I'm thinking of becoming a writer.
"But dude," you might ask, if 'dude' is a term that you favor, "how can you hope to make a career out of the written word when you haven't update your blog in a year and a half? Surely this does not bode well."
That is quite an astute observation! Rest assured, I'm making no plans whatsoever to leave my day job behind and spend my days concocting vast reams of prose. I'm going to stay a programmer just as long as they'll let me, because I'm not an irresponsible idiot. (Although there are persuasive arguments against that... (Um, not the part about me being an irresponsible idiot)) When they stop letting me program for my current company, though---and god knows that's not unheard of, given these uncertain economic times, my company's history in particular, and my experience with my last job---all bets are off (except for the whole "needing money to live" part).
Good lord, just looking at all the parentheticals in that last paragraph makes me cringe; am I really cut out to be a storyteller? In a way, writing's always been my job, since I already spend my days in front of a computer, creating worlds of the words, not-quite-words, numbers, and odd punctuation that constitute my Java code. I'd argue that every program is a story, though usually not a linear one, and often not an interesting one. The world of code has its good writers and its bad writers; I'd like to think that I'm one of the better ones, although I don't think that fact particularly qualifies me to write anything else.
No, I got into writing through NaNoWriMo, and as a result I now have over two hundred thousand words of (mostly rushed, non-publishable) fiction to my name. I recently finished workshopping about a quarter of those words (heavily revised from their original form) with some of my best and most critical friends, and the results of the experience were encouraging enough to make me believe that I can turn the words into something resembling a book. It's a tale of vampires versus zombies, so no, I certainly don't have any lofty artistic pretensions here, but it may actually be something that a good chunk of people will enjoy reading, even given how played-out both those races of creatures have become at this point.
Now the question is how quickly I can muster up the energy to revise the story at least one more time, fix a few awkward elements, and find a way to make it about 50% longer. No big deal, right? Now please excuse me while I go hyperventilate in that corner over there...
"But dude," you might ask, if 'dude' is a term that you favor, "how can you hope to make a career out of the written word when you haven't update your blog in a year and a half? Surely this does not bode well."
That is quite an astute observation! Rest assured, I'm making no plans whatsoever to leave my day job behind and spend my days concocting vast reams of prose. I'm going to stay a programmer just as long as they'll let me, because I'm not an irresponsible idiot. (Although there are persuasive arguments against that... (Um, not the part about me being an irresponsible idiot)) When they stop letting me program for my current company, though---and god knows that's not unheard of, given these uncertain economic times, my company's history in particular, and my experience with my last job---all bets are off (except for the whole "needing money to live" part).
Good lord, just looking at all the parentheticals in that last paragraph makes me cringe; am I really cut out to be a storyteller? In a way, writing's always been my job, since I already spend my days in front of a computer, creating worlds of the words, not-quite-words, numbers, and odd punctuation that constitute my Java code. I'd argue that every program is a story, though usually not a linear one, and often not an interesting one. The world of code has its good writers and its bad writers; I'd like to think that I'm one of the better ones, although I don't think that fact particularly qualifies me to write anything else.
No, I got into writing through NaNoWriMo, and as a result I now have over two hundred thousand words of (mostly rushed, non-publishable) fiction to my name. I recently finished workshopping about a quarter of those words (heavily revised from their original form) with some of my best and most critical friends, and the results of the experience were encouraging enough to make me believe that I can turn the words into something resembling a book. It's a tale of vampires versus zombies, so no, I certainly don't have any lofty artistic pretensions here, but it may actually be something that a good chunk of people will enjoy reading, even given how played-out both those races of creatures have become at this point.
Now the question is how quickly I can muster up the energy to revise the story at least one more time, fix a few awkward elements, and find a way to make it about 50% longer. No big deal, right? Now please excuse me while I go hyperventilate in that corner over there...
