Reading: New Yorker
Music: Utopia
TV/Movie: Final Fantasy X
Link o' the Day: Neil Gaiman's Blog

Rhode Island--Providence in particular--is a funny little state. You can live here for nearly two decades and not know your neighbors. Providence also has a number of writers in the area. Among these is Paul DiFilippo--a fairly successful short story writer and novelist who also writes book reviews for Asimovs, Scifi.com, and other forums. Now he and I have lived in the same city since I moved here in 1985 and I never met him in person until yesterday. Heck, I’d only known him online for perhaps six months. How sick is that?

I won a couple of old Judith Merrill anthologies off him from a contest he ran on a mailing list we’re both on, and instead of having him mail it to me, I said, “Why don’t I just swing by at some point?” We arranged a time, and I got to meet his lovely wife, his two cats, his dog, and two floors crammed with books. I even saw a couple of books I’d typeset for Bearmanor. We talked shop mostly and had a nice time. He’s working on a project with an old friend of mine, Chris Reilly, who I don’t see often enough either. I saw the birthplace of the various stories and essays of his that I’ve enjoyed over the years, and discovered that his writing career twenty years ago isn’t too different from mine write now.

Paul’s a good guy, a great writer, and I hope we get the opportunity to see each other more often. Providence be damned.

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The temptation to compare one’s success in writing with another is strong at times. Strong... and distracting. I know enough about the careers of a wide range of writers to know that there isn’t any one set path to success--not several set paths. All paths are ones own. Sure, there are some givens such as drive, discipline, ability, and the nerve to submit stories to editors. Any writer who doesn’t have any of the above is not going to get anywhere at all. But does the writer who produces 3,000 words of prose a day beat out the one who does 500? The old questions rear their heads, “yeah, but how much of that 3,000 have you sold?” or “Are 3,000 words of crap better than 500 words of craft?” (This assumes that the 500-word/day writer has ability.)

I know a couple of anime fanfic writers whose work is freakin’ brilliant, but who I will never see published in any conventional sense. They sure have the drive, discipline, and ability, but they never go beyond that fairly anonymous, secure internet-based world of anime fanfics. I’m sure these people can create original characters and original worlds--but why don’t they? (One answer: They don’t want to.)

In any case, sometimes I get myself down comparing my meager successes to those of other writers who started around the same time I did. But then I remember that there are no real rules to this game. Every writer is different. Every career is different. Some prolific writers never make it beyond the semipros. Some writers have barely a dozen stories to their name, but are all award-winning classics.

It’s a matter of perspective.

Besides, most of the time I have such a full opinion of myself that I’m impervious to long bouts of self-doubt. I rule.

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And to throw salt on any wounds I may have opened among my fellow writers with the previous topic here, I offer you Neil Gaiman’s blog--yes, the blog of a writer with a career most of us would sell our mothers for.

Enjoy!