I AM a writer, dammit!

I am.
I am, I am, I am.

If I sound petulant, it's because I'm tired of arguing with myself. On one level, yes. I am a writer. It's what I get paid to do. It's in my job description. It's my day job's raison d'etre if you want to get all fancy and French about it.

But on one level, I'm not. On that level, I'm a a procrastinator. And a perfectionist. And a self-promotion artist. Who, to be honest, should spend more time writing and less time self-promoting. And every time I whine about not having enough time, I think about Stephen King banging out Carrie on a typewriter on his motherfucking lap, sitting between the washer and the dryer with a couple of kids and a wife outside the door waiting for him.

So. I've fallen short where it hurts the most. With my own writing. And the most success I've had to date focusing and actually getting shit done has been during Nanowrimo. Which falls during November. Until, that is, I saw that holy crap! There's a summer camp! There are TWO summer camps. And damn it, I'm doing both of them. There. It's in writing.

The poems. The short stories. The novels. The children's books. The sketch comedy. The screenplays. For the love of god, something is going to get polished and finished and submitted.

And here is my inspiration: From J. Robert Lennon's March 24, 2013 review of Jamie Quatro's I Want to Show You More--

"A truly excellent writer, though, pursues her obsessions and allows them to dictate what form her work will take. That sounds simple, but in fact it is hard for any writer to recognize what those obsessions are, to face them squarely when they are frightening or puzzling, and to shape them into persuasive works of art. That is why we so admire what George Saunders is doing now, or what Alice Munro has been doing for the last few decades: They have been living with their obsessions for a long time and have figured out how to give them form."

And for just a little more to shoot for:
"Jamie Quatro's "I Want to Show You More" is an obsessive first collection that feels like a fifth or sixth. It is a dogged, brutally thoughtful piece of work, and gives us a writer of great originality and apparent artistic maturity who seems to have come out of nowhere...it is a strange, thrilling and disarmingly honest piece of work."

Coming soon. Ready or not.