Shaunta Grimes, This is Your Fault.

I’ve been reading Medium for years. I became a member midway through 2018 because I pay for stuff I love.

Today I’m writing something.

Oh, don’t misunderstand. I write a lot. As in, a lot (ask my longsuffering wife). I’ve written eleven novels (nine that I’m not actively ashamed of), published three nonfiction books (including the one to the left that came out at Christmas and is blowing the doors off the shipping department), and umpteen short stories about everything from a neurotic wizard to a talking chicken to a solar-powered dragon. I write new fiction every day, minimum 500 words, and usually a good deal more. I’ve been blogging for twelve years.

But not here.

I have stuff on my own blog, on Patreon, on Steemit, pretty much everywhere words can go, some of mine have gone.

But not here.

Why? Well, lotta reasons, actually. I’m such an admirer of the site that I didn’t want to speak until I could provide signal instead of noise. I’m busy. I don’t believe I’ll be writing here every day, not with all the other projects that are paying me, and I know that one of the check-marks for success in this, um, medium, is consistency. I don’t know that I can be consistent here without blowing off commitments elsewhere, which I will not do.

So why now? Why not maintain silence (as if there were anyone wishing I’d write something in the first place)?

It’s Shaunta Grimes’ fault.

She writes well, and often, and I find myself inspired by her stuff nearly every day. She’s also no-nonsense and practical, which in the writing field is the sign of a professional, Steven Pressfield would say (and he’d be right). She’s a devotee of the same writing god I pray to, the one that says, “Write or don’t. I don’t care. But I’m not helping you unless you put words on the page.”

And today is the day to do that. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the accumulated weight of her posts that said, more or less, “Do this, or don’t do it. But don’t keep wondering if you should. The only way to find out is to stop nuffling around and do it.”

You know what it was? I commented on one of Shaunta’s posts, and she responded almost immediately that she was clicking over to my profile. I didn’t want her to find nothing there. I didn’t want her to think that she hadn’t mattered to me, because nothing could be further from the truth. I wanted her to see that I wrote something, even if it’s just…this.

No, I have no deep wisdom here. No stab of insight. Nothing that one chisels on stone. I just have words. Now, today, I have some words here.

Tomorrow, we’ll see about some more.