Note: I mean that I’m in my third year of grad school. Not third semester. Blahblah.

You can read the excerpt I read aloud below. From untitled time-travel-war-thing.

- – -

Let me start over.

Once upon a time there was a girl and she was going to be married to herself. Everything was arranged for the wedding day, but after the ceremony was solemnized and she was joined to herself in faithfulness unto death, the world opened up and swallowed her into darkness. Frantic and grief-stricken, she searched, and in the end she went down into the darkness after herself, down into the bowels of the realm of the dead, and there she found herself cold and frozen, sitting with her hand in the skeletal grip of Death.

Give me back myself, she said to Death, and such was her pain and grief that even Death was moved.

You may recover yourself, said Death, and return to the world above. But you may not reflect on yourself on the journey. Keep moving forward. Do not look back as you climb.

So the girl began her long climb back to the world above, followed by the silent shade of herself–or so she believed. So she was made to believe. Until her conviction began to waver there in the darkness. Until she began to wonder if she was anywhere at all. Until she came to a moment where she knew she would either look, or not.

All our choices are made in single instants. All our lives are singularities of time, strung together like pearls.

I’m █████ to ████ █████ the ████ █████ I’m ███████ on. I ████, it █████ █████-██████. We’ll see.

██████ I ████: I ████ it’s set in a █████████ ████████ ██████. I ████ ████ █████’s a █████ of █████ █████ ████████ ████████████. I ████ my ████ ██████████ are █████ █████–a man ████ a ███████ ██████████ who has ████ ████████ ████ a ██████████ and who has ███████ to ████ █████ the █████████–and ███████–a man ████ a ██████ ██████, a ██████████ ████, and ██████████ ██████, who █████ to ███████ ████ he is an ███████████ of St. ███████ █████████. I ████ ████ █████ and ███████ ████ ██████████ ████ a █████. I ████ ████ the ████ █████ not ████ ██████ █████ ███████ ████████████ but ██████ the ███████ of a ████████ █████████ █████ to ███████ a █████ to █████████ the ██████████.

██████ I don’t ████: ███████ or not ███████ ██████ is an █████. ███████ or not █████’s ██████ is one of the ████ ████. ███████ or not █████ ████ be a █████ ██████.

█████ I ████ all of ████ out, ████ a █████.

- – -

He ████ ███████ the ████, ███████ his █████ ███████ it, ██████ ████ ████ and ██████ ███████ ████ and █████████ on. He no ██████ ██████████ how ████ he had ████ ███████.

█████ he had ███████ ████ the dog-man, █████ had ████ a █████ ████ of ████████ and ███████████ █████. ████ had ████ the ████, and for a ██████ █████ he had ██████ ████ ████. █████ was █████████ █████ the █████ ██████, so █████████ ████ the ██████ and ██████████ █████ ████ he had ████ all ██████ him, the ████ ███████ in the █████ █████. The █████ had ████ a ██████ ████…

████.

And he had ██████ in it, ████████ █████ in the ██████ of an ████████ █████ ████ █████, ██████ █████ ███████ ████ his ████ ████, ████ ██████ up to the sky and his ████ ██████. █████. ████. █████ ████ ████ ██████. He ██████████ ████ ████.

████ a ██████ and the █████ of ███████ █████████ ██████ him, and the ███████ of ██████ had ████████. The █████ ██████ him ███████. He was ██████ █████.

████ or █████ he █████ a █████ ████ ██████ to him ████ the █████ did, and █████████ in him ████████ him ████ the █████ was █████ and the █████ was ███████, and he ███████ and ████ ███████ ████ █████ and ██████ his ████ ██████ ███████ as his ████ was ███████ ████ ███████. He was ███████████ █████, █████████ and █████████ ██████ ████ ███████ a ████. ████████ █████. ██████ ████ was so █████ to ██████, ████ ████ was so █████ to ████.

████ was not ████. ████ was a ████ ██████ of it. He ███████ ████ and ██████ on, ██████ ███████ ███████, ███████ ██████ ██████████.

