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[T]ypos will lurk and creep and scuttle on the edges of the text and, despite my best efforts, jump out and wave furiously at everyone as soon as I’m done…

from Neil Gaiman’s Journal.

You know, I should start a “quotes” miniblog or something.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what to write. I have the ideas, just not the time to bring them to fruition. Sorry ’bout that. You’ll have something new this week, I promise, even if it’s just a link post. (By the way, click here for good reading.)

Writer’s block. Is there anything more frightening to the would-be writer, the one struggling to get the proverbial “big break”, than writer’s block? Well, I mean other than getting your hands chopped off and losing your ability to write, getting ALS, or getting Alzheimer’s.

You know, that just totally killed this post. Or maybe I just made it better, by making you grateful you still have your hands, don’t have ALS or Alzheimer’s. So I’ll go on anyway. Here’s what you should do when faced with “writer’s block”.

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“I learned that I was right and everyone else was wrong when I was nine. Buck Rogers arrived on the scene that year, and it was instant love. I collected the daily strips, and was madness maddened by them. Friends criticized. Friends made fun. I tore up the Buck Rogers strips. For a month I walked through my fourth-grade classes, stunned and empty. One day I burst into tears, wondering what devastation had happened to me. The answer was: Buck Rogers. He was gone, and life simply wasn’t worth living. The next thought was: Those are not my friends, the ones who got me to tear the strips apart and so tear my own life down the middle; they are my enemies.

“I went back to collecting Buck Rogers. My life has been happy ever since. For that was the beginning of my writing science fiction. Since then, I never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

– Quote by Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing

Dreams are a funny thing. Listen to them, and you’ll inevitably encounter ridicule. Listen to the wisdom of the masses, and yes, you become normal, part of the pattern, part of the tapestry that makes up the background of history. But you also become boring and forgotten. Ah, but to ignore the detractors and listen to your own dreams. That is where the artistry in the tapestry comes in, for it is those things which jump out of the pattern, the seemingly improbable, yet inevitable black swans which make the tapestry come alive. Remember: The failures in life are remembered for their failures. The successes are remembered for their successes. And the rest, the majority of people in the middle? Why, they’re simply forgotten.

Alright folks, here it is, just in time to spice up your weekend: the sequel to the surprisingly popular (judging by the people who have actually come up to me and told me they liked it) Instant Cowboy: Just Add Water. Actually, this is a prequel, not a sequel, and tells the story of Fat Daisy, a comic book shop owner, and the two boys who find a powerful secret.

Did I do an OK sales job? If I didn’t — and I probably didn’t — forgive me: I’m new at that. For now, just enjoy the story. (By the way, this is a pretty long story — 8250 words! — so I’ve made it available on a PDF. You can choose to download it double spaced (33 pages), or single spaced (15 pages). And, of course, you can continue reading on the site to understand a bit of how this story came about, as well as to read it online.)

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I haven’t talked about this here because, frankly, I didn’t know how far it would go. In fact, I’m still not sure how far it will, although it seems to be taking me in a rather desirable direction.

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