game.
• Create 11 new questions for the bloggers I then tag to answer.
• Inform each blogger that I have tagged them.
• Post the rules for the tagged bloggers to follow.

Let’s see what damage I can do here, all right?

You can read the rest over at Left to Write.

Now, fortunately, I don't follow 11 other blogs, so I'm automatically out of the game.  On top of that, of the blogs I do follow, 70% are professional blogs with multiple contributors, and 25% are also tagged in Tobin's list of victims, and I don't want to hit them up twice.  The remaining blogger...well, I just asked her ten questions last night, and the answers will be posted on Friday.

But I'll try to be a good sport and do my part for the other four steps in this dastardly game.

11 Things About Myself

1.  This morning I had a dream about Jack McGee (the annoying reporter from The Incredible Hulk TV series in the '70s and '80s), and about forensic paperwork, time travel, two nasty CIA agents, antiques and and some My Little Pony dolls I had back in the '80s.  I cried uncontrollably when I saw the dolls, and I'm not really sure why...

Truly tear-inducing.

2.  I have to take the dog out now.

3.  I have a horse-shoe shaped subdermal scar on my right calf just below the knee.  It comes from a horse riding accident I had in the late '90s.  After falling from the horse, the horse stomped on me and ran away.

4.  I fractured my ankle back in the '80s after goofing around on the jungle gym at a local park.  I'd been trying to impress my boyfriend (we were 12 at the time), and I tried to jump from the very top of the jungle gym.  Unfortunately, my foot got tangled in the cargo netting and I did a 180, falling on my head and leaving my twisted foot above me.  I don't remember crying.  I do remember thinking, "This is a stupid way to impress a boy."  A couple of days later, someone told me he'd dumped me and had started going out with my anorexic bff.

5.  Apparently army green brings out the yellow in my eyes.  At least, so said a fellow 48th Highlander one morning in the mess hall.  He told me that overall I wasn't much to look at, but I had pretty eyes, the colour of fresh spring grass with some bright yellow pee in it.

Not actually my eye.  Add more blood-shot-ness, and darker bags under the eye.

6.  And speaking of my army days...My "butch factor" increased exponentially one afternoon, not because of any feat of strength, but because of Coke.  See, I'd gone two weeks without a drink of Coke, drinking nothing but water out of a canteen and the occasional instant coffee out of a pack of rations.  Then came the tuck shop (a foot locker filled with ice and real carbonated beverages).  We had exactly ten minutes between training classes, and I was seriously jonesing.  So I drank a full bottle of Coca Cola - and not one of those small bottles either.  A litre of Coke in ten minutes.  On my way into the class, I thought, "That's strange.  I haven't burped yet."  In the class, our master corporal was already in a furious mood (his face was red, and we hadn't even started annoying him yet).  As angrily as possible, he explained all the various components of a particular weapon.  Meanwhile, the bomb was ticking and pressure was building.  Then, the Master Corporal picked up another object from the table and said, "And this..."  To which I responded, "Baarraaaaaaaaaawaawaawaaapuhawaaaawaaaaraaawaaaaaaurghaaaaawawawawap."  The Master Corporal blinked, and without missing a beat, said, "...is a gas plug, which apparently Flewwelling needs."

7.  My dog just looked at me and pooted as I wrote that.

8.  I still haven't watched The Godfather or subsequent movies.

9.  When I was six, I had a crush on Hercules.  I used to polish my nails for him right before the start of the next episode.

Olym...PIA!!!

10.  Apparently I swear (loudly) in my sleep.  I also wake suddenly at nothing, look around, and go back to sleep.

11.  Growing up, I only wanted to be one of three things:  a princess, a professional wrestler, or a writer.

The 11 Questions for the Tagged Bloggers (Tobin's questions back to his quarry)

