Well, there's an interesting word for it now

Much of the writing stuff I talk about here is about submitting and being rejected. I also get to champion my friends when they get published because, 1) it's a lonely job and 2) it's really frickin' great they're getting published. While publishing slots (those open slots for stories and novels, outside the realm of scams and self publishing) can be considered a zero-sum game, and the submission process can be brutal, so far I've only found myself twice in the "we're both in the same slush pile" situation, and in each I found myself rooting for my friends as much as I was rooting for myself. Really, I want us all to be published and be able to quit our day jobs to pursue writing fiction full-time, I really do.

In my day job, I'm a bit more cut-throat. Although, I support my co-workers, I'm very cut-throat against the competition. Right now I am coming to the conclusion that I way, Way, Way overworked when I was out in studio. Seriously, fellow graphic designers, learn the damn trade and think about what your doing. Having the printer "just fix it so it works" is one way to piss your client's money away. If I ever submitted a job to a printer that way most of my jobs come in, I would have died of embarrassment.

Well, this isn't the post I planned to write. So I need to get back to that.

In this downtime I've been having, which isn't writer's block but lack of time and energy (mental and physical) I've been working on my writing process. And I've come to one major conclusion:

Lighten up, Francis.

Yeah, I've been too uptight lately as I approach the novel. I've been psyching myself out about it, reducing my energy. So real soon now I'm going to be talking more about the process and the writing. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again. Oh, wait, that's a different movie.

But here's the post I really meant to make. The good people over at Endicott Studios just did a post about those projects that fail and that we, as writers (ha! yes I include myself) have become very process oriented and blather endlessly about it. And this has generated a new term, "process-porn." I think they're dissing it. Tough. I'm going to commit it anyway. Anyway, they also link to this article about the "failure to launch" stories of famous authors. This also related to the "Juvenalia" panel at Confusion, which was excellent, and I think many cons with writer's tracks should have such a panel.

Jeff VanderMeer points to this article at ClarkesWorld which is saying some of the same things, but I'm still a little too tired to tease it all out.

So there's the weekend roundup, mish-mash of thoughts. In my attempts to catch up with the lurker-fu, there have been excellent "process porn" posts out there. If I get a chance I'll try and round them up.