Why was he ████? █████ had he ████ ████? It ████ a ████ for the █████████ to ████ to him—to ████ ████████ █████████ as █████ as the ████ of his █████████—but ████ ████ ████ ████ ████ █████████, ██████████ to ██████, and ██████ by a ████████ █████████ ████ █████████ █████ ████ ███████. ████ he █████ ████ ████ ████. By ████ the █████ was ████████ and far ████ ████████, no ██████ █████████ to ████ in. █████ was ███████ his ████. He ███████ in a ████ █████ of ██████ and ██████ his ███████ █████ ███████ the █████ of his ████ and █████████.

He ████’t ████ why, █████ all ██████, he ██████ be ███████ ███████████.

I’m also a bit of an oddball, though, and I’d like to mark the release by talking about why.

“Wetwire” started out just straight-up erotica, but part of the way through the inception process, something interesting happened: I started to think about Themes. Those themes eventually expanded to fill most of the mental space of the story, until I ended up feeling like the sex was mostly a way of talking about something else. Two primary something elses, actually. They are:

- William Gibson’s idea of  how “the street finds its own uses for things”. “Burning Chrome” is one of my favorite short stories ever, and Gibson is one of my favorite authors ever, so of course, setting out to write cyberpunk porn, it makes sense that he would be lurking in the background (not like in a creepy way). But the idea is interesting to me beyond that. What I ended up writing about was that initial moment in the emergence of a new form of technology – or a new evolution of an existing one – when it’s not yet widespread or widely commercial, when the only people making much use of it are techies and hackers. At those moments, its actual use might be extremely up for grabs – people might use it for a whole set of things for which it was not originally designed, and for which it may not be used by the public in general once it goes mainstream.

We were the first ones in the pool, sinking in the data-seas, surfing on waves of raw binary, slammed against the shores of our own perception and then straight back out for more. We loved it. It was like being there at the beginning of the universe, an explosion of unformed potentiality, the point of cosmic orgasm. I tossed out my name after I dropped out of college, and I called myself Tiamat because I floated in the watery chaos of that world like it was home. Once Kim gave me a taste I never wanted to come back. We were out there, Kim and me and all the rest of the net-jetsam, drifting through a paradise of incompatible coding, where anything could be and was and would be forever.

The characters in my story exist in that moment, dealing with a new form of communications technology where the interface is within the brain rather than at the fingertips. This isn’t in itself a new idea -  a fully immersive version of the internet has been a cyberpunk trope since the beginning of the genre. But I wanted to tackle it, nevertheless, because of the other thing I ended up primarily writing about:

- The nature of cyborgs. I should be clear about this: I’m thinking of cyborgs in the Donna Haraway sense, beings for whom the line between humanity and technology is not in any way clear or static. My characters are already in that state, much as we are now – their reality is augmented, their world is a lived implosion of atoms and bits. Indeed, their experience of the world is becoming more about the perception of bits than of atoms – the virtual world in which Tiamat and her friends spend most of their time is chaotic and unformed, almost nothing like the “real” world, and as such their very ideas of what the world is and should be are changing in response to a relationship with technology.

In that sense, I’m also responding to a trope in a lot of cyberpunk: the idea of shedding the physical body in favor of an existence in digital space. This is an interesting idea and it continues to resonate with a lot of people, but I wanted to turn it a bit on its head. Tiamat is losing touch with her body, her flesh, her meat. But her body is still a feature of her world. It still matters. I wanted to try to pull her back into that, to put her in a situation where the very technology that disconnected her from her flesh puts her back into full and immediate contact with it. I wanted to implode atoms and bits from a different angle.

With sex.

So “Wetwire” happened. I think it’s interesting. I hope other people think it is, too. But it is, again, an odd SFnal bird in a flock of stories many of whose authors are usually identified with romance. And in light of that, I feel like I should issue a warning, especially given some of the early reviews that have trickled in:

If you are generally a romance reader, you will probably not like this story. Because it’s not romance. It’s not even romance-ish. I’ve seen it described in more than one place as “cold” and “emotionless”, and I fully own that. I wasn’t especially interested in emotion when I was writing it, and I think that shows. I wasn’t interested in establishing any kind of meaningful relationship between my main characters, and I think that shows as well. So if you’re looking for those things, be aware that you won’t find them. This is probably not the story for you. Hopefully, given that it’s a pretty diverse collection, there will be plenty of other stories in there that provide all the things I left out.

