Just Write, Dammit

I have always fancied myself a writer.  Whether or not I truly was is a point for debate.  See, I've always been writing, be it for the college newspaper (regular and underground) or rugby match write-ups or gaming modules for cons.  I paid for part of my grad school tuition writing scripts for technical videotapes to be used in Dupont factories.  But I never felt like a writer until I sold my first piece of fiction a few years ago, which has lived a charmed existence as part of the Machine of Death family.

I've sold a pair of pieces recently but I still feel like a slacker.  I had started rewriting a decade-old novel a few months ago (229k words for a first book is a little too much) but had gotten sidetracked with some short stories, gaming mods, and, well, work and children and life. By the time I get the kids to bed, eat, exercise, do laundry, etc, it's 10pm at night and I'm a little wiped out.  And while all those are valid excuses they are, essentially, just excuses.  Nothing more than that. They don't put words on a page.  They don't create a story.  They don't give you something to look at and go yessssssss.  Sometimes I do that.  Don't judge me.

So for the past two weeks I've been getting up an hour earlier in the morning - 5am instead of 6am - and writing for 45 minutes before exercising, waking up the kids and getting them off to school, going to work, etc.  Despite the overhaul nature of the work it's been fairly productive - I'm averaging about 750 words during that time.  And, maybe more importantly, I feel like a writer.

Now to finish the damn thing and have others call me one.