The Other Steve

First, an apology for not having posted in a couple weeks.

On second thought, no. I've been trying to write a book, and dealing with jet lag, so sue me (speaking of jet lag: melatonine, go get some, it works). In fact, not posting on the blog is a really good sign, when you think about it. It means I may finally be making the transition from someone who writes for fun (and therefore spends lots of time blogging instead of doing things like powerpoint diagrams) to someone who writes for work (and therefore cannot be bothered to blog after she has already spent all afternoon trying to hammer out half a crappy chapter).

So there.

Speaking of writing (because, let's be honest, I'm hardly able to talk about anything else these days), I've just finished reading Stephen King's "On Writing." And I would like to thank Steve for making me feel bad. Here's why.

1. Steve reads 70 books a year. He says that's a minimum if you're serious about being a writer. I read about 25, and until now I always thought that was pretty good going.

2. Steve writes 2000 words a day. 6 days a week. He scorns anyone who writes less than a 1000. It takes him three months to write the first draft of a book. It took me three months just to churn out the first 50 pages.

3. Steve says adverbs are the hallmark of the bad writer. I now seem distressingly incapable of writing anything else. I'm afraid my entire book reads like one impossibly long string of adverbs.

4. Steve says only pussies actually bother thinking about plot before they start writing. The characters and the situation dictate the plot. Not the writer. Duh.

So thank you Steve. I now want to go crawl into a hole somewhere, eat my miserable first fifty adverb-filled, plotted pages and suffocate under a pile of all the books I haven't read.