This cold/sinus/allergy thing that’s been sneaking its way into my head has finally arrived, triggering a slight fibro flare and a pretty good ear infection to boot. That cut my writing time short tonight and ended with me foggy enough that I left the drug store with cough medicine, not the cough and cold I meant to pick up.

Project: Tantric sex/magic story, now with more poly love, a plump dominatrix, and a Chicago swinger’s club.

New words written: 408

Reason for stopping: Out of spoons and Kleenex

Thought for today: Cheryl Morgan spent last evening at a reading by William Gibson and the follow-up Q&A. It’s a good summary of the session with Gibson and you should read it in its entirety. One thing stood out to me, personally:

Much of the questioning concerned Gibson’s writing career and his development as a writer. He talked honestly about how young men tend to write books that feature things like zombie plagues and post-apocalyptic wastelands because they lack the experience of life to write well about people.

This was a discussion had at Clarion more than a few times, about age and experience. I envy those who discover and embrace their talents when they’re younger. It’s easy to lament coming into your own as a writer later in life and feeling like you have wasted time and opportunity.

We write in a vacuum but we shouldn’t live inside one, too. To me, writing is about examining the human condition and you need to experience it in order to do so. I may not have spent my formative adult years writing like I’d once dreamed but I have no regrets for that anymore. What I’m left with is are tools far more valuable to me. Wisdom, maybe. Experience, certainly. Depth of character, hopefully. All things, eventually, that will be reflected in my work.