1. Why do you blog?  Because I can't play piano.  Well that, and because it's a great way to start building an audience before I publish a book, and because it's a fantastic way to help emerging artists get a little more exposure.
2. What country (other than your current one) would you like to live in?  Easy answer!  Wales.  Hands down.  I went there in 2004, and I never quite came back.
3. Who’s the best band/artist in the world?  Queen.  Nobody could move an audience of millions like Freddie Mercury.  And he didn't have to do it with pyrotechnics or flashy costumes or a meat dress and extraterrestrial hairdos - though he did have his wacky moments too.  But he could move people just by the power of his voice and his personality.
4. If you could have a conversation with any three people, living or dead, who would you choose?  I would say Dona Catalina de Erauso, Nikola Tesla and Ernest Hemingway.  The only problem is, I don't think they would talk to me, let alone each other.  But can you imagine the fireworks?
5. In the course of your day, you hear a message from God (or your deity of choice) telling you to leave your job, family, and life and live as a fisherman (or woman) on the Nile.  There’s no doubt in your mind it’s truly God speaking to you.  Do you go?  Absolutely.  I've had the most incredible, formative, and touching adventures by suspending rational thought and following "the Voice."  It's scary how sometimes I arrive just in time to help someone else, and they to help me, when I listen and go.  But hopefully, I won't have to kill the fishes after I catch them.  I've had a bad history with fish that won't die.  It involves screaming.  And hand-flapping.
6. You have one week to live.  What do you do in the seven days left to you?  The same as I do all the time.  I already live every week as if it's my last.  I might take a moment to tell a few people some bottled up things, but otherwise, I can die content not having said them.
7. Your deity of choice (and if you’re an athiest, just go with me here) is holding a Celestial Interview.  You’re allowed only one question to Him/Her.  What would it be?  Simple.  "Why?"
8. Has the Earth been visited by aliens?  Why or why not?  Observed, probably.  Visited?  Probably not.  Why bother?  Think of it - using Google Maps, we can look at the shirt, shoes and pants of some woman who fell down on the sidewalk.  If some alien intelligence is able to create interstellar craft, couldn't they make something a little more advanced and real-time than Google Maps?  If I were an alien, I'd observe us from afar, and I'd get very sad and bored all too quickly.  I don't need to visit some Earth diner for a nice corned beef sandwich to know how great and how cruel humanity can be.
9. You can have any occupation in the world.  What would it be?  Writer.  I'm not loud enough to be a professional wrestler, and princesses have to deal with too much drama.
10. What’s the difference between an orange?  Cephalopod squared.
11. Define the universe and give three examples.  The universe is a big old assembly of distinct, bizarre and sometimes amorphous bodies clumping together in cliques, attracting and repulsing each other ad infinitum;  lesser bodies revolve around planets, planets around stars, stars revolve around centres of incorporated galaxies, galaxies revolve around nothing; someone's always watching the whole thing play out and trying to make sense of it; many people think there's someone behind the scenes manipulating it all; and everybody would rather spin out into nothingness and avoid hanging off each other for too long.  You know, it's rather like an overlarge church, or an after party for the Oscars, or any science fiction convention.

So, really, I would like to forward this on, because I think this is fun.  But Tobin took all the good names, and everyone else is too busy.  Sorry Tobin...I kinda flamed out.  So, here, have some Freddy Mercury instead.

Half-planned whirlwinds

I'd meant to post a new interview on Tuesday.  I have an excellent excuse.  You see, in my world, it's still Monday.  This week has a been one very long Monday, interrupted by an inconvenient series of naps.

But what a Monday!

Sunday:  get up, make bread, pack the car, chase the dog around and around and around and around, pack the bread, get in the car, drive for six hours until landing in Oshawa Ontario, park, get out, unpack the car, chat with Grampa, go for dinner with my mother, go upstairs with dog in tow, lie in bed and pretend to sleep.

End Monday part one.

Monday (the real thing):  Endure 2 hours of fidgety sleep (one before dawn, one immediately after), get up, scurry the dog through ablutions, zoom into the kitchen, set up the laptop and attempt to rush through 5 weekly reports (due Monday), 4 monthly reports (due Tuesday), 1 major 5-year study (due Friday last week), and 1 major new build (due Friday two weeks ago).

Discover that only two data points (out of 65) are functioning correctly.  Yippee!

Spend the next nine hours freaking out.

Pause freaking out long enough to discover that the church (which you left behind in Montreal) is bereft of any music sheets.  They're missing one singer (me), one person for recording the music (me), and one person for the music sheets required by all musicians and singers (that would be me).  FAN-tastic!

Jump in the car; Mother drives, I text, email and Blackberry Messenge' frantically in English, French, jibberish and minced curse words while dealing with simultaneous crises.

Arrive at Durham College and be a cheerful guest lecture in Tobin Elliott's patient and polite Creative Writing class (all the while dealing with a mild case of food poisoning from breakfast earlier in the day).  Tobin says I did all right, but I thought I rattled on pretty much the way I am right now, hardly pausing for breath and not entirely making sense, though from one word to the next I seem to be coherent except until you stop at the very end of the sentence, your eyes whirling in their sockets, as you try to grasp the enormity of the vagueness that is my mind.  Holy run-on sentence, Batman.

Exchange cars with Mother, go home, move more cars around, go to bed and pretend to sleep.

End Monday part two.

