Ten Years of Posts – 2022 in Review

Blog Post No. 527

Since January of 2013, I’ve written a weekly blog post on this website. (It was the tenth post overall). Ten years is a nice round number and a recognized milestone, so I’m really happy that I made it this far. Not to say I have any plans to stop, but ten years and over 500 posts seems like a lot while I look back on it. It’s kind of like that game Lemmings. There was an option to assign one of the little sprites to build a set of stairs. It started off slowly, pulling planks from a sack and laying them down on top of one another. Eventually, they would run out of material and if you were on top of things (and not looking towards the next obstacle on the map) you could select the same worker to keep building before it just walked over the edge.

The Speed at which I Write

Blog Post No. 457

Writing is a sprint and a marathon. Each day is the sprint. You sit at your computer and type away, trying to reach a self-imposed goal. Sometimes it’s a struggle with stops and starts. Sometimes you breeze through it in no time and wonder at your own incredible speed. Then, the next day, you do it all over again, and over again, until it’s done. That’s the marathon. The fun part comes when you have other obligations and you have no choice but to force yourself to go fast. Otherwise you sit at your desk late into the night until you finish. Or you don’t finish and everything falls to pieces.

Novel Update 002

Blog No. 131

I know I’ve said it before, but out of high school I went into electrical engineering. I intended to get a good paying job and spend my free time writing. I had only finished one or two short stories at that time, but I was sure that all I needed to do was secure my future and the rest would fall into place. That didn’t happen and after a year and a half I was struggling to pass most of my classes. I spoke with a few classmates who were in the same boat and looking to jump ship and realized I didn’t have to go down with the ship either. I finished the semester (barely passing) and after a terrifying conversation with my parents, I went over to journalism. That venture also ended in disappointment, but through both failures I learned a lot (and made a few friends that, if I were able to do it differently, I would probably stay the course in fear of losing them). I failed on my first novel too, and like those programs, I learned a lot, even if I didn’t get out of it what I hoped.