Heroes and Zeroes

I’m almost finished reading Frank McCourt’s ‘Tis. While I hate to make any claims about it when I still have ten pages left… first let me say that I like Frank McCourt. I liked Angela’s Ashes very much, actually– he’s an excellent writer with a hell of a sense of humor about life’s awful disasters, and an amazing story to tell. What’s not to love? So I’m not trying to knock McCourt when I say that Tis isn’t really my thing. I mean just that– it’s not my thing. It’d be rad for most of my family, however, so I plan on reccing it anyhow.

In the meantime, I’ve just finished the first draft of the Audio File thing, which was huge. So now it’s down to getting a little more short fiction out there, which is going smashingly, thanks. I don’t like to say too much about my own writing here, but there is something small I wanted to bring up that I think is pretty awesome and important. I’ve had some badass advice– from experienced friends, from books, from agent and author blogs, from all over the place. But there was one piece I read the other day that struck me as so important I want to stand up and scream it all over the place. And I think this is the place for it.

Neil Gaiman’s blog is among the many I stalk daily. (Who you callin’ fangirl?) He does a lot of questions and answers from emails he gets, which is just another brilliant thing about Neil Gaiman. On father’s day someone was asking him how he was able to deal with all the rejection and pain and frustration of failure as a writer– I assume both in the past as an aspiring writer and now as a writer who probably doesn’t get to do quite everything he wants. And he had the best answer ever. “Write the next thing.”

It’s been a really strange couple of years for me since I ditched grad school and started on this madness in earnest– first supporting myself with any random job that’d give me free nights to write, and now going at it full time. Sometimes I feel like I’m popping the crazy pills, yeah. But that’s what keeps me (admittedly, questionably) sane, what he said.

Part of the fun of reading is seeing stuff you’ve always thought put into a pretty and articulate package by someone else, right? So this is my moment of Zen. I reckon loads of others will get it too.

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Now playing: Scissor Sisters – Ooh
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