“I’m not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he’s not in the mood and doesn’t feel the juice. I don’t think discipline equals creativity.” ~ BRET EASTON ELLIS

The sentiment above has always been my mantra, but I’ll get to that in a moment. I thought it was high time that I get to an explanation of why your favorite writing site is operated by a person who doesn’t write. Well, I have often spoken of how a progressive teacher sparked my love for writing at the age of ten, and I owe her a great debt for so doing, but even back then a teacher would say, “You write now,” and depending on whether I was “feeling the juice,” it could be great or garbage.

It has ever been the same. In the probably half a century that I’ve been writing seriously, that is, with the thought that I might be published, I have heard writer after successful writer say that you have to set aside a time every day to write, undisturbed, whatever presents itself to your creative mind. I guess maybe they were right, as I never achieved any success beyond garnering a handful of fans for my self-published works.

Maybe I should blame that fifth-grade teacher for making me feel like a child-prodigy who was earmarked for greatness, but that wouldn’t be right. She didn’t make me feel anything; I reached that conclusion on my own. During the year since I published my final Vella story, I’ve made a number of conflicting statements, so I’m here today to bring everyone up to date on where I am in the process.

I began my first blog in 2011, Jack’s Hideout. It was a mishmash of anything that took my fancy, book and movie reviews, fun things the fam had done together, just odds and ends, you know? It still exists today, though it’s no longer open to the public. I can’t bring myself to delete it, as it was my first contact with the wide world of the internet. Nostalgia, I guess. In 2013 I self-published Beyond the Rails and began to talk about it on my blog. People “in the know” at the time, proto-influencers, I suppose, were talking about how blogs were dead, and would soon be replaced by podcasts and Twitter. But a blog was all I knew how to run, so I kept running it. Now the self-appointed gurus are saying that Twitter — sorry, X — is being replaced by Instagram and Snap-Chat, and probably something newer by the time this post goes up. But I’ve run half a dozen blogs in the interim, including this one, and blogs are still doing fine.

Me, not so much. I published my last Vella around Halloween of 2022. On November 11^th, flush with success and expecting more to come faster than I could write it down, I started this blog. Alas, I haven’t felt the juice since. I have sat down to blank pages. I’ve bought a book that was supposed to spark an interest I thought I felt in the private eye genre. I’ve drawn cards from my StoryMatic card deck. Heck, I’ve even tried discipline, sitting down mornings and some evenings to by God write. Nothin’.

I’ve had many hobbies over during my life. I’ve built scale models, I’ve been a table-top wargamer, I’ve explored the SoCal deserts from behind the wheel of several off-roaders. Each of them has faded away, becoming less interesting over a period of weeks or months, until I eventually realized that “Hey, I don’t do that anymore.” That’s now happening with writing. As I said in that paragraph above, I find no pleasure in it any longer. I sit down to do it and all I can think about is what I’d rather be doing, and it isn’t just playing Fallout 4 or XCom; sure, those are expected. No, I find that, given the choice, I’d rather wash dishes or weed out the garden. That isn’t a choice I sat down and made after careful deliberation. That’s just the way it is.

But I’ll never quit trying to tell that elusive tale. I’m looking at short stories now, novellas at the longest, and am currently being led along a path of crime. I’m never far from my notebook (I’m very old-school), and a surprising amount of background material is accumulating there; should the juice ever return, I’ll have plenty to work with.

But I’m not going to worry about that. I’m going to ignore the crotchety old git that is my muse, and if he wants to come back and see why I’ve stopped chasing him, that’s his choice. Right now, my writing talents, such as they are, are going into this site, this blog, which despite all the premature announcements, isn’t dead yet. As you might imagine, in 66 years of pursuing what has ended up to me as a very time-consuming but enjoyable hobby, I’ve learned a few things, and I’m going to take my turn on the blog here to share some of them. Maybe they’ll help you. Maybe they’ll amuse you. Maybe they’ll turn that switch that will make you the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. In between, I’ll share some of the many stories I’ve written over the years that deserve to see the light of day. I ask that you take it for what it is and maybe even humor an old burnout with a comment now and then. It’s what makes all this worthwhile!