My writing

I often hesitate to give any kind of specific update here, mostly because when I'm asked what I'm up to with my writing (usually by someone who isn't a writer) I am able to answer in the same way: "I'm writing." I could get into specifics about the story that I'm working on or the fact that the ending of the novel I'm trying to finish seems locked inside a Fort Knox style secure location, but most of the time I get blank, glossy stares after a few minutes of this. Most of the people around me just don't want to hear the specifics anymore. Unless there's a particular problem with something or a really clever idea I have (I know, beware cleverness), there really just isn't that much to tell people. Writing is a solitary habit.

But here today I'm going to talk about two projects that I'm considering taking on for good or for ill: a short story collection, and a website.

This isn't a website, it's a blog. A website might have a "News" section, but this is still where I post the insane ramblings. They will be linked. The website would be more for information about me as a writer, links to all of my stuff and to create a true web presence. The question is: Is it really going to do anything positive for me? Well, that sort of brings me to my next section.

I've been thinking about collecting my short stories for a while now, but recently I actually added up word counts and I'm getting close to the 40,000 word minimum. I'd like it to be something closer to 50-60k, but we'll see what happens.

These two ideas go together because a website helps promote and sell the book (and any future books) and the book will hopefully direct people to the website where they'll learn about other things I'm working on, read my blog, etc. The ideal situation is a positive spiral where eventually everyone understands what kind of a brilliant writer I am. Or not.

Maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to learn how to program in Python.