Tuesday:  endure about two predawn hours of bizarre and disturbing nightmares, get up, chase the dog through her ablutions, screech over to the kitchen table and commence one-handed typing while jamming fresh-made bread into the side of one mouth.  Muscle through 5 weekly reports (due Monday), 4 monthly reports (due immediately), 1 major 5-year study (overdue), and 1 major new build (grossly overdue).  Parry all (understandable) complaints from upper management at the lack of reporting, riposte with excuses and ETAs.  Freak out some more, just for the cardio exercise.  Compile data for an additional 52 data points, and throw together as much of the reporting as possible.

Pause freaking out long enough to jump in a Dodge Charger with Tobin (leaving the poor bewildered dog behind), zoom down major highways into the heart of Toronto, jump out, and commence hobnobbing!  Tobin and I were delighted to attend the book launch of Howard Shrier's Boston Cream!  With Linwood Barclay as MC!  I met up with other such wonderful authors as Rick Blechta, Dorothy McIntosh and Jill Edmonson.

Hang around a little while longer, networking, blabbing, and generally making a fool of myself while Tobin wittily and coolly sits back, having a grand old time.  (I, in the meantime, couldn't stop thinking about a) interviews, b) reporting, c) churches missing music sheets, d) how gauche I must sound to "real authors", and e) how wonderful it would be to have a book launch of my own.)

Return home by way of a gut-busting laugh-fest with Tobin, spend a little time with my mother and grandfather, shuttle cars around, go upstairs, lie down, and pretend to sleep.

End Monday part three.

(Deep breath...and now we carry on.)

Wednesday:  Suffer 3 predawn hours of nightmare-infested sleep (did you know the emails you get in your dreams can be darned realistic?), get up, run barking after the dog as she performs her ablutions, jump in the car, drive to Scarborough by way of drive thru breakfast, work for an hour and a half, jitter around the office building with members of my old team (and accidentally end up sitting right beside Tobin), jump back in the car, drive back to Oshawa, run around Staples trying to arrange a data transfer sometime in the next 24 hours, run back home, work for an additional ten hours (completing 4 overdue weekly reports, 3 monthly reports, no new builds and a pathetically overdue 5-year study), decline an invite to coffee with my mother and some of her friends (COFFEE?  Did you say COFFEE?!), shut down one computer, run upstairs and turn on another, and watch the dog drowse and wag her tail.

I wonder if there could ever be such a thing as a designated sleeper.

Did I mention the food poisoning, round two?

Now, I could spend another hour and a half working up one of the interviews, or I could stretch out with a decent book, probably one by Howard Shrier or Ed Kurtz, or I could play a re-run of The Incredible Hulk, Season Three, then pretend to sleep, nightmares or otherwise.

I'm going home tomorrow night.  I need to slow down, and I desperately need to sleep.

As much as I love it out here, if I'm going to do any more freaking out, I'd rather at least be where I can access data through something a little more robust than a steaming USB modem, where I can blast music by U2, ZZ Top, Artie Shaw and Caravan Palace, and where I can walk around my apartment wearing nothing but underpants and a smile.

And that, dear reader, is why you'll be getting two interviews back-to-back this week - one tomorrow, and one on Friday.  It's because I like my interviewees too much to give them a slap-dash presentation.

Seriously, though, I picked the worst (and best) possible week to be out here.  Murphy's Law was waiting here for me.  And boy, did the week flash by.  The last thing I clearly remember was climbing out of the bath tub with Tobin's book (Vanishing Hope) in hand, and going to bed on Saturday night.

Oh waiiiiit a second...that might explain the strange dreams and the lack of sleep...hm...

Meh - I can't  stay mad at him.  He drove me to Howard's event.

But a lot of good came out of this week, too.  Tobin let me speak to his class, I got to meet up with Howard Shrier and umpteen different authors - including some I'd never met before - and I managed to complete most of my reports, despite the arduous and frustrating delays.

And I really don't expect any more than 4 or 5 hours of conscious downtime between now and Tuesday next week. On top of everything else, we're starting up practices for the Easter concert at church (guess who's directing...), I sing on Sunday, I have four more interviews now lined up, and I'm trying to launch a new business.

I live in exciting times.

Is it June yet?

Heck - is it Tuesday yet?

Here's hoping some SleepyTime Tea will keep me tranquil for an hour or two.

Sweet dreams, dear reader.  You are now my designated sleeper.  At least until Tuesday.  Whenever that may be.

Marketing your Blog: It's more than "Blarfing".

As part of my "get out of my head and into someone else's" campaign for 2012, I'm following more blogs than ever, and I read more one-off posts now, too.

