The Writing Blues

I want to do more with my life.

This is, of course, about the writing. I want to be a writer. I want to have things published. I want other people to read my stuff. It's not all just about the one thing you've all heard about ad nauseum, though.

Yes, it is in part about the book. I've been working on the damn thing for so long that I'm afraid now that it'll never be finished. Then again, it's been shelved for quite a while, too. It doesn't have anything to do with not prioritizing it due to my being in a relationship, before anyone thinks that, because the truth is I haven't worked on it steadily since before Amy and I got together. In fact, if you rememeber back to when my other laptop fizzled out on me, that's pretty much when the juice ran out. I have worked on it since, but it's just been herky jerky here and there stuff.

I'm not sure if my committment to THAT book is waning or what. The reasons that I felt were so important to write that book that way and have it come out to that conclusion are nowhere near as compelling to me as they used to be, and haven't been for years. As someone once said: Living in the past; there's no future in it. And for many many varied reasons I'm going to decline to talk about, I'm not feeling all of the story nearly like I used to. I love the characters and the basic plotline, but a good chunk of the thing is leaving me cold. And that's no way to write a novel.

You are not going to want to hear this, but I have to try and alter things so that I am once again writing a book that I give a shit about. What that means .... we'll see.

However, there are other things I'd like to do as well. I would love to have a job writing about either wrestling or comic books online and get paid to do so. I have gone so far as to look into how I can do this. I applied at Examiner.com, and got a good response to my writing, but they want me to somehow tie in my writing to some kind of "local angle" or such, and I haven't quite wrapped my head around how to do that yet. And that has led to me feeling somewhat discouraged. I know that gig is something I could do well and often, but I have to get hired first.

There's another site, too, where I think I could do well, but when filling out the application I got to the part where they want two writing samples of about 600 words or so ... and I blanked. Complete writer's block. And when I get to the point where I can't even pull 600 words out of my ass on a subject I enjoy so much, I know I'm in some deep trouble. Maybe it's because I haven't done jack shit for actual writing in so long that I've gotten rusty, or maybe I'm just putting too much pressure on myself, but I got stuck and stuck hard, and it pretty much destroyed my confidence.

This is not to say I've given up, by the way. I'm just doing the typical SB thing of using this blog to exorcise the crap out of my system.

The alternative is to wind up a bitter old man full of regrets.