The blank page…

The blank page can be quite intimidating at times. I noticed the other day that I hadn’t posted anything for the blog in almost two weeks. I immediately resolved to myself that I needed to remedy this, and get to it. That was five or six days ago. It’s taken those additional days for me to finally write something that I would even consider posting.

The blank page. It’s not something you’d expect to be scary. In reality, for a writer, it’s like Stephen King scary. The blank page is almost always an invitation to fear, doubt, and self-loathing. It starts you on the path where you only listen to your inner critic, and that inner critic thinks everything you write is crap. It makes you start to wonder if you’re a writer at all.

When this happens you start to procrastinate. You do laundry. You wash dishes. Worst of all, you plunk yourself in front of the television and slowly slip away into a happy numbness. All of this is just finding excuses not to write.

At the end of the day, the only way to fix it, and make the blank page go away is to sit down and force yourself to puts words on paper. You have to write. It doesn’t matter what you write, you just have to do it.

So I’ve been writing. Nearly every day. Writers have stuff that they write in various notebooks, computer files, on pizza boxes, napkins, and other various assorted scraps of paper. This is the stuff that after they write it–will never again see the light of day. The best analogy I can make would be to compare it to composting. You write all this garbage for as long as it takes, and eventually it will turn into fertilizer.

It took a very long time for me to learn this lesson. Years. It’s very easy to let the blank page get the best of you, and then lose weeks or months where you don’t write at all. I know this from personal experience. I also know from that experience that I’m never going to let it happen again. I will never go more than a day or two without writing something. I can’t. For me, writing is the same as breathing.

So off I go. It’s time to sharpen my pencil, and start once again. I’ve just opened my notebook, and find myself looking at a crisp, new, blank page.

Peace.

Milestones…

Twenty years ago, I graduated from high school. This was most certainly a milestone in my life, but by no means the biggest. Graduating wasn’t even the biggest milestone of my summer in 1990–getting married was.

This mammoth event happened a little less than a month after we threw our tasseled caps in the air. I collected my diploma thanks to some incredibly generous charity on the part of a few of my teachers, and four short weeks later got hitched (the first time).

I’ve been thinking about that summer and high school a lot this week due to my twentieth reunion having happened last weekend. I didn’t attend due to other commitments, priorities, and much apprehension. Even so, it’s had me reminiscing about the many things I’ve experienced since that time in my life. A time that feels like it was only yesterday, and at the same time feels like it was a millennia ago.

There have been many milestones since graduation day.

Marriage. A beautiful little boy two years later. His also beautiful wiggling little brother four years after that. A divorce. Recovery from divorce. Finding what I thought was true love. Crashing and burning once again. Finally finding that true love. Taking my time. My thirties. Marriage again. Starting my own company. Moving more times than I care to elaborate on. Finding new friends. Losing old ones. Reconnecting with old friends (thank you Facebook). Discovering what’s really important, and realizing how little it has to do with money.

Like I said, I’ve already accumulated many milestones in my life. Most of them good, a few bad. Every single one of them a life lesson. What’s exciting for me now are the milestones yet to come.

This week I’ve founded an online writers group! We already have four members, and the words are flowing. I’m also starting my first week of a four week writing workshop that is being moderated by Chuck Palahniuk’s (Fight Club) website. My first assignment hit the email box a little earlier today. I have until 2PM on Saturday to write a 2000 – 3500 word original short story. Any of you who might be questioning if this is a good thing, trust me–it’s a very good thing.

The writing is happening. More importantly, the milestones that are important to me are happening too. It’s sometimes good to take a moment and reflect on the things you’ve done.

It’s awe inspiring to take a moment and consider the things you’re still going to do.

Peace.

Perspective

Here I am, back again. Sitting at my desk, fingers touching keys, and really not knowing what happens next. I’d originally thought I might punch out a few pages of a whining rant. I have no idea what I want to write today, and I considered how easy it would be to produce five hundred words or so complaining about what’s been pissing me off.

