Become a professional writer

It’s not exciting, but why is this here if not to produce updates.

I have entered two contests with two different pieces.

I’ve noticed a few things:
1. I like my work out of context, but the moment I decide to send it somewhere I start judging it. I’ll determine a story is too serious or too whimsical for a given contest. This is an oddity.

2. There are a lot of contests!

3. I don’t work well under pressure. I was trying to finish a piece to send to a contest and every sentence was a chore. The first page of this particular story was written in the middle of a sleepless night with no problem what-so-ever. In fact, I got out of bed and began typing with no direction, but pulled one out anyway. Now that it’s going somewhere, I can’t make it flow. I delete twice as much as I put on the page.

4. Writing is my Kung Fu. This came from watching a movie mind you, but it makes sense. A person can be built to be a fighter, and be pretty good without a lick of practice or study, but he will lose to a martial artist who studies everyday. So it is true of my writing. I must practice, collect tools, and make it as breathing. I must not fear.

So there’s that. More to come.

I sat down and took apart the term “professional writer”.

Fine, I’m lying, I did it from a standing position.

My point is, a professional is someone who is paid to do something; a writer who writes.

Because I have the writer part down, grafted to my brain, unable-to-think-unless-there-is-a-pen-in-my-hand style, I have a lot of short stories (finished, unfinished and abandoned) wasting space on my hard drive.

I could try to sell these, the finished ones anyway, but I think that might be a little too-much-to-the-point for the literary world. People have this tendancy to make things complicated so they feel better about themselves and publishing seems the type of job that demands such a practice. This means I’m going to have to jump through some hoops, flaming hoops, probably over boiling acid.

That’s right, CONTESTS!

I’m going to enter short fiction contests.

The thing is, I’m not very good at this whole writing thing. At least I have no way to judge if I am or not and like to assume the worst. If my stories aren’t quality depictions of heroic events, then I am at a severe disadvantage in a contest.

Well then, if you can’t be good, be prolific. I’m going to enter TWENTY of them. If I don’t win any, then I wasted a lot of entry fees, a lot of paper, and a lot of hard drive space with my writing.

And that’s saying something.

In the beginning there was nothing.

And I saw this nothing and said… oh wait, I feel like I’ve read this somewhere before.

I started writing in high school, I wanted to be an actor, and so started writing screenplays. I know that seems a bit counter-intuitive, but my friends often describe me as the “most frequent traveler on the path that is not of least resistance”. I fell in love with writing, creating something from just words, building greatness with pen and paper.

I tried to make a movie, but it didn’t work, I still play around with cameras from time to time. (you can see what happens when I do that here: http://www.youtube.com/ThePhantomPantheon.)

I blamed a lot of people for my feature film “Empty” never getting finished. But I thought back to how many things in my life were never finished, and how I was a part of all of them. I started writing a book to see how much I was getting in my own way.

I am nearly finished with the book, entitled “Wander”, but of course I have no idea how to sell it.

To tell the truth, I’m just getting below the tip of this iceberg, and I not a strong swimmer.

I’ll try and keep you informed, it should be similar to watching a 32 car pile up with a tanker truck and a school bus. I hope you’ll be entertained.

Thank you to Breathe_deeper for showing me this… As I can’t properly spell “professional” under my own power.