"Write What You Know" is bullshit.

I have no idea why I was thinking about the old saying "write what you know" tonight, but I was. And now you have to sit through a rant on why that's about the worst piece of advice anyone can give you. If you're lucky, though, I might put a picture of something at the end. As a reward.

If you're a writer, I very much doubt your life experiences are actually very interesting. I take this from my own life (or, "what I know"), so your mileage may vary -- but even if you've led a fascinating life full of adventure and intrigue, those experiences are probably good for one novel at most. If you're planning to just write the one book, good on you -- you now have my permission to write what you know.

The rest of us have to make shit up. It's quite a bit more fun, and the stories are generally better than thinly disguised retellings of our own mundane existences. I think the phrase should be rearranged to read "know what you write," as that's a more helpful piece of advice.

Come up with your story idea, then research the hell out of it. Want to write murder mystery with a cop as the main character? Talk to some cops and get a good idea of how their world works. Want to pen a novel about a girl's cheerleading team (if so, what the hell are you doing here)? Go hang with the cheerleaders, but be careful to avoid arrest on charges of corrupting a minor, stalking, or anything similar. Perhaps talk to former cheerleaders -- that'd be safer.

In this day and age, you can get a good feel for almost anything by using the good ol' Internet (of course, this assumes you're bright enough to write a book in the first place -- there's a lot of crap out there, and you'll have to separate the good info from the obvious bullshit). So write whatever you want -- but make sure to do your homework and know what you're talking about.

And now, a picture of the Tampa Scientology Center, for no reason other than it was on my hard drive. I think I took it when I was wandering around downtown Tampa looking for illegal cigars.



(I never said it would be an interesting picture.)

Fleah.

So, when I woke up from my afternoon nap today (yes, I nap in the afternoons. I also enjoy the early-bird special at restaurant. What up.), my stomach was overproducing acid for no reason. I felt like absolute hell for about an hour until it calmed down. I've noticed that, as I keep cutting my caffeine and nicotine intakes, old health problems are starting to rear their ugly heads.

I was a pretty sickly kid, so I'm hoping that's not the case.

Anywho, finally catching up on Lost. I didn't remember when I stopped watching it, so I started the entire series over from the beginning the other day. I'm just getting into season 5 (it helps when one doesn't sleep). It's starting to get pretty good again.

Yep, that's all I've got tonight. Bitching about feeling mildly sick and talking about TV most of you have already seen. I should go to bed.

Adventures in Government Contracting

My job is actually exciting some days. I get to look at next-level military and government tech. I'm always learning something.

Today is not one of those days, though. I'm uninstalling the old versions of Rational software and installing the slightly newer versions. It's probably going to take most of the day.

As a side note: I hate you, Rational.

What I should be doing. . .

I should be writing today. I should be catching up on day-job work. I should be doing edits of the last novel and outlining the next two or three.

There's plenty of stuff I should be doing, so why do I just feel like sitting around, being lazy with the dogs, and catching up on Lost? I know I'm inherently lazy by nature, but come on. This is a little ridiculous. I haven't even bothered to put pants on yet.

For example -- I know I should go clean the kitchen, yet I'd much rather waste time by posting this blog entry. I paid some bills this morning, and the little devil on my shoulder is trying to convince me that doing so was enough heavy lifting for a Saturday.

I suppose I'll just be lazy until I get hungry -- at least then I'll have to put on some pants and go obtain food. Or, at least, I hope I'll put on some pants. Just in case I don't, let me apologize to the Raleigh, NC area in advance.

Well, that's just nutty.

I just did a word count on 47 Echo (that's the working title for Tweet_Book II: Electric Boogaloo), and it's at 31,750. I started this one in late June, and I've been holding myself to at least 1,000 words a night for the past week or so.

It's a lot of work, really. You look at the number -- 1,000 words -- and it doesn't look like much. In college, I used to be able to sneeze out a thousand-word paper in about fifteen, twenty minutes -- but then, it was mostly bullshit. (That's why I have a degree in Journalism, which is kind of like graduating in the middle of your class at Hamburger University.) Writing 1,000 words of story every night, without fail, is a bit of a haul. Sometimes, on the last book (when I only held myself to 500 words a night), I'd struggle to hit my word count. This book's been no different -- I've just been getting even less sleep.

So why would I do something like this? If you've seen a lot of the other Twitter novels that are in progress, you'll kind of get what I'm about to say -- because I think I owe it to the people who are reading mine to keep the story going at a reasonably constant pace. A lot of the people who are writing books on Twitter either update so infrequently that you're pulled out of the story, or give up a couple hundred tweets in and leave whatever readers they have hanging.

I don't want to do that. If you're going to give me some of your valuable time, I'm going to do my best to keep you entertained and updated on the story. I write for myself, of course, but I also like to write for my audience. While I'm not naive enough to think that all 2400 people who follow tweet_book are actively reading, I figure at least some of them are -- and I'd hate to let them down.

That's why I don't take nights off (except Sunday this time around), even when I'm sick, upset, don't feel like writing, whatever. The readers and I have a pact -- I'll keep writing if you keep reading. Every scheduled update is going to happen, regardless of what's going on in my life at the time.

Yep. I say it a lot, but it's true -- I probably need more hobbies.

I'm a bit surprised it's taken me so long to do this.

First off -- if you're joining me from Tweet_Book (or The Twitter Novel Project), welcome! I'll most likely talk about that from time to time, as it's a big part of my life at the moment. . . but what I'd like to talk about now are my dogs. My two lazy, lazy dogs.



Yep. That's them. Big one with the glowing eyes is Edie (that's not a photographic effect, by the way -- her eyes just do that, and we've never figured out why), the small one looking like a dead bug is Sadie. This is how you'll normally find them when I'm home. Once, I got to sit on the couch. That doesn't happen anymore.

All right. I've been working from home most of today (government stuff), so I'll get back to that for the moment -- I just hate having a blog with no postings, so you got a pointless one instead.