![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
It would have been twee to ask you a week ago what your writing-related New Year’s resolutions were – too cheerful by half, and 90% bullshit. Much more fun to wait for the tomato juice to overcome the hangovers, and see what resolutions you’ve already broken, or are likely to break.
So, let me know: did you make any NYRs about writing, and have you blown them already?
I’ll go first. I resolved not to waste time arguing about writing with flaming eejits. I’ve already succumbed.
(Note to Self: If you argue with monkeys, they will eventually fling poo. He’s probably chuckling now – “Heh heh, he said ’suc cum’, heh heh”.)
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You said “blow them” heh heh… heh heh
You know something it wouldn’t matter if someone did edit some piece of tripe they’d written. My experience is that if you present a writer with full constructive criticism and points to review of a given work and then they present you with a revision you will find:
a) 3 of the spelling errors have been corrected before writer apathy set in and they decided to do some “real editing” and “come back to the boring stuff later”.
b) Several things have been changed. None in line with request. Usually these are additions. All other comments you may have made have been ignored.
and c) If you’re really unlucky they try to justify why your criticisms are totally wrong.
So it would be a bit of a pointless resolution to 99% of budding authors really.
(I, on the other hand, really have applied fixes to the lenten feedback I have received and find no one willing to give the revision a new once over. Editors, however crap they are, earn their salary for just bothering at all. However I am somewhat guilty of leaving spelling errors till last.)
I have not resolved to give up writing but as we know this is because I am mentally unwell.
“Who Flung Dung” by Brown Spots on the Wall.
Aye, you know I made writing resolutions. I did make an arbitrary word count resolution and so far I’m on target. But then, I’ve also got the goal to complete my manuscript and attempt to get an agent. We’ll see how far I make it
I would never give up arguing with someone… especially another blogger. It’s way too much fun. The following is always true:
“It’s better to remain silent and be thought an idiot, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
Idiots are everywhere. We can’t get rid of them so we must use them for entertainment value.
Cheers!
Shit slinging monkeys make good pets for pirates!
Heh heh…fecal inuendo…heh heh.
I’ve found that 90% of the writers I know and lay on a sword for every time they come bounding my way with a fistful of creased, coffee stained pages act more or less along the lines of the monkey’s observations.
However, the New Year is a very special time for those of our ilk – and fling poo if you must – I am a writer myself. And god knows I should probably stop writing, but masochism is such a hard habit to break. We all make these hair brained, meaningless resolutions every year.
“Hey, it’s January. I’ve magically developed the will, talent, and humility to listen necessary to write something worthy of bleached pulp.”
But then again, I’m of course different, and shall complete and stick to all of my resolutions. (Says the monkey to the other monkey)
Resolutions? Only one thing to say:
To evoke one’s posterity is to make a speech to maggots.
–Louis-Ferdinand C
It’s okay: I’m about ready to make a resolution…to break my previous vow to quit writing, if only to send another entry. (I’ve got a beaut about the irrational fantasy that saving independent bookstores will somehow save publishing, and it’s threatening to eat my brain if I don’t write it down.)
Noooooooooooo!
Paul, you were a beacon, the apotheosis of the 101 Reasons philosophy. If you write so much as a “letter to the editor”, ever again, the cause will be dashed as surely as if you dusted off a ten-year-old story, stuffed it into an envelope and wrote “Member, SFWA” on the front.
But what if I write it under a pseudonym? After all, I may have quit, but Edgar Harris never did.
Oh, “Edgar Harris”. That’ll work.
Don’t they say that a pseudonym is the last refuge of a scoundrel?
You got me in one, Sean. Then again, back when I was writing, I had specific orders that I was to be cremated after death, and my ashes dumped into the ventilation fans in the main hallway at the next Worldcon. The thought of Gardner Dozois, Gregory Benford, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch pulling bits of me out of their neckbeards for weeks has a certain charm.
Come on, Paul, spill: what have you against those fine elder statesmen of the ghetto? Especially Rusch, who works so hard to give us all the opportunity to write Star Wars?
I’m running a sidebar poll on this topic at my blog, A Stop at Willoughby, and so far the results are unanimous.
I don’t do well with writing-related NYRs. I write when I can, and when I feel I’m in the mood to write. Forcing myself to write for the sake of doing so produces little more than crap.
Hey…found you via Scalzi’s pimp thread. Thanks for the pointer. I’ll fatten up my Bloglines account with your blog.
I never thought about making writing NYRs. But you’ve given me an idea…