A Change of Pace

February 9, 2008 · Posted in General, Writing

I really need to refocus here. It’s kind of difficult to have any chance as an “aspiring novelist” if you spend all of your time writing programs and programming tutorials. I’d thought about writing a how-to book on C#, but it’s just not happening; it’s kinda fun, but it’s too easy for me to get caught up in the details (I’ll spend two hours trying to format source code snippets so they have proper syntax highlighting; by the time I’m done, I’ve completely lost whatever momentum I started with.

Having gone a full year without selling Like Glass (well, to a publisher at least) hasn’t helped much on the motivational end of it — I’m having a damned hard time getting past it, and I know I need to move on and start on that damned Book #2, but it just ain’t coming. I almost wish I hadn’t written Like Glass.

That’s not true; I’m glad I wrote it, and if I never write another book, at least I can honestly claim that I have written a novel, instead of throwing another voice into the “Well, I could if I wanted to…” pile. But it was fun, and commercially viable or not, I wouldn’t go back and stop myself.

But I’m losing focus here, I’m worrying too much about programming and not enough about writing, and that’s gonna screw me over I think. Why? Because, even if I don’t feel like it now (and I’m starting to, lemme tell you), I’m going to get back to being tired of coding. I’ll get out to Texas and be lucky enough to get a good job, and I’ll drop it because I’m getting bored of it. Or I’ll get fired, or … whatever.

Sorry, I can’t look at programming as just another job. It’s got to be a career, it’s got to be everything or nothing. It isn’t something to just clock in to at 9 am, clock out at 5 pm, and forget about until the next day.

And I know that, if I’m ever lucky enough to be able to write full time, I’ll be the same way there. And I’ll probably get tired of it and bored with it eventually too. But it’s something different to get tired of. Hell, I’ve spent the past 8 years of my life focusing as hard as I possibly could on programming, eat, breath, sleep and yes, seriously, even dream programming (you don’t know how strange it is to wake up realizing that instead of flying through the mountains with a two headed bird, your night was spent in strange delusions of if/else blocks and polymorphism).

So, I need to start bringing myself back to writing. I need to start making that the focus of my future instead of coding. Coding’s fun, and I’ll get paid more for it, but it’s not the same. I need more passion in my life, more creativity, more dreaming (preferably dreams that don’t need to be compiled upon waking to make any sense).

Which means that either the posts here are going to change drastically, or they’ll stop pretty much altogether. Not because I don’t want to post, but because I’ve been having a hell of a time coming up with things to post regarding writing, though I’ve had very little writer’s block from the programming side of the spectrum.

Need to run and pick Patti up from work.