So, this week's blog time arrives, and I got nothing. No headlines appeal, no new "10 ways to the best orgasm" list, my guyspeak links folder betrayed me for once, Dan grabbed the girl on girl cheating story before I could, I wrote about the situation in Egypt elsewhere and our audience doesn't tend to go for politics much anyway.
So hell, what do I write about this week. One of my friends suggested in FB chat that I write about writing. Once I had got my mind firmly around the metaness of him writing to me to tell me to write about writing, I rejected the idea. It is just sitting at a computer and striking keys, after all. Hardly rivetting to read about. Then I looked at the clock and reconsidered.
Not exactly sure if he is a friend or a mortal enemy now, but here it goes.

I write all the damned time, now. Keyboard and blank screen is far more addictive than crack or alcohol. Trust me - I know. Give me 10 spare minutes and I am jotting down a story or an article outline. Writing is something best done privately behind closed doors, as Heinlein said, and is nothing to really boast about. Writing a story is hardly up there with solving world hunger or curing cancer. Yet it is so much damned fun, despite the pain!

Pain? Yes. You listen to your characters. Write out their thoughts and feelings as best you can, even when what they feel is something you detest. You get to care about them, and sometimes you have to kill them. There is a reason a lot of the "bad guys" in stories are almost cartoonishly evil - it makes it much less painful to kill them off. You watch your story hobble away into the world, crippled by your inability to tell the tale the way it should be told. The sad fact is, very few people can tell a compelling tale and do it total justice. As a writer, you accept that and try to get better at your craft, or you simply give up and go into Real Estate or used car sales. It is the not very enjoyable part of the game.

But I don't want to talk about pain, but rather joy. The intense joy when a tale lands on you, fully formed, which they frequently do in short story land. I have had a full tale pop into my head while washing dishes, while having a bath, while driving, even while writing something else. Melpomene and her sisters strike as they will, with little regard for your comfort or safety. Amongst my writing friends, we jokingly talk about your muse crapping on your head, a respectful shout out to the greatest modern short horror writer, but it is more like her loading a sock with quarters and whacking you across the face with it. It is that sharp and harsh. And once she strikes, you had best get it down fast, or you'll lose it again.
 
These sort of short stories just seem to flow from your fingers to screen like magic. It is the ultimate in creativity, where you are just the conduit. A convenience the story uses to get itself told. My current lady, who is both a mother and a very acomplished poet, says it is the closest feeling to giving birth that a guy can get, without having to deal with the blood, sadistic nurses, epidurals and intense physical agony.

Then what? You were not given the gift of this tale just to let it languish unread in a drawer, or to sit on your hard drive until the inevitable failure wipes it out for good. Once told, it needs to be read. That is the boring part. Which pseudonym does this go out under? To which publisher? Which genre does it fit under? Can you handle the inevitable rejections yet again?
You procrastinate terribly. Send it off to a couple of trusted first readers to see if it is clear on all points. Re-examine it, touch up the language here and there - vitally important in my case, as most of my first draft stories use f*ck so many times it is like trying to read in a brothel full of nymphomanics. That is just the love stories - the horror ones are worse.

Eventually, if you persist, a cheque arrives and the story gets published. The cheque is nice, but the buzz of seeing your words in print and knowing people are reading them, taking pleasure from them - that is unbeatable.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have just been smacked upside the head again while writing this. "The Last Storyteller." Interesting idea ...