I really liked this post by Felicia Donovan, especially the part where she whips out her bookmark. Just too funny!!!!

Really, I’m a Writer:

I am a REAL writer, a published one, in fact.

I whip THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY bookmark out of my purse at the speed of lightning and flap it like a hundred dollar bill in the person’s face. "See, I even have a bookmark. It’s official."

How often do you practice writing? Daily?

Ok, so how many hours have you put in over the last 10 years?

Below is a heavily edited teaser for Mark Terry’s article on what writing for 10,000 means to your writing.

10,000 Hours:

The distance between “familiarity” and “mastery” is very far indeed.

I immediately thought of the oft-repeated suggestion that in order to become a competent novelist you needed to write 1,000,000 words, which probably does come into that 10,000 hour figure somewhere, maybe.

I once heard somebody suggest that no writing was ultimately wasted, that it was all part of those million words (or 10,000 hours) and I think that–and “ultimately” may be the key word here–this is true.

So, how many hours do you have in?

I posted a comment on the thread about being into my 3rd 10K hour block (when using Mark’s conversion from words to hours). I can’t say I’m competent but I keep on trying.

I’ve not posted much recently part of this is because I’m actually writing. Well, I was until I went on a business trip while sick with the flu and now I’m all wonky in the head, but really I’m working at getting back to writing and not blogging or journaling or any of the other typing that is not work.

Except for this post. 😉

Below is a snippet from a post by author John Scalzi. I just read his book The Android’s Dream – very funny, glad to find a new writer I like. In his post he dissects a very old post by Robin Hobb.

Boy I love this bit… Now get back to writing!

Robin Hobb is Not Entirely Wrong:

On the other hand, one of the reasons I stopped doing the AOL gig was that all the blogging I was doing was taking away from time that I could be writing fiction, and I’m at a point where it makes sense for me to focus there. Also, even having pared back my blogging committments, I have been known to procrastinate quite substantially online rather than, say, getting to my actual work.

No! You say. That can’t possibly be true! Not you! Alas, yes, me. Because it is easier to blog than write. It’s also easier to comment on blogs than write, get into flamewars on SFWA’s private boards than write, answer e-mail than write, and so on. All of that is, in fact, typing that is not work. Do enough of it and it’s very possible that your brain will say well! I’ve certainly done enough work for the day — I think I’ll fall into a vegetative state now and then pretty much shut down for the purposes of active and creative work. And then you’ve lost a day. Trust me on this, my pretties.