In order to know who's updated what and when, Blogger gives me a nice snapshot of all the blogs I'm following, even if the post is written through WordPress or a private website.  Partially because Michael Lorenson and Lee Lofland are writing their blogs daily, I'm reading daily.  So I check my reader summary daily.  Sometimes two or three times daily.  Sometimes I check it like a maniac, because data is taking forever to run, or because I can't figure out how to fill a plot hole and it's killing me.

That got me thinking about how we market our blogs.  How do we get more readers?  And why bother, if you're an unpublished author?
 
I know Facebook has a "Networked Blogs by Ninua".  Here, you can search blogs by category, twenty blogs at a time.  I'm registered there, too, under "Writing."

But under the "Writing" category, blogs are ordered by number of existing followers.  And I tried to find out how many blogs under "writing" there were.  Apparently Ninua can't count that high, but it's probably more than 5000.  (And for the love of all good things, don't put "Muse", "Musings" or any variant thereof in your frigging blog post title.  It's.Over.Done.)

And as for the count of how many are "following", that's Ninua's count, not Blogger's count.  I gave up scrolling through blogs in the "writing" category, because after almost 3000 registered blogs, I still hadn't found myself.  I'm at the very bottom of Ninua's list, because according to Ninua, I have only two followers, and I'm one of them.  Only the most already-popular posts are going to float to the top and attract new readers.

So basically, I would have greater success handing out business cards to strangers on the street than I would if I relied on Ninua's listings.  That means I can't leave anything to chance.  I have to work to get more exposure, if I want more readers.

Once a new post has gone live, ordinarily I send out a notification through Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook is still my biggest referral URL (shouldering that spambot domar.ru out of top spot), so I know that FB is a good way to notify folks of a blog post update.

Some blogs I follow now because I've been perusing author websites or being referred to certain blogs by other readers.  That's why I started following Annie Off Leash by Annie Boreson.  So, yes to old-fashioned word of mouth. But I've found the majority of my new reading material through a post recommendation on Facebook.  That's how I found Graveyard Shift. So, yes to Facebook, too.

But I also found that readership through FB has everything to do with the timing of your post, and with the popularity of your readers.  If you have a family member with few friends (and assuming they like you enough to check up on you daily), the message will get through to them easily enough. But if someone has a gazillion friends and professional contacts, your FB status update and/or link are going to get buried quickly under that reader's slushpile of status updates.

I still haven't found the timing sweet spot for FB links.  Post in the morning, when everyone's checking their FB news?  Lunchtime?  In the evening?  Post repeatedly until people de-friend you?  I dunno.

And most importantly, unless someone else re-tweets your post or shares the link on their own FB profile, your tweets and FB status updates never reach beyond your own established circle of contacts.

Or does Twitter or Facebook even matter, if people tend to use things like RSS Feeds, Google Reader, and Reading Lists, which allow us to check out the posts we want to view, when we want to view them?

It does matter, if you want to attract new readers.  You need to get yourself on to new RSS Feeds, or they won't ever read your work.

I look to how Tobin was "pimping" our interview from late last week.  I posted the interview just once on Facebook, around my lunchtime.  That's my normal activity.

But Tobin posted the interview several times to Twitter, he posted it on five different spots in Facebook (his fan page, his personal profile, and at least three different Writer's Group discussion group pages); it was referred on from there by his friends and family - and some my friends too!  I wouldn't be at all surprised if he got on the phone and called people to tell them to read it. 

The results were fantastic:  within a week, his was the most popular post in the history of the blog - and not just a bit, but by an additional 25% more views than the next most popular post.

Compare that against other recent interviews and blog posts.  On average (including some recent interviews), I've had only 1/5th of the views as Tobin's interview - over the same period of time.

So there's the answer to the how:  increased readership = social media + word of mouth.  You can only reach so far.  Your reach doubles the moment one other person reposts or retweets your link.  Your reach expands geometrically every time someone else passes on the word.  You need to meet people who are willing to believe in you and point people in your direction.  And you need to return in kind.

But that begs the next big question:  why would someone like me (prefamous) want to increase my readership now - months, maybe years before an actual paying publication contract.

Tobin and I had a good discussion about it.  After all - Tobin needs students for his class, and he needs readers to buy his work; this is one more means of advertising.  Increased exposure makes sense for him.  What benefit is there to me, if I should a) blog at all, or b) make a point of increasing readership?

Tobin would argue that I do have something to sell, and that I need to get off my bum and go direct to Kindle.  I'm old-fashioned and I'm still holding out for the classic print (but more on that in later posts).

But there is an argument to be made about posting regularly and actively marketing my blog, even if I'm a "nobody" in established circles.

