Wow, it feels weird to be back on the mic after a whole month of just writing prose. I feel like I am dancing after a whole month of singing, and it is going to take me some time to get my feet back under me.

So what have I been doing? Well, writing another whole damned book, for one. This one is called The Road To Amarlea and it’s about two friends and their trip to the magical city of Amarlea.

It is meant to be funny fantasy a la Terry Prachett’s Discwold series, Robert Aspirin’s Myth series, Piers Anthony’s Xanth books, and the Malady of Magicks series by Craig Shaw Gardner.

Of the above, the closest to my style (and that is not an accident) is Pratchett. And not just in the obvious Douglas Adams-ish authorial voice. I hope I also put the sort of warmth and wit into my writing as he does. I would never claim to be as good as him (though I long to be), but I hope to emulate his gentle yet keen wit, his lovable quirky characters, his deft interweaving of the comic with the profound, and of course, his massive financial success.

Mostly that last bit, really. (Joking, people. Relax.)

I am worried, however, because I am pretty sure that I sort of forgot to be funny for long stretches of the book. I got really into telling other parts of the story and I am afraid I wandered rather far afield, as I am wont to do, especially when I head out into the writer’s wilderness with nothing but a few characters, a couple of scenes, and a vague destination in mind.

That is something I will have to try to fix in editing. Which is where I am now : editing the damn thing.

And having just edited two parts of it, I can say this definitely : editing is so much less fun than writing, it’s not even funny.

Writing the rough draft is fun. Very arduous fun, but fun nevertheless. I get to really stretch and expand and strengthen my imagination, work on my authorial voice, make up what happens next each day, spin stories, make up funny stuff, spend time in a world of my own making, and best of all, create.

That’s what I like to do. I am a creator, an artist, a maker, a progenitor. It is that act of creative birth that motivates me. I have so much creativity inside me, so many words and thoughts and ideas and emotions crying for release, that when I finally get around to letting them out through these busy typing fingers of mine, the relief is so profound that when I am done, the selfish and shortsighted side of me wants to just roll over and go to sleep.

Yes, that was a sexual metaphor. Sorry about that. What can I say, I am a man. Everything is about releasing our energies into the world to us.

But of course, this whole tendency to want to forget what I have done and move on to the next thing (what a pig!) of mine is not going to lead to a satisfying and lucrative writing career.

Nobody pays the big bucks (or even the small change) for someone’s rough draft. All the writing books say that you have to make it as good as you possibly can before you even think about sending it to a publisher. And so even though it goes against every grain of my lazy progenitor nature, I have to cuddle up with my book and stay awake long enough to edit the goddamned thing.

And I don’t like it. But I will do it.

And when I am done, I will make the edited version available to you, the readers, and then, God willing and the crick don’t rise, I will turn it into an eBook and sell it online.

I plan to fix up last year’s book too, and make it available as an eBook.

Or maybe not. I would prefer to go the eBook route, because I honestly want as little between me and reader as possible, for both financial and artistic reasons.

As a writer, all that matters to me is connecting with my audience. I have developed a definition of a writer as a person with a desperately strong need to communicate with people without them being in the same room. And that describes me pretty well.

After all, if I wasn’t shy, I guess I would just talk to people. Maybe.

Anyhow, I would rather sell a book directly to the audience with any goddamned gatekeepers in the way. Now that it is possible to do so (without needing to have the capital to self-publish), I view the entire traditional publishing industry as a completely unnecessary impedance to the artist/art consumer relationship, which is all that has ever mattered to art.

But… there is this little voice inside my head that says “But what if a big publisher WOULD publish it. What if you could have traditional success. Books with your name on them sitting on people’s shelves. Nice gat advances in the bank. Book tours all over the world, all expenses paid. You could HAVE ALL THAT. ”

And that sounds pretty good. I think my writing might not be all that polished yet, but I think the stories I tell are good ones, and that is more important than formal perfection anyhow.

So perhaps I will hedge my bets by sending one book to a publisher, and the other, I will eBook.

And seeing as I went to considerable trouble to retain first publishing rights of my latest magnet opus, I suppose it would make sense to send that one out to the Book Police.

My hope would be that if I have enough eBook success, I will attract a real world publisher, and have the best of both worlds.

So wish me well folks! Seeya tomorrow.