Desktop Dynamo

About a month ago, I blogged that I entered The Tears of Saint Lawrence in Glimmer Train's February 2008 Family Matters contest (after ripping the innards out of the story yet again).

Did that last edit make a difference?

Well, for the second time I had a story finish in the top five percent (out of 1200 entries). While I didn't win or make the published top 25 list, this was still a tremendous bit of encouragement at a time I really needed it. Glimmer Train is one of America's best fiction magazines. It's been called a "feast of fiction." Finishing as well as I did...twice now...is a heady thing for me. I haven't been writing "for real" all that long.

The last story to do this well was July 27 (which will be published sometime this summer...more details to come).

There is so much I simply don't know about this craft. I don't have the depth of reading, training, education...perhaps even the sheer, raw talent...of so many other writers. This stuff come very hard to me...my frenetic bursts of activity are usually wedged between long weeks of going 'round in circles and getting nothing of consequence done.

But I love this thing called writing...it's what I want to when I finally "grow up." On the one hand, I cuss myself for taking so long to start. On the other hand, I really had nothing to say until about five years or so ago. That's when the faucet opened in my head, and things started to fly out. Some days the faucet just drips, some days it's wide open. But it never shuts completely.

Do I quit the day job? Not yet. Maybe never.

But when I do "retire" from that day job, the part-time writing career moves full time. I can't imagine myself doing anything else which challenges me as much as fiction.