Hello there,

Thank you for patiently waiting for a delayed Monday rant. It’s been a busy weekend and week for me, lots of babysitting, a dental visit that left me talking like Sly Stallone for hours, a 16 hour workday, and more trolls on the literotica forum. *whew*

As a note, Literotica was updating their site and I was not been able to even load it in some time, so the next chapter of Thief In the Night has been delayed, but has been submitted now that Literotica is back up. Ah, life. At least today I finally got a new library card and can catch up on my non-fiction and sci-fi reading lists.

At least there is one good nit of news: I have the official cover for my next novel, Secret Desires, coming out in 2016:

Well, on to the rant. I actually have nothing preying on my mind today. Everything is going well, except my sociopath hoarder roommate who is now annoying my downstairs neighbors as much as he annoys me and our third roommate. All I’ll say is I found human tooth marks on my $200 super-awesome electronic toothbrush, which I now wish to boil in bleach before using again.

Ah, life. The good news is I have been working on my depression, seeing a professional, and it is going swimmingly well. I am happy that I refused medication. It does feel like I am doing this largely myself, and that feeling along with every victory is amazing. Look, if you have depression, make up your own mind about medication, but I am personally against it for a temporary issue.

However, due to work and depression, I have come to a decision that does affect new books and Literotica submissions. No more writing is scheduled before November of 2015. I need to focus on my building up my company in my day job, and focus on my depression. So until then no dating, no sex, no vacations, no writing*, just slow, consistent, hard work.

*I can’t completely stop writing, so I’ll work now and again on two projects: Revising Wolf Tales Volume I and finishing TITN. I just want my readers to know there are no scheduled dates for anything. It shall come when it comes.

I guess perhaps I do have a rant in all this: Never, ever forget to think for yourself. I realized this when speaking to my therapist, and it went something like this:

Her: How many hours do you work at your dayjob per week?

Me: About 70 hours a week

Her: And how many hours do you write per week?

Me: I try to write a thousand words per day, sometimes that’s twenty minutes, sometimes five hours a day

Her: Why?

Me: Uh….well, Stephen King does that, a thousand words per day. Basically every writer has different advice, but they all say write every day.

Her: What is the reason they say that?

Me: I guess the fear is use it or lose it

Her: Do you consider writing talent, hard work, or a combo of the two?

Me: A combo. You have to have talent, but talent without hard work is meaningless

Her: Do you think hard work is a mood you have to be in, or a decision you make?

Me: You have to have the energy, I guess it depends on mood, but it’s basically a decision

Her: So you can decide to work or not work, and talent is something you either have or don’t, it doesn’t fade with time, so why can’t you decide to take a break?

Yeah, that’s about as direct as a therapist is legally allowed to get. But she had a good point: if you’re good at something, sometimes you can take a break and come back, like riding a bike. Or sex.

The only thing about that that bothers me is how every successful author on Earth claims, “Write every day. Treat it like a job/churn out X amount of words per day.” I began to think on that, having actually believed it for years myself. Really? REALLY? So, you never have the car break down and have to spend all day waiting on the repair? You never have to do laundry and grocery shopping on the same day and have no fucking energy to write? You never get menstrual cramps so painful you can’t unfurl from the fetal position for hours? Must be a nice life.

I had an A-HA moment: they are lying!  I learned an interesting fact in undergrad psychology: 80% of all things stated in a day are bullshit. Most of it is mis-remembering (telling a story about a man in a blue shirt, but you honestly forgot his shirt was purple) or slight exaggerations (“It was the best sundae EVER!”). However, there are more serious lies we tell that are socially acceptable. Whenever a man tells you his height, subtract an inch, that is the real number. Whenever a woman tells you her age, add a year, that’s generally the right number. A man’s erection varies constantly in size/girth, but rather than give you the average, say, 5.5” in length, he’ll give you the highest number he every got, say 7”, something a statistician will tell you is never valid (along with outliers, most times when calculating something you throw out the highest and lowest numbers, average the rest.)

Statistics can be manipulated, MPG is usually never in actuality what it claims on the sticker, and no human on earth will ever be totally honest about their sexual history. So why would writers be honest on writing? Yup, full of shit. Hell, I may be full of shit, but I’m really trying to get it right.

Most times in writing we tell people to develop their own voice, so why on the business side should it be one size fits all? This, above all else: to thine own self be true, remember that and keep it all your days. And I conclude by explaining my Writing Lessons are meant to help you write & publish a novel in a year, if you want, but take as much time as you need.