The Finger

I have been facing a bad stall of about eight or nine months. I lost confidence horribly when multiple people expressed interest in Baptism for the Dead, then promptly forgot that I exist and that they'd pestered and even brow-beaten me into sending them my unfinished book to read. That combined with the divorce from hell has drained me of creativity and motivation. It feels just about impossible to keep writing at this point, but what choice do I have? I can't do anything else with my life. And not in that awful, cliched "I CAN'T NOT WRITE, I BLEEEEED IIIINNNNK" bullshitty way. I literally have no other skills, no money for schooling, and I cannot qualify for financial aid. Writing is my only viable long-term option for supporting myself for the rest of my life. That's it. It's all I've got. All my eggs are in this basket. Fortunately I do it well, I think, but it's hard to remember that when people pay about as much attention to my writing as they pay to their own respiratory systems.

Hooray for critiques!

I just received an amazingly thorough and extremely helpful critique from Mr. Jonathan Dalar and it made me want to write about critiques.

In general, I find that most writers are eager to get some feedback on their work. Most of us are writing in order to sell -- or at least to know we're providing a quality experience for our readers. "Good" and "bad" are subjective concepts, but still, input from fresh sets of eyes gives us access to new approaches to our works in progress.

I loves me some critiques.

More about critiques below the jump!

What the hell is Literary Fiction?

This question comes up with regularity on AW, and as we all know, AW is my personal frame of reference for all of reality. Invariably, everybody weighs in on the subject, and virtually invariably, the threads eventually devolve into this script:

(warning: this post is long.)

I LIVE!!!

Wow. It's been a while, ne? Sorry 'bout all that radar silence and whatnot.

I have a few problems with blogging. Or had, I guess I should say.

Below the jump: my personal problems partially and tantalizingly exposed; fun with dementia; why you shouldn't fall off the writing wagon; and what happened when I followed my heart and bought a book solely on the strength of its title and cover.