Let's say a publisher has received my work, and they want to know more about me.  They can Google me and my blog.  Here's what they're going to see.

Potential:  They can see what other writing styles I'm capable of.  They can see the extent to which I research, what my passions are, and how seriously I take my writing craft.  (Typo spotted post-publication?  Kill it kill it kill it!  Then update the post and pretend like it never happened.)  They can see how much writing experience I have, and what I intend on pursuing.  They're going to see what else I'm working on, or have worked on in the past.  And they're going to see that I'm not afraid to post things that are uncomfortable to talk about.

Thought: Let me never publish a post that hasn't taken more than 4 hours to write and refine (usually spread out over two more more sittings).  And may these posts do more than express my own thoughts; I won't ever be satisfied unless they make the reader think, too.

Audience:  I'm attempting to build up a readership now, well in advance of publication.  Networking is one thing, learning from other people another; but building up a readership, getting people interested in the stories I intend to publish - that's all one great big teaser campaign.  And it shows that I'm ready, willing and somewhat capable of marketing, even when I have "nothing to sell" yet.

Dedication:  I'm not just blarfing whatever comes into my head.  I'm researching.  I'm learning, and processing new information, and putting it into practice.  I'm audaciously contacting new and established authors, publicists, agents, publishers and editors, and I'm putting them through the interview wringer - even though I'm neither an online magazine, nor writer's group, nor a publisher, nor even an established author.  I'm not doing it just for myself, either - though I do learn something new every time I interview someone.  I'm doing it so I can share best practices with others in my position, and so I can advertise great new Canadian writing to audiences here and abroad. And they're going to see that I'm actively writing - more so than ever, with or without their publication contracts.

So do I have something to sell?  Yes - best practices, advertising, and one very prolific writer.  There's no price tag, but I'm still "selling" something.

Do I have something to gain?  Absolutely.

Does everyone benefit, if I continue expanding readership?  Beyond doubt.  I benefit, so do my guests, and so do the readers.

So how, fellow writer, how do you market your blog? And for a bonus question:  how important is it to you that you increase your readership, if you're not getting paid to blog?  Leave your comments below!

Also, if you're new to this blog, can you do me a favour?  Follow me.  I promise, I won't let you down.

Stuff I actually read

For a while last year, I'd stopped writing in my blog - not only because I had little to say, but because I thought it was unfair of me writing more and more material without taking the time to read other blogs.

That said, I'm going to take a moment to post a couple of blogs that I actually read on a regular basis.  That's not to exclude any blogs of any of my friends!  This is a list of blogs I've been reading for six months or better, and doesn't necessarily include those blogs I've started following.

Naturally, I have to mention two of my buds - Tobin Elliott over at Left to Write, and Michael Lorenson at...well...Michael Lorenson, both publishing through WordPress.  Tobin's usually got a laugh or two for us, though you never know when he's going to hit you with some naked and uncomfortable honesty.  And Michael - bless his heart - is trying to write a blog post a day as part of his New Years' Resolution.  So far so good!  And I know, because I've been salivating for the moment when I can pop him in Facebook and tease him for not writing that day.

There are a couple of other blurb-worthy blogs I follow, written by folks I've never met.

Now you have to understand, I'm a slow reader - I find it painful and frustrating.  So if I read something on a regular basis, it must be super interesting!

Graveyard Shift, by Lee Lofland (whose name I always read as "Lee Of Land").  According to his "About" page:

Lee Lofland is a veteran police investigator who began his law-enforcement career working as an officer in Virginia's prison system. He later became a sheriff's deputy, a patrol officer, and finally, he achieved the highly-prized gold shield of detective. Along the way, he gained a breadth of experience that's unusual to find in the career of a single officer. 

I love, love, love reading his stuff, because it helps me to separate out "real" from "TV".  This blog forces me to examine the assumptions I make in my own writing.  Plus, Lofland writes in quick, short bursts on a daily basis.  Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's bittersweet.  But I've never been disappointed.  On Friday, he pays hommage to those who have fallen in the line of duty that week, and sometimes, that's the grounding I need.  It brings a perspective I need:  it prevents me from glorifying gun battles and it prevents me from underestimating the courage of a police officer, or what they put on the line every day and night.

Annie Off Leash is another one I read on a regular basis, though she doesn't write as frequently as either Tobin or Mike.  She actually started following me before I started following her.  I don't know what it is about her style - except to say that when Annie Boreson writes a retrospective on her life, there's something indy-cinematic about her style, as if she writes using Super 8 film.  If there's one thing I really enjoy about her blog, it's that she doesn't write a lot about writing!  And that's something I need to learn to do.

