William H. DiPaola <76521.1751@compuserve.com> asks:
> Can you at all identify as a writer with what I'm relating to you
> here? I'm also hard on myself where my writing is concerned
> because I constantly find myself in the spot of saying, "Why is
> it that I can't do more than I do?!" Any suggestions?

That's the hard part, the doing. Lots of folks have ideas, but
they flit, or they don't have the discipline to sit down behind a
keyboard and just *do it* for the requisite number of hours per day.
And that's the one thing neither I nor anyone else can help or advise
with. It's what Marcus said: patience, determination, direction and
strength.

And to quote somebody else, sometimes some people mistake a
passion for reading for a desire to write. They're wholly different
impulses.

Writers write. It's what they do. If you're struggling to do
it, maybe it's part of your brain throwing roadblocks in front of you
to try and tell you something. Maybe it's a lack of discipline, or
attention span, or something deeper, a concern about finishing, or some
other area.

I dunno...this is one area where I can't advise worth a damn,
because I've never had this problem. It's Heinlein's (and Ellison's)
rules of writing: you must write, you must finish what you write, you
must put it on the marketplace, and you must keep it on the marketplace
until sold. Sometimes we get caught by the *idea* of a story, but to
actually finish writing it, the *execution* of that idea, takes a great
deal of work, and if the basic idea is already down there, the impetus
to write it, the steam feeding the machine, evaporates quickly. Only a
conscious decision to finish the damned thing can carry you the rest of
the way, a commitment to follow through on the craft of the
STORYTELLING.

It's the difference between two kinds of people who talk about
how they met their respective spouses. One says "at a party," the
other says, "at Bob's part in Toluca Lake, and she was wearing a red
dress, and I couldn't take my eyes off her until I got her alone for a
minute." Idea vs. execution, telling the idea vs. telling the *story*.

jms