See, the fog hides what you already know is there, but does it hide more?  I feel a small rush whenever I’m driving and can’t see more than a hundred feet ahead of my car.  I don’t expect anything to be out there, but I almost hope there is: that some new discovery awaits.  When I see the lead lines to the towers disappear into nothing, or the trees in the distance only as ghostly specters, it’s inspiring.

At the same time, it can be frightening.  Stephen King made an entire book about menacing (and lethally obscuring) fog.  In the movie The Last Samurai, there is an entire track of the score called “Specters in the Fog” that belies the fear of unseen enemies.

So, yeah, I love fog, even when it makes me waste my entire day because the ferry isn’t running.  I could stare off into that gentle glowing white nothing for hours.  In fact, today, I had that exact opportunity.  Thus, this post.  And now you know.

Not a long blog (as I said, I lack the topic right now), but still, a relay of comment that I heard from the good Mr. Brandon Sanderson (most recently, at least, I’ve heard it from many others too).  That is to say, writing is not all peaches and cream.  Nor is it some inspired labor of pounding away at it as The Moonlight Sonata drones on the background and you puff a clove.  No, it can be a boring chore, even when you love it.  Sometimes you just aren’t feeling like writing at all, but it is very easy to let that turn into weeks of inactivity.  So, here are some tips and tricks I have found for writing.

a) Just do it.  Make yourself sit up, stiff upper lip style, and start typing.  One word leads to two, and two to twenty, and twenty to lots more.  Once you get the jive going, it often really helps.  Momentum and all that.

b) Do something creative elsewise.  A novelist can write scripts for a TV show or vice versa.  Or perhaps try drawing, or even (gasp) do some editing!

c) Schedule it in. Actually have it on the list of chores with a time-block.  Also make sure you realistically have it set aside in a place you won’t easily run over it without remembering.

I’m sure there are more (feel free you share your tricks). But heck, my tricks all just worked with the creation of this blog (which I was at first so weary at the thought of doing tonight when I remembered I nearly did a “dead” day, for shame!).  So, write, write, write! Oh, and if I’ve said this before in some other blog, bleh.  I said it again!

Now then, why do I hate being called smart?  Well, honestly, I don’t think I am.  Yes, I do well on standardized tests.  Yes I am a whiz with computers, and yes I have a huge vocabulary.  Yes, I am even socially capable in most situations.  But, in my opinion, that does not make me “so smart.”  Heck, if I had a Nobel Prize in Physics, had cured cancer, and founds the Higgs Bosun under my bed, I would not consider myself “so smart”.

See, in my opinion, I am not smarter than anyone else.  Conversely, I don’t think anyone else is really all that smarter than me.  Yes, there are varying levels.  If birth defects can completely mentally cripple people, then I am sure regular variation grants for levels of raw mental capability, but in my mind, it’s a very steep bell curve, and raw potential doesn’t take you near as far as effort and gumption do.

So, yeah, when someone calls attention to a perceived difference in my mental prowess verse their own, I feel bad.  I feel like I have been unjustly placed above them in some way, and that bothers me.  It especially bothers me since usually after such an exclamation, the person stops talking to me like I’m just some other person and as if they’ve just met Einstein.

All I want to do is drink a beer and talk.  Is that so much to ask?  Sorry for this more LJ-type post instead of my normal writing type bloggery, but, well, my website, my rules.  Deal.  I just needed to vent from my soapbox with a blind fold on.  I feel better.  Hopefully will have a steam-punk short ready for all y’all on Monday, then a special Birthday Edition blog Tuesday.

Well, first and foremost, I’ll admit, I’m blogging because it’s the hip thing to do, especially when you have your own website layout and URL to throw it on.  Second, it is something to fill up the site between posting the short fiction, which was really what the site was about from the get go.  It also fleshes out my web presence, which apparently is a big thing for writers to do now-a-days.

But even then, I could blog about anything, be it baseball or gardening.  No reason I have to hammer at the old “what is it to write” stuff.  I mean, I hardly doubt I have said a single original thing in this blog, even to me.  A lot of the topics I’ve thus covered were things I already kind of knew or felt, and I’ve just been blogging to blog.  Part of the reason for that, though, is the snail’s pace that writing and publishing are.  I mean, if I was blogging about my quest to become a published author, I would put up a post every couple months along the lines of “Got a rejection” or “sent out another manuscript.”  I feel like I should post up more than that, and something at least marginally more entertaining to both you the reader and myself.

Thus, meta-writing.  Do I even really care if anyone is reading this blog?  Not overly, truth told.  I mean, if an editor reads it and likes it, woo!  But on the average, this, I am coming to feel, is more for me.  Not a diary, per se, but a place to just air the laundry.  The Internet is the world’s soapbox, so I’m taking my turn, and all that.

Anyway, Friday’s blog is going to be about what a book signing/launch party are like.  Oddly, I’ve never really attended one for SFF that was just that.  Anytime I see an author signing books is usually at a convention or some such.  So, new experience for me!  Yay!  See “all y’all” then.

RichardFife.com is my corner of the Internet where I can both blog about whatever, but with a general focus on life through a lens of writing, and also where I can self web-publish some short fiction.

Now, here is the dilemma I face is that if I web-publish a short story, I basically say “there is a slim to nil chance I will ever be paid for this.” Well, yeah, I do. And while I am still going to write some short fiction that is going to be sent out on the rat race, I am going to be using this website as a means to force myself into the “craftsmanship” of writing. That is to say, to get into the habit of meeting writing deadlines since I have yet to actually face them.

So yeah, I will post a new short fiction story of some sort the first day of every month (tentative schedule). I will also blog at least twice a week in an effort to force myself to meta-write. Yes, write about writing. See, that helps too, ne? Makes you think about the structure and process. Good times, good time.

So, I have a story up already over on the Short Fiction page, and the next one will be posted on October 1st (even though I’ll still be recovering from Dragon*Con). I figure if you are going to start facing deadlines, might as well try a hard start then let it smooth out after.

So, that’s about it for introductions. Welcome to RichardFife.com!

*editorial note: Yes, we might not quite be up at RichardFife.com yet, but it is forth coming, honest! We just had some issues with the first registar/host we selected, so we are moving to a new one.