Me:  You know, sometimes I wonder if I’m working hard enough at this writing thing.  I’ve been doing pretty good lately, cranking out 1000 words day every day, but it never seems to be enough

Poe:  I suppose the question is, enough for what? 

Me:  Well, to achieve my goals, I guess.  To become a bestselling fiction writer.  To reach the largest audience with my stories as possible. 

Poe:  You think there’s a certain number of pages you have to write each day to achieve that?  I’d say it has more to do with luck and the fickleness of the reading public. 

Me:  I’m not saying luck doesn’t play a part, but I’ve got to believe that writing is a craft that one can achieve mastery in.  It may not be teachable, as I saw Stephen King say the other day, but it can certainly be learned.  And the best way to learn it is to read and write in great quantities — and the more you do both, the faster you will achieve success. 

Poe:  You really think so? 

Me:  Sure.  If I didn’t believe that, I’d have to give up now.  If I didn’t think I’d keep getting better, then I’d give it up.  Or take up drinking and end up dying in the gutter. 

Poe:  Not very funny. 

Me:  But my thing is, no matter how hard I work at it, I always have this nagging sense of guilt that I’m still not working hard enough.  Isn’t there a point at which I can pat myself on the back and say, yep, I’m doing all I can?  

Poe:  I suppose the problem is that you can never know if you’re doing all you can. 

Me:  Exactly.  In fact, there’s always writers working harder them me.  

Poe:  Therein lies your solution. 

Me:  What do you mean? 

Poe:  Acknowledge that no matter how hard you work, there is always another writer out there working harder than you. 

Me:  Okay . . . But that doesn’t make me feel any better. 

Poe:  I did not say it would.  I think, for the ambitious writer, living with that feeling of never doing enough is just a given.  Of course, you could always take up drinking.  Many writers do. 

Me:  Not very funny. 

A lot of people know that I’ve got an Edgar Allan Poe action figure in my writing office at home, complete with a miniature raven on his shoulder.  He sits by my computer and looks on while I type.  After a while, I started talking to him, sharing my concerns about writing, family, and life in general.  One day, amazingly, he started talking back. 

This is Belle.  She came to try us out over the weekend — a one-year-old Boston Terrier looking for a new home.  With Mankato passing away only a few months ago, I wasn’t really looking to add a new dog for a while, perhaps even a year, but sometimes an opportunity presents itself.  She’s a sweetheart, and she’s won over everyone.  Well, not the cats yet.  They’re sulking in the garage.  But they’ll come around.

1. Writing is like having an egg salad without the eggs.  Or the salad.
2. Writing is like holding your breath underwater while wearing scuba gear.
3. Writing is like pretending to be Neil Armstrong while Neil Armstrong gives a speech on what it’s like to be Neil Armstrong.
4. Writing is like going to a flea market actually run by fleas. 
5. Writing is like being the guy in a cannon at the circus who’s naked but nobody knows it. 
6. Writing is like remembering everything but suddenly having amnesia.
7. Writing is like trying to talk your way out of getting a speeding ticket — on a unicycle.
8. Writing is like making a mobius strip with a start and a finish.
9. Writing is like waking up and having it all be real.
10. Writing is like being a midget and a giant at the same time — on a unicycle.

This one is from my driveway this morning.  Each year, about this time, the giant pin oak out front fires the first cannon of my annual battle with leaves.  It usually ends around, oh, February.  In between, there’s lots and lots of bins full of the wounded and the dead — er, leaves, I mean.

It never fails.  If I mention to someone that I’m a writer, I almost always get the dreaded question:  So what are you writing now? 

Usually I give people the short answer, which is whatever I’m closest to finishing, but the truth is a little more complicated.  Take now, for example.  I’m almost done with my new YA book.  That’s certainly where I’m spending the bulk of my writing time.  But there’s also the new short story I started the other day that’s five or six pages in.  I got bit by a story idea and wanted to at least get down the opening, but I didn’t want to take too long away from the YA because I’m currently writing some of the most pivotal scenes. 

So there’s two projects.  But I also have the mystery book I finished a few months ago.  After getting some feedback from some trusted readers, and sitting on the book for a while, I realized that it’s not quit there.  Close, lots of good stuff so it’s not a redraft, but there’s some work that needs to be done.  Fortunately, I finally figured out what I think it needs, and I’ve started on that too.     

What about the copy edits on the short story collection I finished not long ago and emailed to the editor?  Do those count?  What about the questionnaire Simon and Schuster asked me to fill out for their new online promotional efforts for their authors? 

And heck, right now I’m writing this blog post.  Throw that into the mix. 

This is certainly not uncommon — in fact, there are lots of writers with far more on their plates than me — but I’ve come to see it as a good thing.  One of the best ways to be prolific, and to avoid writer’s block or the dreaded lulls between projects, is to always be working on something.  It keeps the creative juices flowing.  