I would be remiss if I didn't add the Crime Writers of Canada National Crime Writing Blog.  If you go there RIGHT NOW you'll find a funny blog post by Melodie Campbell, about firearms and their (mis)use in crime fiction.  If you don't get there in time, follow this link and you can read the same article at your leisure.  This is one of those blogs I should have been reading more often, but haven't been.  Must get back into the habit!

So, like I said, this is just a short sample of some of the blogs I've made a point of reading over the last six months.  This list should grow over the next couple of months, as I add more blogs to the list.

I like reading blogs that are about more than just writing, or being a writer.  Take Graveyard Shift, for an example:  Lee writes about what it's like to be a cop, and about, as a cop, how he reacts to things he sees in the movies or that he reads in crime stories.  I find blogs like this endlessly fascinating - not only because it helps me challenge and improve my own writing, but because it gets me out of my own head and into someone else's for a change.

Feel free to leave your recommendations below!

Paper Days

It's funny - I think about this a lot, but it never occurred to me until recently to write about it.

I don't remember a lot about my youth.  I can't even blame Alzheimers.  I just don't remember a lot of what happened.  Maybe my childhood was so boring I've blanked it from my mind, I don't know.

But there are a few moments I remember.  Some of them good.  Not all of them.  But most of them have something to do with writing.

I still remember what these smell like.

When we lived in Peterborough (age 5-7?), I remember writing and drawing on papers my mother used to get for free from the grocery store.  I must have been in kindergarten at the time.  She was trying to get me to stop writing on the walls.  Whenever she bought a roast, they would wrap the meat in paper, but she would always ask for four or five extra sheets, so that the outer layers would stay clean, and I could use them for drawing.  Come to think of it, I remember the smell of the paper too, and I think I began to associate creativity with hot, yummy beef.  And of home - specifically, my bedroom, where I could sit in peace and play by myself.  I had rainbow crayons then, too - and I thought those were the most awesome things, because I could draw rainbow-unicorns with a single stroke of the crayon!

I remember Christmas and birthday presents of lined notepaper - sometimes as much as four hundred pages in a pack!  My family wasn't giving me cheap presents; they were giving me room to dream.

Back in Oshawa (ages 7-9 or 10), I wrote my first "full length" story.  It was thirty-seven pages long.  I even illustrated it myself!

And because they knew I was a writer, the teachers of my school let me go to the assembly for Grade Fives and Sixes (even though I was only Grade Three at the time).  They thought I would be interested in it, even though it was a bit old for me.

"Interested"?!  It was Gordon Fricking Korman! 

Twenty-eight years later, I still remember listening cross-legged on the cold gymnasium floor listening to him tell us how his editor used to call him up and say "You have to cut this part out," and how Korman would always reply "But that's the best part!", and how, at the end of the conversation, all the parts were the best parts.

I don't think I closed my mouth once the whole time. 

(For the record, his books were the rare few I actually read.)  By my rough math, he couldn't have been anymore than 20 years old at the time, but to me, he was something ancient and untouchable that had fallen out of heaven.  

And it wasn't until today that I found out he'd grown up in Montreal!

Then we moved away (again).  That's one thing I remember about my childhood.  All the times we moved.  After awhile, I stopped crying about losing my friends and just focused on making new ones when I got to wherever we landed next.  More often than not, I would leave with a story half-written, and finish writing it once we were moved in.  It helped to give me a measure of continuity.  Finishing a story and moving in the same month gave me too clean and too jarring of a break between "past" and "future."

I hate to mention this out loud (sorry, Mother), but I hated growing up in Kincardine, Ontario (aged 10-12, I think).  I had only one or two friends, and they didn't like to play a lot.  Most of my school friends lived out in the countryside, and we didn't have a car.  And since we lived in a housing project on the edge of farmland, there wasn't a whole lot to do, especially without friends.  I used to roll balls of wool, and play Monopoly by myself, to ease the boredom.  If I had liked to read, it would have been a fantastic childhood, I think.

But when I had blank paper...

I clearly recall sitting on the floor at the base of the steps between the front hall and the sunken living room, with an open three-ring binder resting three steps up.  I loved, loved, loved odd-numbered pages, because I could write on them without having to contend with the rings under my wrist.  I wrote about superheroes and unicorns and aliens, and once I even wrote about how a scary Communist could co-operate with a French-speaking spy to save lives.  (This was before the Wall fell, boy am I old, and I always find it weird that twenty-five years later I'm building on ideas I had so long ago.)  Spring, summer, fall, winter, it did not matter.  I could sit there all afternoon, listening to the radio while my mother crocheted, and I could write until my hands fell off.

