On Writing

I'm reading a book that was lent to me by a friend.

It's Stephen King's On Writing, and it's pretty good so far. It's a semi-autobiographical account of how he got started in writing, and then it changes gears to give advice on how to write.

It makes me want to give it a shot.

I've tried before, when I was younger, and never seemed to be able to get anything over more than two or three chapters. It was pretty horrible stuff too, but what do you expect from a 13 year old kid. The stuff I was reading at the time was cheap pulp fantasy, and that heavy handed influence wouldn't be good for anyone's creativity.

Part of the problem is ideas. I think most of the ones I have are, for use of a better term, "stupid". But if Dan Brown can cram together a weak plot with bland characters, wacky theology, dubious theory, put it together with horrible pacing and shitty dialogue and sell over forty million copies, then maybe I can too.

The other problem is time. I hardly have time to blog some days, and stretching that into time to write is not conducive to daily life. Still, if you want something bad enough, I guess you can find the time. Maybe I can stop watching so much CSI - but c'mon, who can stop watching that?

Maybe I'll give it a try, who knows? Will any of you see it? Probably not, unless I'm feeling over confident. Getting shot down by strangers on the Internet may work for some, but I don't think much of it would be constructive. ("Why did you write about lesbians? What the fuck do you know?") Oh, I can see the comments now.

Later.