Casey's Just Sayin'

I know I've posted this story before, but I'm sure many of you haven't read it. After my little quip about golf vs. lawn care I thought it deserved another go. The old man didn't hear his wife when she opened the front door, barely handling the two bags of groceries in her arms as she dipped inside and kicked the door shut, scuttling to the kitchen. She never let the clerks use plastic bags at the store because the straps cut into her hands. He didn't notice her as she put away the soup cans, milk carton, chicken breasts, eggs, rice and the rest. Even though he sat less than five feet from her at the kitchen table, his attention was fully drawn out the small kitchen window. “George!” she finally yelled, which came out as a harsh screech like a child's cough. He didn't turn but grumbled and batted at the back of his head as if a fly were buzzing about. “You're being rude.” “Lady, you need to shut your trap,” he grumbled, still looking out the window. “I ...

This place always makes me calm down and look inward. I think as writers our environment often dictates how much we write and maybe even the quality of the work we do. If we are surrounded by chaos, noise, clutter, demands of our time, responsibilities to own, duties to honor, rules to follow, we might say that there is no room for writing, no room in our minds to create anything worth reading. We might say that. I know I have. I fantasize about being out there, completely isolated, riding the wave of my own creativity to see what works of art, what masterpieces materialize. We might say that. I do say that. But that doesn't make it true. For me, it's justification for the apparent unwillingness at the time to work hard to get what I want. I say "at the time" because I'm not always so quick to make excuses. I once wrote the majority of a novel lying on my stomach in our long hallway in the front of my child's door. Why? Because said child had a couple of ...

As often happens when I have a strong run of words (30,000 in November) I bail almost completely in the subsequent weeks. That has been the case for Mighty Quinn. The book is about 2/3 done and I have come to a complete halt. It makes me wonder if binge writing such as NANOWRIMO is good for my productivity. Maybe slow and steady really does win the race. Isn't he cute? But I'm not a turtle kind of guy. I type fast, I think fast, I work fast, I golf fast, I... do other things fast. I want to write my novels fast as well. But the faster I go the uglier my prose become. My mind has to sort of devolve to get into my writing brain. Maybe I need to start some sort of meditation routine before I start slapping those little keys. Isn't he cute? Regardless, these words do not write themselves. I'm very excited that Scrivener is developing an iPad app for their phenomenal writing software. But this is no excuse. Holidays? No excuse. New job? Well, maybe a little excuse. But rea...