Metal finger traps.

Around those same years, my mother bought a manual typewriter - I think she bought it at an auction over at the Complex...Anyhow, she brought it home, along with some Teach Yourself to Type book.  Then she presented it to me - after having blanked out all the keys with electric tape.  She wanted me to learn how to touch-type.

And that, ladies and gentleman, was the start of my most exciting summer vacation ever.  No.  Honest.  It was the '80s equivalent of an eleven-year-old sitting down to program utility software in C++, because there is literally nothing better to do...

I didn't do a lot of keying exercises on the old typewriter (aaa...asa...asdsa...asdfdsa...sss...sds...GAH - MAKE IT STOP!), but it did seem to give me an unfair advantage when I took typing in high school. (And electric typewriters were sooooo much easier on my pinkie fingers than that manual ever was.)

But then I got to meet another awesomely famous supercool author, whose name now eludes me.  She did a workshop on pop-up books.  She taught us everything we needed to know about how to make the mouths of monsters chomp when you folded and opened the book.  She taught us how to animate exciting chase scenes by having cardboard cutouts slide back and forth on strips of poster board.  I created Denny the Dragon (with real shooting flames!  made out of real orange and red construction paper and everything!) and I created Mr. Doobie, the annoying ghost that lived in my mother's upstairs closet, totally not realizing I had named the phantom after some funny-smelling cigarettes.
And then I wrote my next "full length" story (mostly on the stairs going down into the living room).  It was almost a hundred pages long - and someone actually typed it up for me.  My teacher submitted it to a contest for me.  I didn't win anything except honourable mention - for being so prolific!  Some things never change.

Oregon Trail.  Boy, this brings back dull memories.

And as for computers, at that time they were only good for two things:  Logo Turtle - a programming language for kids - and Oregon Trail - some game about pilgrims crossing the prairies.  I was the only one of three kids in the school who passed the programming test for Turtle.  (*siiiiiigh*)

Then we moved back to Oshawa (age 12-19).  Unfortunately, I remember a great deal about being in Grade Eight, most of which I'll probably never write about.  But there are still some few pleasant memories that I recall.

Outside our excruciatingly tiny basement apartment on Myers Street, there was a pear tree.  After a massive spring storm, the tree broke at the base, but it continued living on the one side.  When life was at its worst, I used to hide under the boughs of the fallen pear tree and be utterly surrounded by leaves.  I couldn't see anything else; I couldn't see the house where I lived, I couldn't see the neighbourhood, I couldn't see the rusty cars parked on the side of the street.  I used the limbs of the trees to hold my construction paper and poster board and markers while I designed more pop-up books.

But during this time, I stopped writing about happy, bounding ghosts and their friends, and started writing about gunmen, muggers, and real dragons that swooped out of the sky and consumed my enemies with liquid fire.

Despite all that, though, I still recall reclining in the arms of the fallen but flowering pear tree, writing.  My shelter.  My secret hiding place.  My all-natural office.

In high school, we moved into the basement of my aunt and uncle's house.  Writing was still my escape, though year after year, I was also determined to get something published.  And our household technology did, in some ways, help out with that.  First, we upgraded to a daisy-wheel electric typewriter (and BOY, was that thing loud).  Then we got a one-line word processor.  I could write away, then hit a print key and a bazillion letters would appear on the line before coming to a screeching halt.  I still preferred hand-writing most of my stories while lying on my stomach on my bed, feet up and crossed at the ankles over my backside, while listening to the Best of Louis Armstrong.  Oh, the stories I wrote then - stories about shape-changers, aliens, mutants...the Fog of Dockside City, Hawkeshaw...Packs of lined paper were reserved for school now; no, my new best friends were folders with stylized dragons and wolves on them, and later, anonymous (non-geeky) spiral bound notebooks.  Every blank notebook was an unexplored universe.

Anybody else remember the high-pitched whistle?

Then came the computers.

I fondly recall a trek through the galaxy on a multi-species cargo ship called Pilgrim's Ark.  I wrote on our first computer, an XT.  I had to launch Microsoft WordPerfect by a DOS command!  I even remember having to use the F-keys to highlight text and change it to italics.  I used to change the screen colours so that the background was black, the letters were white, italics were highlighted in a disgusting purple shade, bold in green...Filenames that could only be 8 characters long and contain no spaces...Man, those were the days...

I used to write fan fiction, too, all the time.  And when I say "millions of words" of fan fiction, you can believe me.  Boy, this is embarrassing but...*kaf*...I had a thing for The Flash, The Rocketeer, and the Shadow.  (GEEEEEEEEK...)