But just as an aside, I do think this is indicative of some ongoing issues in the classification and marketing of “erotica”, some of which I’ve written about before – including how it’s kind of weird to me that I’ve sold a bunch of things that are marketed pretty heavily toward romance readers when I don’t consider myself at all a writer of romance.

But what the hey. People like categories. This is useful but also clearly creates problems.

Regardless, I hope you’ll pick up the anthology. Again, with that diverse a collection of authors and takes on a theme, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find something that floats your boat.

Here’s a longer excerpt:

—

“You can tell me to stop anytime,” he said. “If you really don’t like it. And I swear, I will.”

At first there was nothing. I watched him go back to the netbook again, and I squirmed a little, experimentally, but as he tapped on the keyboard I caught myself starting to doubt this whole “input” thing, starting to wonder if this was all just some kind of kinky prank.

Then he hit a key and my fucking brain started buzzing.

It was a low hum at first, but it ramped up until it was a purring between my temples. My vision doubled; I shook my head, trying to clear it, and then he was crouching over me. I licked my lips, tried to gather myself enough to speak, and he touched me again, light, running the tips of his fingers up the insides of my bent arms. It was like the raking of little needles over my skin. I jerked and he laughed.

“Kim, tell me what the fuck—” His fingers moved back down, quick, and he pinched my nipple through my shirt. No gentle teasing, just one hard pinch. It should have made me yell, and it just about did—but it didn’t hurt. It was like someone pressing a slick finger down on my clit, flicking it so fucking perfectly, all pleasure. I dropped my head back and whimpered.

“I rewired your peripheral nervous system,” he murmured, lips against my ear as his fingers kept twisting, pulling my skin out of shape. “Pain is some of the most intense shit you can feel, right? Pleasure is harder, more subtle . . . So I figure, if I switch which makes you feel what . . .” He gave my nipple one more hard twist and released me. I let out a whine of disappointment, but it cut off when his hand smacked hard against the side of my face.

Tears flooded my eyes. He’d avoided the jacks, but I could feel my cheek burning . . . and it was hard to describe what else. It was all the pain I would feel from a slap like that, but flipped. Sweetened. It was lingering, a warm honey-glow spreading down my neck, all through me. I gasped, twisted a little, but I wasn’t trying to get away.

“You like that?” He flicked his tongue against my ear, and it was like he’d dug his fingernail into the lobe. I tried to get words out—what I would have said, then, I have no idea—and they didn’t come. Should it have been scary, what he’d done to me? Maybe. I hadn’t known exactly what was coming. But I hadn’t really asked. Because I’d wanted something new, I’d wanted to be surprised . . . and here we were, and I wanted . . . Fuck, I wanted him to hurt me.

So this is neither a regular series anymore, nor is it happening on Mondays. I’m keeping the title around because I like alliteration, but if there’s one thing that’s made itself abundantly clear over the last semester, it’s that regular blogging is much harder for me than regular story-writing.

Nevertheless, here’s this installment: for when you’ve written and beta’d and edited and written and edited and written some more, and you have something that you’re really happy with.

So now you send it out.

And yet I get the sense that a lot of people struggle with this part. Which makes total sense – before, the people reading your stuff have probably just been you and some people you at least know sort of well. Now you’re sending your little story that you love and worked so hard on out to people who don’t know you at all. And they’ll look at it, and you know that it’s likely that they won’t want it. That they’ll reject it.

Buddy, that hurts.

And it hurts every single time. It gets a little easier as you go, but really it’s always pretty much a downer. I’ve written elsewhere about what I think some good ways to handle the agony of defeat are, but really the one thing I’ve found that always seems to work best and most immediately is sending it back out again. But if you even want to get to that point at all, you have to submit the thing in the first place. And again, that can be a really hard step to take.

