Dan

Among the creators that I admire, drifting gallantly in that hallowed constellation, is Kris Straub, creator of the webcomics Starslip, chainsawsuit, and F Chords (on hiatus).

Those are all well and good, but what really had me excited was his horror microfiction community site, Ichor Falls. In fact, I took an idea I’d had involving ears and the crud therein and wrote it up in such a way that it would fit into the site’s universe… only to find that the “Submit a Story” link was hopelessly broken. And now the site’s gone entirely, replaced by an “Account Suspended” message.

Frustrating! Is this a result of the same issue that took down webcomics.com?

Anyway, in the meantime my story will have to languish on DeviantArt (where, as the work of a deviant, it surely belongs). I hope Kris will reinvest in Ichor Falls soon; meanwhile, I support the guy and his desire to bust out hilarious comics all the time instead of web design or some other, less-fulfilling job. So read his comics, and then buy them.

Update: Ichor Falls is back online, but I still can’t submit stories. Perhaps someday “Earwax” will have a proper home (other than lodged in your ear canal, I mean).

In his article Fire and Motion, Joel Spolsky talks about how all you need is to get a little more done every day. Time is on your side, if you just keep improving bit by bit. He’s talking about the game of inches in terms of slowly growing a software company, and I’m interested in it in terms of slowly growing into a writer.

It’s tough to keep writing. Now that I’ve been doing it a little more, I feel like the output is a little rushed and amateurish. That makes sense though, given that I’m an amateur. What matters is I’m writing at all. It’s not like I used to write better: it’s that I wouldn’t write, and would just spend a lot of time thinking about it. In my head everything would come together beautifully, but like the artist who struggles to translate what’s in his imagination onto the page, the raw act of writing is still unformed. And the only way to form it is to just keep practicing. Just keep writing at least a little, every day, all the time. Work on improving. But don’t stop just because it’s not awesome yet.

When I used to play the guitar, I loved the idea of being an awesome guitar player. But I was never that good when I practiced, so I didn’t practice. So I never played the guitar. When what I should have been doing was playing all the time, just a little. And keep getting better every day, just a little.

Well, writing means a lot more to me than playing the guitar. Enough so that I am willing to put up with not being as good as I want to be, and just embrace the struggle of getting there, story by story. Inch by inch.