Monday, June 11, 2001

Back at work today. A mass e-mail was sent to the entire office, notifying us that a new firewall system is in place, which gives the IT group detailed logs on web usage, and reminding us that the web should be used primarily for work-related needs.

Ahem.

I’m suddenly glad that I’ve decided to work more diligently here at Intersect. :-) I can still update this diary (since I use ssh to update the diaary, rather than any web-based forms, and anyway I don’t think anyone would begrudge me the time I spend updating my diary), but I’m trying to force myself to only use the web for work, unless I literally have no work to do.

It’s time for a new poll; this time, a silly one about dental care. Here’s how the last one turned out:

I tried to draw another anime face today, and it came out looking nice. I uploaded a scan of it to my gallery, if you want to take a look. I also updated Kamidake, my AtheOS software directory, to display detailed publisher information.

Now, about that conversation I had with Saalon last night. Here’s the scoop:

It started as I was trying to fall asleep on Saturday night. I felt tipsy and light-headed, but also restless. I finally got up and staggered about my room, thinking about my writing experiences on Saturday.

I decided to ask myself a simple question: What drives me to write stories? What is the reason behind my drive to become a published fiction author? I had to delve pretty far down into my psyche before coming up with the honest answer:

I want to be a famous author.

Specifically, I want to be like Ray Bradbury or Todd McFarlane or J. Michael Straczynski. I want people to walk up to me at conventions and say, “Hey, I read that book you just wrote, and I loved it.” That’s the reason behind my writing.

And, while that is a fine goal, I think it’s not a very good reason to write.

So, the Writer within me has been cut free of its moorings, and is floating around, rudderless. It’s not that I’ll never write again. I’ll certainly write non-fiction, and I’ll probably write fiction if I’m inspired, even in this state. But I have no reason to write now.

So, I told this to Saalon, and he said that he sees me as a Producer more than a Writer. He feels that I excel at co-ordinating creative things. If I were to make a CD, I’d love printing out the sheet music, and choosing a cover image for the CD, and arranging the order of the music on the CD, and choosing instruments, and finding people to play the instruments. I probably wouldn’t like actually composing the music.

And I agree.

So, I asked, what did that mean for Wine to Those in Anguish? If I’m not supposed to write it, but I’m the one producing it, what should I do?

I asked Saalon to write it. And he accepted, with a mixture of fear and excitement. Which made me excited. We then proceeded to spend several hours going over the story, mostly me describing the stuff going through my mind. We resolved several major plot and presentation problems.

It was great. I’ve convinced myself that this was the right thing to do.

So, I think I’m going to spend less time worrying about my fiction writing skills from now on. I’ll just wait on that; maybe I’ll get inspired, or maybe I need some time to practice writing. Perhaps I can now just exercise my writing muscles.