How to make it easier? I’m honestly not sure. I’m not sure there is any one way – everyone is different in every aspect of this process anyway, but when it comes to this particular jumble of hope and fear, I think people’s individual differences are likely to be of even greater than normal consequence. So whatever works for you is basically going to just be what works for you. And it may not work for anyone else but you.

I think perhaps it helps to remember what’s at stake,  though: You worked hard on this story. You really (I assume) believe in it. That means that a lot is out there to get stomped on with that first rejection slip, true – but I think it also means that a lot is there to be lost if you never send the story anywhere. What if it gets accepted? What if it would have been accepted, but it never got the chance because you could never let it go? And what if someone out there would have really enjoyed it, and has now been denied the chance? There are few things that feel as awesome – I think – than someone you’ve never met, someone who has no reason in the world to go out of their way to be nice to you, dropping you a line to say “That thing you wrote? I really dug it.”

There’s also the issue of meaning to submit but never feeling that the story is quite good enough. The impulse to edit and tweak endlessly. I’m not sure what to say to that either, especially given that I tend to err rather heavily in the other direction. But I think that usually, when a story really is done, you know. And if you don’t, hopefully one of your betas will tell you.

If you’ve worked hard on your story, it deserves a chance out in the big scary world. You owe it that. So get it out there. And when you get rejected – and yeah, that’ll probably happen, and it’ll probably happen a fair amount – get back on the horse and send it out again. Hope and persistence are really necessary in this. Perhaps to a slightly loopy degree.

A word about the title of these: I realize that it might read sort of obnoxious, like I think that this is the the definitive way  to be a writer and to publish. Let me be clear about this: I don’t think that, nor am I claiming it. I think there are some broad conventions that are likely to work across different people and working styles, as well as techniques that might be more likely to yield good results than others. But this is only what’s worked for me, and what I’ve done. It might not work for you. It might be bad advice for you. So I make no claim to authority here outside my own experience. The wording of the title itself is meant to convey impatience and exasperation toward the craft/process itself, which is frankly how I feel about writing a lot of the time.

That clarified, this week: editing.

I’ve written a lot around and about the process of editing, but not much that deals directly with what the process looks like, for me. This is mostly because, for me, the process is still very much in the middle of being hammered out, and it changes all the time. Of all the elements of writing that I deal with, editing is probably the one on which I still need to do the most work – which sucks, because it’s sort of really really important.

Me, I’m impatient (see above). I’m also blessed with the ability to write first drafts that often don’t need drastic tweaking before they’re at least okay. But because I don’t usually see the need for massive tweaking, and because I’m impatient and I have an itchy submission finger (more about this next week), I tend to overlook the need for more subtle polishing, and I sometimes send things out before they’re really ready – before they really are about as good as they can be.

In that vein, some things I’ve learned, most of which I’m sure are familiar to you:

• Get some distance. Put the piece aside and do other things, so you can come back to it in a week or two and read it like you’re not so close to it that you can’t actually see what shape it’s in. This is hugely important, and hugely difficult if you’re as impatient as I am. But you need it. You’ll miss things without at least an approximation of objectivity.
• Get some good beta readers and listen to them. Do not pick people who have good reason to massage your ego, or people whom you believe might do so out of nicety. Pick the most ruthlessly blunt people you know and demand their honesty. I firmly believe that no story is so good that it can’t do with at least two extra sets of eyes. And you may not like what they say. But be ready to trust them, even if the truths they tell you are hard to hear.
• Be ready to murder your darlings. One thing I especially need to work on in the editing phase is cutting. Cutting is hard, especially if you have a habit of falling in love with your own prose. But I’ve lost count of the number of stories I’ve written that ended up being hampered, and in some cases rejected, because of their length – more specifically, because of the amount of plot in the length. Short stories especially are tricky this way: they need to be lean and mean. Stuff needs to happen and it needs to happen fast, because there isn’t a lot of space for it to happen in. So ideally, each individual word should do something specific. If it doesn’t, or if it doesn’t do it efficiently enough, cut it and find a new one. And if you really really  love this passage or that turn of phrase, that’s when you most likely need to be the most ruthless. Seriously: you are a serial killer and words are your hapless victims. Murder them.
• Be ready for more. Even after a story gets accepted, there are almost certainly one or two or even four or five more rounds of editing that it’ll need to go through. Sometimes an editor will also have something of a different vision of your story than you do. A writer should never sacrifice the soul of her story, or make concessions that she really finds harmful to the piece, but be ready to work constructively with criticism, and be ready to be open to ideas that might, at first shot, seem very far apart from how you see things unfolding. Don’t be a prima donna. Trust your editor, at least unless she’s really given you good reason not to.

