I don’t write for a living, although I’d love to. I do it mostly for myself, since there are stories that I’d like to tell, or I need to get some pure hatred tapped out of my veins, or I feel like talking and there isn’t anyone around. So it comes down to the main reason I write: for fun.

Sometimes, though, man. Writing can be a real bitch.

Writing is like trying to build a house with a pile of wood, some nails, a hammer, and your own skill and talent. There are days I feel confident and relaxed, and I can nail some boards together to form a relatively straight wall. Other days, you find your hammer has been replaced with one of those novelty squeaky hammers, and every nail is the size of a harpoon, and the wood turns out to be made of goddamn concrete. You pound and pound and pound and you end up going absolutely nowhere.

Then there are the other days. On those days you are just going along, and the next thing you know, you’ve got the Hammer of the fucking Gods in your hands.

Those are the days I live for. Those are the days that make all the days of shit and frustration and anger seem worthwhile. It’s one of the greatest feelings in the world. There is absolutely nothing like it.

Today, man, I found myself holding the Hammer of Thor. I didn’t ask questions. I just smashed the ever-loving shit out of everything in front of me. It was awesome. Maybe no one on earth is gonna like it, and that’s OK by me. I loved it. I still do. I had tears of fucking joy in my eyes today while I wrote something. That – that was a pretty good fucking feeling.

The Storm of Northreach, at this point, is one awful-looking house. It’s ramshackle, meandering, ugly, mismatched, and patchworked all to hell. But there are parts of it that work. There are a couple of rooms were the walls meet the ceiling, and the angles are pure Euclidean. Those are the rooms I’ll keep through edits. The rest… well, there’ll be a little remodeling, some serious spackle, and maybe a few plants to cover a few bad spots. I can live with that. I’m getting really close to having a finished house. That makes it all worthwhile.

So today I was doing my normal lunchtime workout. I spend this time exercising, but I also spend a lot of it thinking about writing and other stuff. Today, sometime halfway through my whey protein shake, an idea struck me. See, I’ve been working on the sequel to The Curse of Troius for a really long fucking time. Too long. WAYYYYY too long. It’s turned into this 1800-pound cackling imp that rides around on my back waiting for people to ask me how my writing’s going so it can grab my earlobes and thrash around wailing and howling with maniacal laughter only I can hear while I try to come up with an articulate answer besides IT’S GOING REALLY REALLY SHITTY RIGHT NOW AND IF YOU’LL EXCUSE ME I’M GOING TO POP OFF AND EAT A GALLON OF DISHWASHING LIQUID.

So anyway, an idea came to me today, as I said. I used the idea once before, last year when I wanted to be able to do 100 pushups in a row. I put it out to my friends that if I couldn’t do those 100 pushups by a certain date, I would do something painful (well, mentally painful; I’m not actually masochistic). With that incentive in mind, I was able to accomplish my goal. So, in the spirit of that successful venture, I am today announcing my new plan:

15k in 15 Day.

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