DuckiDeva, you rule.

Also, I believe you described three of my ~five ideal activities: drunken freeform writing, caged dancers + Dante Alighieri, and a weekend in Amsterdam. Throw in some orgasms and some Civ 2, and I'm in heaven.

Edit: Oh, and crawfish. Lots and lots of crawfish.

I wrote this exact same essay at least 3 times a year while in grade school. Especially in the lower grades when they give you that little black and white journal to fill up.

I salute you, sir... you bring back (painful) memories

When I did this in high school I wrote "An Ode to Invisible Ink" at the top of the paper and handed it in. I tried my damndest in high school to terrorize my English teachers. Since I hated English classes, fueling my hatred of hippies to this very day.

This however, makes me think I should've paid attention a bit.

Nah screw it, this be a good damn article.

Perhaps you should have threatened to post those pictures you took of your muse. You know, the ones taken in Tijuana that you promised never to show to anyone.

Funny article, Ducks.

Nice.

Perhaps an occasional advice column as filler:

"Dear DuckiDeva,"...

Ex:

My Warrior doesn't pack the wallop that he used to...when we are close What can I do about it?

Signed,

Redfaced in RedRidge

Eh?

That sounded like Billy Madison's discussion on the Industrial Revolution of the early 1900's!

Oh well, there is always next week, maybe the muse will show up.

Maybe the muse has been kidnapped! Maybe a certain other duck in the household is tired of articles about sex that must be about him!

MUHAHAHAHA!

I ...

OK, how about this...

An episodic bodice-ripping Romance Novel, set in the war-torn Realm of Azeroth.....

Starring........

Work with her, people....

..........that's just disturbing Gorilla.

That's offensive!

And with orders over $50, 3-day shipping is free!

Hi. I'm going to be a bit of a contrarian here. DuckiDeva, you shouldn't have published this article at Gamers With Jobs.

I'm not trying to be mean. Writing is hard. Really hard. As you know, from hard experience, inspiration comes on its own schedule. It can't always be forced. What can be forced is the perspiration part of the formula.

There is, however, one thing harder than writing. And that's editing. Paradoxically, editing is more important to writing than writing is. Some editing is easy -- finding spelling errors, typos, and the like. Some is harder, but still straightforward, like ironing out awkward phrasing, and making sure verb tenses agree.

The hardest editing of all, though, is answering the question "should I publish this?"

Everything you publish represents you. Everything you publish presents your face to the world. Things we write contain not just the explicit content we give them, but also the implicit claim "I think this is good enough to show to other people, and belongs in this space."

I have a rule on my weblog, Tea Leaves, which is "no blogging about blogging." While _on some level_ having a window into your struggle to find a topic to write about might be interesting, no one would come to a site called "Gamers With Jobs" because they wanted to read an article about how you couldn't think of anything to write about. Put bluntly, I think this article, in this context, is a cop-out.

And let me be perfectly clear: I'm NOT criticizing you for not having a clever gaming article. That happens to all of us sometimes. I try to publish an article every day, and sometimes it kills me, and I can't always do it. I'm not trying to yell at you, or tell you your writing isn't good, or anything like that.

I'm trying to say, writer to writer, that if you don't have anything to say on a given day it is better for you to face that, accept it, and _not publish anything_ than it is to publish a cop-out.

I know that people are going to think I'm a jerk for saying this. That's understandable. There's a community of posters here who like schmoozing with each other, commenting, exchanging views back and forth. Nothing wrong with that. But I'd be willing to bet that you have many more readers besides the regular crowd here. Many of your readers in fact are probably reading via RSS, where the comments aren't visible at all. The commenters are giving you a pass and saying nice things about your article because they like you, and they know your other body of work, and they want to encourage you to continue. That sort of feedback feels nice -- it's always nice to be supported -- but it's not going to help you develop as a writer. I took the trouble to register and post this comment not to hurt your feelings, but because I thought your _other_ writing was good enough that you deserved to be told when you published something that was sub-par.

Note that nowhere here have I said you shouldn't have _written_ the piece. It's the sort of piece that would be perfectly at home on a personal weblog, or on a livejournal. In my opinion (and of course, you're welcome to think that I should go jump in a lake) it doesn't belong here.

That's what I wanted to say. I hope you receive this criticism in the respectful spirit in which I intend it.

Regards,

peterb
http://www.tgr.com/weblog

Yeah. I spent about a minute looking for an "email author" link, and when I didn't find one made the post (since then I discovered the whole "view profile" / "email author" dance, but since I'm unfamiliar with the forum didn't know it was there.)

But you're right. It would have been better via email.

To me this was a very nice read and gave some insight into the mind of a writer. I found it entertaining and sort of bold, I didn't see it as a cop-out m'self. I could visualize the muse and that to me is good writing. More fun came as I continued to see the muse in the comments, so that to me is good content, other people were seeing the muse in their own way, and in some vivid incarnations. I'm not into schmoozing for schmoozing's sake, but will admit that I've become very interested in the personalities here, and while I may not crave critisicm for my posts (I kinda expect to receive it from time to time based upon my hippiness), I'm absolutely willing accept that criticism with a few - or several, depending - grains of salt. One thing that's kept my interest here is the myriad of topics and the artistic flair of the front page writers and the posters here. I'm not a writer, so I'm commenting from the layperson's point of view. I haven't read a stinker yet. Seen a few though! lol
*edit* can I say lol here? heh heh heh

As a fellow writer, fellow sufferer of the occasional bout of writer's block and fellow member of this community I feel the need to chime in here.

Allow me first to address a concern that many of you have expressed which is that I tacitly avoid serious personal issues by way of making a joke. To be fair, I make a lot of jokes, but never to avoid addressing serious issues.

For example, concerning PeterB's comments I have to honestly say that I "… hang on, I left my drink at the bar "…