Next week: the submission process. Joy.

This is something else I’ve written about before. It tends to be more of an issue with longer pieces for me, because those are the points at which stamina really comes into play (people who compare writing novels to running marathons are not kidding in the slightest, nor are they overstating the point, though again, everyone is different). But I think it’s the kind of thing that has the potential to be a problem for anyone, at any point.

Here’s what I’m talking about: there is going to come a time – and probably this time will come semi-frequently – where you’re not blocked, but nothing you write seems good and you’re sure that it all sucks. This is naturally going to make you want to stop writing, because writing sucktastic stuff is no fun, even if no one else ever sees it. It’s embarrassing and it feels like a slogging waste of time.

This is a trap. Don’t fall for it.

It’s possible that what you’re writing sucks, yes. Here’s two things, though.

1. You are too close to your own writing to be sure of that. I really think that true objectivity – when you’re in the midst of the process – is just about impossible for most people. It certainly is for me. This is why we have editors, or why we should. You might think that what you’ve written sucks, and then come back to it days or weeks later and be pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s actually pretty good. But if you had quit back when you had started to feel like you were sucking, that’s some pretty good writing that wouldn’t have happened. Also, every time you walk away from a project, I think you may find that it’s more and more difficult to walk back to it. The times when it’s hardest to keep going are often the times when it’s most important to do so.
2. You need to be okay with sucking. Anne Lamott has written a great deal on being okay with shitty first drafts, so let me just put in yet another plug for her: if you’re neurotic about writing, go read her stuff. She won’t make you less neurotic, but she’ll help you embrace your own issues and maybe even turn them into stuff that can work for you. But let me also reiterate her point: You have to get comfortable with your first draft being shitty. Because while what you’re writing may not suck, it also may suck quite badly. And that’s fine. That’s why we have first and second and third drafts, why we have beta readers and editors. You know what’s worse than having a shitty first draft? Having no first draft. A shitty first draft is almost certainly not shit all the way through. There’s probably a good story hiding in there, one that you can pull out and clean off in the editing phases, sharpen and reshape and polish into what you really want it to be. But you can’t do anything with nothing. Shit is still something to work with, even if it’s not good clay.

So take heart in the midst of hating everything you write. Keep going, even if it’s miserable. Even if you hate it and you want it to die. Finish it, put it away, come back to it later when the hate has subsided and you can see it with fresh eyes. You might be shocked at what you find.

And if what you find is still shit… go back to work on it. People have used shit to build houses with. It’s all good.

No, I’m not talking about market research, at least not in the sense that the term is normally used; I’ll get to that later. And I’m not talking about research for your actual story; you should be doing that anyway, if you’re ever treading into an area where your knowledge base is less than expert-level. I’m talking about genre research–about acquainting yourself with the basics of what’s going on in whatever genre you happen to be working within, even if it’s very fuzzily defined.

For a lot of people, this isn’t an issue; they get into writing what they write in the first place because they’re voracious readers and they’re totally up on all the current big names and all the books getting a lot of critical and consumer attention. But I honestly was not one of those people.  I love SF and always have, but when I started writing it for publication, I was woefully ill-informed regarding the state of the industry, in terms of who the people to watch were, and in terms of who was producing the work that was getting people excited. I had to give myself kind of a crash course, and keeping up with my reading is still something I try to work on. It’s reading for pleasure, but it’s also frankly part of the work.

