Introduction

Welcome to my blog! Since this is my very first post here, I think there are a few things that might be good to clear up. First off, I don't claim to be a published writer. But I'm close. Very close. So why choose this time to start a blog on writing? Why not just wait until I have the agent issue settled, the ms sold, the book on shelves? I guess there's several ways I could answer that, but the best one is probably to simply say that I believe I have things of value to say now. I'll have more to say later about my history as a writer, and why I believe my insights would be of any value to anyone (suffice it to say, it is my belief that they are).

What can you expect here? Well, I'm not going to be posting my daily word counts, what my cats are doing (we have three), or anything like that. That's not the kind of blog I like to read, and it's certainly not the kind of blog I'm going to write. Why do so many blog writers feel the need to fill the Internet up with trivial, uninteresting items? Once again, I think there are a lot of valid answers that can be given to this question. However, as a writer I think that the most compelling answer is that... they can't tell the difference. Call it narcissism, call it what you will--some people just can't tell the difference between personal trivia and a story that is going to interest someone else. That holds true whether the clueless individual is writing, or talking to you in person--come on, we've all met "that guy." The trick is to not be that guy, and that takes some degree of critical self-examination. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this topic in later posts, as this is a fundamental and very oft-overlooked aspect of writing well, but for now I'll leave that there.

At any rate, I hope you'll stick around for a while. Check out my art on picassa, and always feel free to leave questions in the comments section if there's anything specific you'd like me to address.