Novel Stats:

Words Today	507
Words Total	96,528

---

Short Story Stats:

Written	0
Submitted	1
In Circulation	0
Rejected	1
Sold	0

Sunday,
February 26, 2006

Sometimes, you forget

When you're a writer with a day job (and that describes the bulk of writers who don't have last names like Grisham, King or Rowling), sometimes you get wrapped up in the day-to-day stuff. You've got deadlines, the boss is coming down on you, your commute sucks ass, you're wondering how you're going to make the rent this month, all the slings and arrows of working for a living.

And sometimes you get so wrapped up in this stuff that you forget you have this other thing you're supposed to be doing. You have a short story or novel (or both) languishing away on your computer, or slowly fading on the pages of your notebook. But you're so tired/angry/stressed when you come home that you forget to sit down and work on it, or you just want to veg out and forget about the day, or you need to head off to that second job, or you want to spend time with your spouse, kids and pets. Yeah, you know that a real writer nails their ass to the chair and puts one word in front of the other, and you should Just Do It.

But goddamn it, there are other things you should Just Do, too. Or maybe you just don't wanna Do It. Maybe the very thought of sitting down and saying goodbye to hours of your life while you're writing makes you feel like bursting into tears. And so the story sinks to the bottom of the "To do" list, and you start to forget that, among the other many hats you wear, there's also this stylish little hat (I like to think of it as a beret) that says "Writer." Or worse, you start to feel like a fraud when you look at that languishing work, and you think, "Hell, who am I fooling -- I can't do this. My writing sucks -- I don't know why I'm wasting time on it. And that beret looks stupid on me, anyway."

That's where a convention comes in very handy for genre writers. You can start the weekend feeling like the biggest impostor in the world, wondering what you're doing there and who the hell would be interested in talking to you. Then you attend your first panel, and if you're lucky you're working with three or four intelligent folks who can bat ideas around with you, and the audience is actually listening to you, asking good questions in between the moderator's questions to the panel.

Then you wander into the dealer's room, and one of your publishers is there, reminding you to promote their latest anthology which contains one of your stories, and handing you your very own stack of Coupons of Great Value with your name on them, ready to be handed out to potential readers (and buyers). You shoot the shit about various things, talk about the publisher's Re-Goating, and bat around plans to attend Worldcon and maybe take a couple of hours to head down the street to Disneyland.

Once that's done, you head back out to the hotel lobby, where you run into various friends and colleagues. This gives you the chance to shoot the shit with them, bitch about writing, gossip about other writers and generally hang out in a way you really, really REALLY needed, because it reinforces the reality that shit, yes, you ARE a writer.

And best of all, this just keeps happening over the weekend. You sell four chapbooks to nice people who want to read your short stuff. You get told you're going to be the moderator on the Short Story 101 panel because the designated moderator didn't show up, and you do a pretty good job of moderating, considering that it's 10:00 AM on Sunday and you haven't had any breakfast yet. You meet, and greet, and get your face and name out there, and hopefully the next time you sell something someone may remember you from the con and think, "Yeah, I should pick this up -- she's a good writer."

It doesn't stop after the con, either. When you go home, you pull up your languishing novel and add on 508 words, inspired by the woman who wrote 30 pages this morning. Then you remember the rather nice review of an anthology with one of your stories, and how your story was rated one of the antho's three best pieces. When you Google it to find details, you discover that there was another review by a well-respected zine, and your story was one of two selected as the best of the bunch. Both reviews get printed, cut out and pasted into a scrapbook, because a writer with a day job needs reminders once in a while (and yes, maybe an ego boost or two) of what they're really supposed to be doing.

And suddenly, that beret starts to look pretty damn good on you, after all.