In our day, we used to call Wikipedia "Books!"

I used to have to save each chapter in a different file; and after awhile the stories got to be so long I'd have to put one book on two 5 1/2 floppy disks!  Then along came the amazing 3 1/4 disks, and I could put more stories on a single disk!  I lost count of all the disks I had.  New, bigger computers meant longer, more vivid stories.  I was connected to technology for hours on end while my mother sat on the couch beside me, watching the TV; I had enormous headphones plugged into the cassette player / turntable on my left, disk in the drive, keyboard smoking, and an orange-curtained basement window above me on the right.  That was before we moved the computer into my room, in time for me to co-found the high school newspaper.

I wasn't writing exclusively at home - at least, not in the mornings.  I came into the high school computer room about an hour before first class, and with such regularity that once, our high school science teacher posted a sign on the computer room door saying, "Patti, you're late!"  It was 8:15.  School started at nine.

And because I was in there so often, I was the school's IT group.  Gosh, I don't know how many times I had to clear a printer conflict on the network...and no matter how often I wrote out a manual, people still found ways of breaking the laser printer.

I didn't mind.  I got paid in free access to ink and paper.  I think I still have some of the dot-matrix manuscripts kicking about.  Lord knows - as do some of my unwitting moving partners - I've carried them around long enough from one place to the next.

I even took on my first "writing contract" for a friend of mine.  Young Mr. Jim Zubkavich asked me to type out a story he and his friends had put together - a kind of D&D tale.  I had a BLAST...even though I didn't understand a quarter of the inside jokes.  Now that guy is like some kind of world-famous comic book creator guy or something, and I design databases for a living.  (Recently, he gave me the first season of Skullkickers for free, and they're really, really good, so when I say there's no jealousy here, I mean it.)  (Okay, maybe just a little bit of jealousy, but the pride I have for my old classmate is, like, a bajillion times stronger.)

In university, not much changed.  I didn't write much that wasn't "for the sake of publication", though I did another crack at Hawkeshaw and nearly landed an agent.  But writing was my escape, especially during first and second year university.  It was my sanity.  Nothing gets rid of anxiety, stress and near-homicidal frustration like shooting up vampires, werewolves and zombies, or like making their heads explode using psychic powers.  And nothing gets the brain firing like a 9:00 a.m. deadline on an essay I don't want to write. 

Loved it so much I destroyed two of them!

But in the second and third year of university, I was working full-time (and part-time with the Canadian Army Reserves), working mostly evening and midnight shifts.  Uneventful swing shifts, plus my first Journada (the precursor to a netbook), was like splashing gasoline on an open flame.  I filled floppy disks at an extraordinary rate - while still maintaining a geekly-high GPA (because I had literally nothing better to do...).  During those years, I discovered I could write radio plays.  Since I wasn't sleeping for weeks on end, this seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do.

Not mine.  But almost as bad as mine.

Then, university done, and literally nothing better to do, I took a course at Durham College:  a certain creative writing course as taught by Tobin Elliott.  I'd been working away on a brand new laptop - a real, live, battery-sucking laptop.  I wanted Tobin to check something on my computer, and the first thing he saw was that there was no paint left on most of the keys.  Sweaty fingers had done to my laptop what my mother had done to the keys of that first manual typewriter.  On my laptop, the space bar wasn't just polished from use - it was dented.

So there you have it.  In all the craziness that was my youth, all the moves, the new schools, the friends gained and lost, there has been one constant

I leave you with one final memory.  I've probably written it before, but it's important to say it again.

During high school, I came out here to Montreal, staying only a few blocks away from where I live now.  I was hired by a family to work as a live-in babysitter for one full-month. It was the most formative adventure of my life and of my career.  Much of who I am today is because of that month.

I wrote constantly in my free hours.  I wrote in my journal.  I wrote Scarlet Unseen - a story about a girl who could turn herself invisible and walk through walls.  I wrote stories for the kids I was looking after.  And one afternoon, I took the kids (all five of them) to the park, and while I watched them from a park bench, I gabbed in my journal about the unfairness of life.

An older gentleman came and sat beside me.  He had sad, rheumy, turtle-eyes, a stooped walk and a bittersweet but wincing smile.  His clothes were too big for him.  He told me a story about a friend of his, who was slowly dying and in constant pain.  "I asked him," he said, "'how do you survive all this pain?'  The answer was, 'I write.'"  Then he smiled at me, bid me good day, and limped away.

Publication is not the point.  Making sense of the world while escaping from it - that's why I write.