If this is something you struggle with–if you even feel like you need a bit of a brush-up–Best-Of anthologies and awards showcases are good places to start, at least in the SFnal world. Take a look at the magazines that get a lot of mention and see who and what they publish. Just get a sense of what people are reading and talking about, and why they seem to be excited by what they’re excited by.

This serves a bunch of useful functions. First, it’s fun–it’s always fun to read great writing. Second, it might help you avoid doing something that’s been done to death, that people frankly don’t want to see anymore. Example: a couple of years ago, I submitted a “war in Heaven” story to Shimmer. A few weeks ago I read an interview with their editors wherein they state very clearly that they are very tired of “war in Heaven” stories and some of them would prefer to not see them. Honest mistake; I didn’t know. But I could have saved myself and them some time, and myself a rejection notice, if I had.

Another example: I am fairly certain that most SF&F editors would prefer to not see any more stories featuring sexy vampires. At least not for a long while.

So yeah. Get a sense of what’s out there. Get a sense of what you like, what you don’t like, places you might want to go in your writing and places you might want to avoid. That’s not to say that you should rip people off or change up what you do simply to be more “marketable”–I mean, if you want to do that, cool, but it’s not exactly what I’d recommend. But regardless, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with drawing inspiration from great places, or from getting a sense of how you want to orient yourself from talented people who have gone before you.

This is obviously going to involve a lot of reading. If you’re trying to make time for regular writing, you’re probably also going to have to make time for at least semi-regular reading. Again: a huge part of doing this is intelligent time management. And sacrifices. There just ain’t another way.

But again, it’s worth it in a number of ways. And if nothing else, the slush readers will thank you.

Learning to write regularly is one of the most important things when it comes to this business – maybe actually the most important, and if I can call myself prolific by any stretch it’s because I’ve managed to hammer my brain into that pattern. But it’s a little hard to ignore the fact that writing regularly doesn’t do you a tremendous amount of good unless (at some point) you write about something.

Getting ideas is sometimes tricky and sometimes not. I’ve written about it before, but I think it’s worth saying something about again here. In that last post, I said that I think it’s not that I have more ideas than I used to but that I’ve learned how to pay attention to them. I still think that’s true, at least to some degree, but that still doesn’t do much to address the question of where they come from, and how one might get an idea when one is having trouble doing so.

First, as I say, I think a key move is to pay attention – not just to yourself but to everything outside yourself. Writers have to be keen observers; it’s vital to constructing a world that feels real and alive, and characters who feel equally real and alive to live in it. But even more than that, paying attention involves awakening your capacity for being astonished by the world. You won’t notice things if you aren’t looking for them, if you don’t regard everything as worth paying attention to. See the world around you as something truly extraordinary, and I think you won’t long want for something to write about. And you’ll enjoy the process more.

More practical? Well, prompts are always great. A lot of my early publications came out of specific prompts drawn from calls for submission. I think themed anthologies are a great way for a beginner to break into publishing, because it’s slightly less on-spec than shooting stuff into general slushpiles. With a themed anthology, you start with a basic idea of what your story needs to contain or what it has to do, and you can construct something around that framework. It can be less stressful than trying to conjure up something from what feels like nothing, and it can be confidence-building. I found it so. Check out the listings on Duotrope, or other sites that aggregate calls for submission. Keep your eyes open for a project that seems like fun.

More specific? Retelling old stories is usually useful, provided you can do so in a way that really brings something new to the table. Get to know your myths and fairy tales and folktales; there’s a reason certain stories are so enduring. Look long and hard at what’s been done and try to think of a way that you can put your own unique twist on it. What would it look like if you changed this around? What would happen if you tweaked this specific aspect? Sometimes the result can be great. If nothing else, it’s a fun exercise.

Most of all: Chill out. There’s nothing like a OMG I HAVE NO IDEAS panic to drive everything out of your head. Relax. Hang out. Watch the world go by. They’ll probably come, if you make yourself open to them.

