This is going to be a long, rambling one, yet again. You've been warned.

Okay, I'd planned to write this yesterday but ran out of time, so here goes. Thanks to Tim, who ran a link to gapingvoid, the Web site for Hugh "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" Macleod, I've been reading and thinking about Macleod's downloadable manifesto, How to be Creative.

Yeah, the title is sort of silly, but the contents are pretty interesting and thought-provoking. Like a lot of writers, I'll bet, I'm really interested in how other people work and how they deal with their own creative urges. So his mini-book was very inspiring, and I'm going to share some of my favorite quotes from it, along with what they mean to me and my own creative life at this sort-of crossroads where I'm currently standing. All quoted text is from Hugh Macleod.

• "Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina. Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst."

Oh yeah, I'm all about stamina and perseverance. I'm stubborn. I've been at this fiction-writing thing for almost 10 years now, and the last 4-5 years of those ten have included some pretty hard, intensive work. I also have to learn to be patient, something I forget too often. And yeah, I've bought into that need for a "job-free" burst of creativity myth as well. More on that in a bit.

• "I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in; do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually."

Yep. That's what gets me up at 4:30 or 5 a.m., before I have to get ready to leave for the day job. Ideally I'd love more than an hour or two, but knowing me, I'd just piss around and not get everything done I wanted to. I like that "magical, life-transforming" part -- it does happen. You just have to set yourself up so it happens more and more often, through practice and an openness to it.

• "THE SEX & CASH THEORY: The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs. One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended. As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don't know why this happens. It's the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way—who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author…well, they never make it."

This is probably the most fascinating part of the article for me. I like what he has to say, because it makes perfect sense. So many writers -- all of us, I'm sure, at one point or another -- dream about hitting it big and getting that fat book or movie deal. And why do we dream about that? Well, speaking for myself, it's so I can quit my day job, of course!

Every writer wants to live like Stephen King, writing and reading all day, putting out a bestseller every year like clockwork. But his case is a special case, and he's also 1) immensely talented and 2) immensely lucky (at least at the start of his career).

For me, I've been bitching about my day job for years, and I need to just. Get. Over. It.

My job isn't all that bad. The worst of it is that it's so sedentary, that I'm perched on my chair in front of a monitor most of the day, editing or writing courses. Could be worse (I could be teaching grammar to vocational college kids!). I have cool co-workers, a laid-back atmosphere (for IBM, that is), flexible hours, and relatively interesting work (most of the courses are about applications for laptops and desktops to help users improve their productivity). And thanks to this job along with Lizzie's job, we've been able to start to get slowly out of debt.

The day job also forces me to budget my time, which is getting even shorter now that Drew's here and I want to hang out with him. I tried getting up early a couple times this week, and I'm getting back into the swing of things (though it's painful, especially on nights when Drew decides to be a night owl!).

Also, I know people who are full-time fiction writers, and they seem to always be on the edge, waiting for their freelance checks, picking up assignments for books that may not be their first choice for writing but they do anyway for the cash. I like getting regular paychecks and having reliable health insurance. So the lesson here is -- make the most of my day job, and if I'm not happy, find another one if I can. But I'm content here. (Now watch them lay us all off!)

• "Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb. You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness. It's about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth."

The last sentence in this quote reminds me of what Gandalf says to Frodo in the mines of Moria in "Fellowship of the Ring" ("All that matters is what you do with the time you are given..."). Why not make our best attempt to live life to the fullest? At least try to climb that mountain, even if you're tired and think you suck and would rather watch the boob tube.

• "Go ahead and make something. Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it. If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed."

For as long as I can remember, I've had the urge to make stuff. Models of cars or space ships, stories, D&D modules, Web sites, novels. It must be something I was born with. One thing that's been holding me back lately is that I've gotten too concerned with marketing and publishing my stuff, and not paying enough attention to the actual process and the work itself. Which is why I've gotten interested in working on the novel blog again. More on that in a minute.

• "Frankly, I think you're better off doing something on the assumption that you will NOT be rewarded for it, that it will NOT receive the recognition it deserves, that it will NOT be worth the time and effort invested in it. The obvious advantage to this angle is, of course, if anything good comes of it, then it's an added bonus."

Yeah. Of course.

This is why I opened up all the older entries to my novel blog, Dead Man's Rope. I want people to actually read this novel, so I want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. No more password-protection, no more locked entries. Just a story that I'm slowly building every day or so, adding more cool shit as I go. And I added a new entry yesterday, and plan on writing another one today. Ultimately, I'm telling this story to myself, to figure out what happens next. If other folks enjoy the ride, even better!

As an extra added bonus, you can even download a PDF of the story thus far, if you don't feel like clicking through all the previous journal entries. This project was what I kept thinking about as I was reading Macleod's article, and I think it's a fun little project that I want to share with anyone who's interested.

And finally:

• "Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won't. It's that simple... Write from the heart."

I'm still working on this part. It's not easy. Even though I blab on and on in this journal, I'm ultimately a very private person. So it's a challenge to me to open up when I'm writing. But when I do, it always pays off. It's just that risk of exposing too much of myself that keeps me from pushing a bit further, taking those risks. I need to push more.

And that's all I gotta say about that. Later!