But if we’re being literal about it, then unless I’m sitting in front of a computer typing away when somebody asks this question, then really there’s only one answer. 

Right now?  I’m not writing anything.  I’m talking to you.

I mentioned to a friend the other day that it was my goal to write three books over the next year and got the predictably shocked look. 

“You?” my friend said.  “Are you going to quit your day job?”

“No.”

“But you’ve got a full time job.  Two young kids . . .”

My friend wondered how I could possibly find the time.  Well, it’s true that I have to make choices, but it’s not nearly as hard as most people think.  It’s just writing by numbers.

This isn’t the same thing as painting by numbers.  That’s not what I mean.  I mean that if I want to write four books (and actually, I want to throw in some short stories too), I figure out how many words that’ll be approximately, then divide that number by the number of days I plan to write.  Here’s how it looks in my Writing Productivity Spreadsheet (and yes, I really do have such a spreadsheet, where I log all my writing sessions; if I’m not honest how hard I’m working at this, then it’s too easy to lie to myself): 

As you can see, if I write 1000 words a day, 330 days a year, then I can easily reach my goal of writing three books in one year, as well as tossing in a half dozen short stories to boot.  In fact, as the chart indicates, I can actually write four books a year, but I built that in as a cushion knowing that I occasionally have to throw away all or part of a novel that isn’t going well.  I can write 1000 words in forty-five minutes to an hour and a half, depending on how the work is going.  A thousand words is roughly two single-spaced pages. 

I change some of the numbers in this spreadsheet as a way of playing”what if.”  What if I was writing longer novels (I often write YA, which skews the novel word counts down a bit)?  What if I only wrote five days a week?  What if I only wanted to write two books a year?  Each time I change a variable, it changes what my daily rate needs to be.

A thousand words is a comfortable pace for me.  It’s the pace I keep coming back to time and time again.  I mix that up with the occasional marathon writing day, but the longer I’ve been at this, the more important it’s become to write every day.  I wouldn’t have said that five years ago, but a couple things have happened along the way:  1) I’ve become addicted to writing, so I get cranky when I don’t do it; and 2) As I’ve gotten better at it, I enjoy it even more, so there’s fewer days that I’m having to drag myself into my office. 

Can I find an hour a day?  Oh sure.  Sometimes it’s thirty minutes here, twenty minutes there, but if you’re serious about something, no matter how busy your life is, you can always find the time.

Just run the numbers.

Well I sell all those books?  Who knows.  That’s outside my control.  I’ll certainly try.  But I’m a firm believer that the rate of my success is dependent on the level of my productivity, a truism that I think applies to almost anything worth accomplishing in life.

Fall may have officially began September 22, but it’s only now that it really feels like autumn here in the Willamette Valley.  The air is crisp in the morning.  The leaves have begun to turn brown and litter the pavement.  Another summer has passed.

I like doing these quarterly updates to assess where my writing — and to a lesser degree, my life — currently stand.  I’m working on a new young adult novel, one that should appeal to readers of The Last Great Getaway of Water Balloon Boys, and I’m aiming to have it done by the end of month.  It’s a good thing, because I’ve got a pretty good idea what book I’m writing next, and I’m feeling butterflies in the stomach about it.  There’s two or three other books lined up after that, too.  Always more books to write.  I’m starting to feel a bit like manufacturing can’t keep up with R&D.  In other words, too many ideas, too little time.  I guess that’s a good thing.  Better than the alternative.

Beyond that, I’ve still got a mystery novel that needs a bit more work before it’s ready to send out into the world, so I need to make time for that.  It’s close, but I needed to let it sit for a month or two to really look at it objectively.   

I just mailed the signing sheets to PS Publishing for the limited edition mini collection I have coming out later this year, called A WEB OF BLACK WIDOWS AND OTHER STORIES OF LOVE AND LOSS.  Nothing like autographing your name 100 times to swell your a head a bit — and give you hand cramps.  I’ll have more on that soon. 

I also recently sent back the copyedited manuscript of my other collection, THE DINOSAUR DIARIES AND OTHER TALES ACROSS SPACE AND TIME.  With luck, that one will be out from Fantastic Books early next year. 

On the life front, the summer went by too quickly, as usual.  We’re enjoying our remodeled home.  We spent a week in July camping in our tent trailer in the Redwoods, down in the Prairie Creek area, which included a quick overnite jaunt to the town of Eureka.  We made a quick weekend trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota for my cousin’s wedding — with the added benefit of my ninety-two-year-old grandmother getting to meet her three-year-old grandson for the first time.  Otherwise, we spent most of those warm summer days in our own back yard — literally.

The kids are growing up fast.  My daughter started first grade.  First grade!  It seems only yesterday that I was strapping her into her car seat for the first time to bring her home from the hospital, this tiny, fragile thing nearly lost in the folds of her blanket.  Where has the time gone?