Happy Happy Gus

Gus is a happy betta this morning. Gus has new clean water in a clean bowl. Gus is wagging his fins and tail happily. Gus even smiles at me when he comes up for air. I feel like a good little boy for figuring out what Gus needed before told me by turning upside down.

Today I started revising one of my short stories. Bit of a tough slog, that, but I got the first couple of pages down, and that's a start. My instinct is that I've only just begun to climb this hill of fiction writing, though I've done it off and on, mostly off, for close to ... uh, I'd rather not say how many years. I remember a similar slog when learning to play an instrument. It was effortless to hear the music in my head, I just needed years of study and practice to figure out how to make it come out of my hands as well. And I have ideas for stories, even novels. The trick is to discover the way to make it come out on paper in ways that will grip a reader and make them not want to let go even when it ends.

All of this is on my mind because I spent much of this afternoon reading advice from writers and editors and publishers and such about how to write well and market the result. Ah, I always did like Kindergarten. I always preferred to stand at the bottom of the slide and see if I could climb up its slick surface. Way too easy to just climb the stairs in back and slide down, fer cryin' out loud.

For those doublessly not interested, the second exercise paragraph will have to wait until I convert it from open source to Microsoft's proprietary doc format, which I may never do now, as I'm absurdly, irrationally mad at Microsoft for not supporting Open Office docs natively when you open Word. C'mon Redmond. You guys should be way better than that.