"One Month Later..." by Troy H. Cheek on Apr 30, 2004

Back on April 1, 2004, I made a April Fool Resolution. I resolved that I would post an article to this column every week day of this month. I'm still not exactly sure why I'd do that.

It's not like I have loads of adoring fans constantly clamoring for fresh articles. Judging from my fan mail, nobody reads this website frequently. Instead, they stumble across it, read a bunch of articles in a bunch, get horribly offended, write me hate mail, and promise me that they'll never visit again.

I think part of the reason is that I'm not getting paid to do it. Nothing kills my interest in a subject faster than making it part of my job description. As long as it's a hobby, though, I work at it all hours of day and night. I thought that if I made this resolution, I could just maybe see if I could handle a job writing a daily column, or if the pressure would make me hate the very idea.

So far, I don't hate it.

Also, I decided to walk a mile in someone's shoes. Several someones, actually. I get tired of picking up a newspaper or a magazine and find that someone who is actually paid to write a daily or weekly or even monthly column somehow managed not to do so in time for this issue. I read and think something sounds familiar and then down at the bottom it says "This article was originally published in our January 14 edition. Joe Writer is on vacation this week and will return on the 27th."

If not that, well, he's sick. Or he had other obligations to meet. The dog ate his typewriter. Or something. But no problem. We'll just throw something else in here. A repeat. Maybe the editor's nephew would like to write about marching band practice. Whatever.

There are some class acts out there. Peter David, I will mention you by name. I've read articles by him for years in various publications and never saw a repeat except when he was remembering an anniversary or the like. I've never seen the publication date of a novel he was writing pushed back because he was on vacation. I've never seen a comic book he was scripting be late because he was sick. And the one time I remember him having to meet other obligations, he cut a deal with his publisher (at a loss, I have no doubt) so that the other work could be published in the place of his regular column.

In other words, Peter David is who I like the delude myself into thinking that I could emulate should I ever dig up the courage to quit my day job and work full-time at writing.

Unlike other people, who apparently miss their deadlines because their cats hide their car keys. Hey, buddy, I changed out an alternator on the side of the road in 20F weather just so I could make it to work on time. If you take a job, you agree to do it.

90% of success, Woody Allen once said, is showing up.

Sure, I sometimes go days or even weeks without writing anything new, or even updating my website with information I've had laying around for months, but I work for a living. And I don't work as a writer. This is a hobby. This is something I do in my spare time. This is something I do when I'm not working. My job, whether I like it or not on a particular day, is my job and I do it.

If my job was a writer, I'd expect to write. Based on this month, I think I could do it. I've still got a few more stories to tell, and I still have tons of old stories that I could re-publish in this new format. New stuff happens to me all the time, too. And then there's my actual fiction, science or otherwise, instead of these semi-biographical junkets into the past.

That's quantity, I guess. Another reason I wanted to write this month was to see what kind of quality I could produce. I see people what people who are paid to write produce and often think that I could do so much better. It's not so much that people have writing jobs because they're so good at it. I think it has more to do with how hard they worked to get the point where such a job made available to them. I don't have the gumption to save up six month's worth of living expenses, quit my job, write every day, and see if, at the end of the six months, I'm selling enough of what I write to live off of.

Someone who did do all that deserves his writing job, even if I can write rings around him. Or at least turn in my articles on time.

I've re-read my articles from this month, read some reader mail, and have reached the conclusion that, if I'm willing to give up my evening television and risk permanent damage to my relationship by ignoring my girlfriend, I can produce acceptable output.

Churning out an article a day has changed the way I look at updating this website, mind you. I still don't like automated web site management packages and all the web page editors I've tried take too much creative control away. However, I did manage to create my own management software, if only a hacked-together GFA BASIC program to keep track of what files I've changed. Once I figured out what I always end up putting in every webpage anyway, it was fairly easy to come up with a template I could save for future use. I've used this as a justification to update the entire Cheek.Org site, which I'll no doubt use as justification on some future date for not writing any original articles for a while.

You wish!

Copyright 2004 by Troy H. Cheek. Reprint with prior written permission only. Comments and questions to $mail:theview$