I’m still learning, so some of this is probably going to be wrong. I’m just me, so some of this will probably not apply outside that case. That said, as a social scientist I’m a great believer in taking what little we know and doing the best we reasonably can with it. So.

How The Hell To Do This, Part The First: Make It A Habit

More than once, I’ve seen writing characterized as something fickle that you have to be in the right state of mind for, with the right mood and the right setting and cups of tea and music and absolute solitude and magical things happening in your head, and that it should be easy and fun and flow out of you, and if you don’t have any of those Dumbo feathers or those vibey mood things going on, you shouldn’t try to force it when it gets hard.

And I think that’s kind of bullshit.

Because in my experience, creativity is a muscle. It can be fickle, sure. It can be easy one day and extraordinarily hard the next. But you can mitigate some of this – and save yourself a lot of frustration and anxiety – if you treat it like the muscle it is and get used to exercising it regularly.

Regularity is the key here, or at least it has been for me. You’re training this thing in you; you’re teaching it to come when you call, not the other way around. The only way I have ever found to do that is to just do it: pick a time, try to stick to that time on a daily basis – whenever it is – and get your ass in your seat and write. Set a daily minimum and stick to it, no matter how small, no matter what. It doesn’t matter if it sucks or if it’s no fun. Some days – even many days – both will be true, at least to start with. It doesn’t. Matter. Put aside whatever distractions you might be dealing with, sit down, shut up, and write.

Also? Once you hit your daily minimum? Stop. Even if you feel like you could keep going. I tend to deal with this by actually setting three minimums: one that I must meet even if I feel beyond horrible, one that I should be aiming for on an average day, and one that I can shoot for on really good days. But I try to not go over it by too much. Your mileage may vary, but I find that this helps with the regularizing aspect: you are training your brain to know what’s expected of it. Here, routine is important.

Which is not to say that all that other stuff – the music and solitude and coffee and pleasant lighting and soft colors and whatever – can’t help, because it can. Try to incorporate some of it into your routine, if you find it useful to do so. I have a particular fondness for writing very early in the morning after – or with – a cup of very hot coffee and with some ambient music playing. That’s my routine. It works well for me. Having the little extras also works well. But don’t let the absence of those extras be your excuse for not writing. Because your brain is as crafty as it is lazy, and if you give it half a chance it’ll come up with all kinds of reasons why you can’t or shouldn’t be expected to write today. Don’t stand for that. Take control of your brain. Make it turn that craftiness toward whatever you’re working on.

Writing at least semi-regularly is the key to finishing things. I just don’t know of any other way to do it. So if you want to be a writer in the sense that writing is something that you not only talk and think about but do… you’re probably going to have to at least make an effort to make it a habit.

And here’s the funny thing about habits: the more you do them, the less you have to think about them. The less effort it takes. With writing, it’ll probably always take some. Some days it might take a lot. But you can still help yourself. You can take a measure of control. Even if it’s just a little bit of one.

First: THE NOVEL IS DONE. Well, the first draft is. But I generally write relatively complete first drafts, so I don’t anticipate very much needing to be done to the structure of the thing in the editing stage–which I plan to start in a couple of weeks. I may have to vanish again right about then but for the present I plan to return to at least a semi-regular posting schedule.

Second, my numbers station-inspired story “The Cold Death of Papa November” is now up to read for free at Three-Lobed Burning Eye. You can also hear me reading it at that link (and you can download the mp3 for ipodery). I really do love that weird piece of… something. The story, I mean. I’m glad it’s been loosed on the world. And the rest of that issue of 3LBE is very worth your time.

And finally, another plug for Shadows & Tall Trees #2: Issue #1 sold out, and it’s very likely that this one will too, given the limited print run and the fact that people seem to like the magazine. So if you want it, I’d get it sooner rather than later. It is also very worth your time, and not just because of me (seriously, Steve Rasnic Tem’s piece in there is way unsettling).

And that’s it for me for now. But watch this space.