I’ve decided against that. It is far too beautiful a day to start it out that way. These types of days are my favorite. Bright sunshine. Warm, but comfortable. The oppressive thick mugginess that has been plaguing us this week is gone for now, and has been replaced with a wonderful breeze. The day is shaping up to be the kind that I’ll spend almost every minute of it outdoors. It is Friday after all. This is the perfect kind of day to sneak the weekend in a little early.

It’s been a full week, and the weekend will be busy as well. Graduation parties, author readings & book signings, maybe a movie. I’m a couple hundred pages read into Justin Cronin’s The Passage, and fully intend to get a couple hundred more before the end of the day on Sunday. If you haven’t put this book on your radar yet, you really should. The building buzz that this will be one of the biggest books of the year is well deserved, and the more I read, the more difficult it is to put it down.

I’ll spend a lot of time this weekend creating my own words too. Besides the blog, I’ve got a story in the mixing bowl, and it’s going well.

It’s funny, just in the few minutes I’ve been sitting here typing this, and then rereading what I write, I honestly can’t think of a single thing I’ve got to complain about.

Happy Friday!

Starting again with a new blog, and the super amazing iPad…

I’ve recently decided to take another stab at writing a blog on a regular basis.  I also broke down this week, and purchased an iPad.  I then thought it would be appropriate that I write the very first entry of my new blog on the iPad. So here goes…my first excursion into a new world I’ve decided to call The Muse’s Ink.

The new iPad is the equivalent of crack cocaine to a gadget geek such as myself. I told myself for weeks that “I didn’t want one,” or “it’s a nice gadget, but not something I’d really use.” I thought for a while, and still do in some respects that it would be better to wait for a later release of the iPad. It’s always better to wait a while so they have time to work the bugs out of a new technology.

The thing is, there just aren’t that many things to complain about. The things I don’t like are minor, and I’m sure most of them will be resolved in a future software update.

The shiny glistening screen on the iPad calls out to you, and asks to be touched. As a piece of hardware, it’s sleek, and it very compact. I carry it around like I would a small book. There is literally an “app” for everything you might want to do, and there are hundreds of apps that do absolutely nothing.

One of the biggest features I like about the iPad is its new approach to books. I have been for the last several years a proud owner of a Kindle. The Kindle was the first step in the new age of digital books. The iPad has taken another step. The experience of reading on the iPad is difficult to explain. All I’ll say is that you shouldn’t make a final judgement on whether or not you can enjoy reading on a digital device until you’ve tried it on the iPad. I acknowledge that it might not be for everyone. I just think until you’ve actually tried it, you should reserve judgement.

Don’t get me wrong, the Kindle is still a wonderful device. E-ink is still preferable in a lot of ways. The Kindle as a device is still cool, It’s just not as cool as the iPad. As much as people don’t want to admit it, the hype is real. The iPad is going to change the game. Not just for books, but probably portable computing as a whole.

Despite all my whining and staunch assurances that I wouldn’t get an iPad, the reality of it is I don’t think I was fooling anyone except maybe myself. No one was very surprised at my announcement. Most were more amazed I had waited as long as I did. My wife was mostly amused, content in the fact that her prediction of my not waiting had finally be substantiated.

Since getting it on Tuesday, I’ve hardly put the silly thing down. I’ve barely touched my laptop, and I’m starting to wonder if I should just box up, and sell my desktop.

As I’ve been writing this blog entry I’m finding that typing on the iPad will take some getting used to.  It’s a bit like two finger typing with all my fingers.  It’s not comfortable to type the same way you would on a regular keyboard, but I have to say, the more I do it–the easier it gets.

I really didn’t intend for this first blog entry to morph into an Apple commercial as it seems to have done. It’s no secret that I’m a Mac geek. Future blog entries will hopefully be more about my creative process, or books, or whatever I might be fuming about on any given day. I might even post some short fiction from time to time. Whatever I post here, I don’t intend on setting any limits to what it may be. I’m just going to keep writing every day, and every once in a while I’ll post something I think the rest of you might find interesting.

Until that next time!