Allyson, I have a downloaded clip of you on Sally that I listened to just the other day. In your place I'm afraid I'd have both done and said something unbearably rude. But you were gracious and funny and warm, even when your hostess was being clueless, rude, and strident.

I don't think you're going to have a problem being charming at book signings. People will come because they've read the books, they know your "voice" from the page, and they want to actually hear it for themselves, and to tell you how you affected their lives. You are charming, you are witty, you are funny.

And you're pretty and have faaaabulous hair!

What. Beverly. Said.

Getting Out

“Hey, what’s up. Sorry, that was stupid. Let me start again. Please? Okay. So I saw you over there, well over here - see I was over there, yeah by those guys - in the jerseys, smirking - anyway, what I want to say is...fuck. I had to come over, not just because you look amazing, no you do, seriously, I don’t just say stuff like that, but I came over because you’re wearing my wife’s ring, which we buried her in, I actually designed that pattern, and, well, how the hell did you....hey, HEY, shit, SOMEBODY STOP HER! Damn.”

What a narrative, Wolfram!

For most authors, writing is going to be a part-time gig or a secondary income in a two-income family, and that's just facts.

Yeah, this is true for musicians too, and something I don't think most aspiring rock stars realize. Even the people they idolize and dream of being now are likely to be painting billboards in a couple of years. There's just not nearly as much money in the industry as a whole as most people think. And I think that's true for all of the arts.

So we create to create.

...or we don't create because we're mush-heads.

t Conversation Judo-Flip to MeMeME!!

You know how, as a writer, you "hit the wall"? You're just stopped dead, smacking your noggin against an impenetrable wall of Can't Write?

I have no wall.

I have hit Writer's Quicksand.

That's the only way I can describe it. I've been staring at Chapter Five of my Goofy Fantasy Novel for, what? Three months now? And I just...blank out. Nothing happens. There's a big grey fog ahead where Stuff Happening is supposed to be.

It's driving me nuts.

Just thought I'd vent my spleen. Carry on.

t James T. Kirk Flip Conversation Out Of MeMeME!!

MM,I think this happens to everyone. I have not had it like that, but I've not been inspired either,lately.

Can you throw in some quicksand? Or a big grey fog? Or both. That would make a fun scene.

I find ideas come to me when I'm not looking for them. Of course I'm still staring at Chapter One of my novel/short story/screenplay, so there's that.

For me, fiction is something where I have the talent but not the vocation. I can write very short fiction when inspired (usually by dreams) - otherwise sheer garbage. But I can write non-fiction professionally. I have a passion for it and sometimes inspiration, but I can put in the perspiration too - pound my head against that wall until it gives. Don't know why I can't take a professional approach to the first, but can to the second. Steven Brust claims the opposite is true for him, though his blog seems to belie this. Maybe it is a way around the block; he thinks of it as blogging, not non-fiction.

MM - wish I could help you with the grey fog. When I hit it I normally end up filling a few pages with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" and giving up.

There's always the DLD draft, aka, the Don't Look Down draft. You just write down the story in whatever language comes to you, without looking down, no editing allowed. In essence you're giving yourself permission to write crap and know that you can go back and fix it.

I have a very hard time with this method because the internal editor is a big pain in my ass, but I know people who have used the method to break out.

My way of breaking out of the writing fog is to write longhand on a legal pad or in a journal. It's kind of the same idea of the DLD draft because you have far less opportunity to go back and edit.