Welcome

"If you stare into the blank page too long, the blank page will stare into you."

Just my own adaptation of the quote from Nietzsche about staring into the abyss.  Things around here will certainly NOT rate that high on the nihilism meter, so I apologize for the faulty first impression.  Allow me to explain.  That quote from good old Freddy N. has been translated into English in a  number of different ways, but is usually thought to mean something along the lines of "be careful that you do not become what you are fighting against."

Writers wage daily a battle of creation against chaos, order versus entropy, and a struggle to make something laudable out of nothing more than a few synapses firing.  This struggle represents for many a stab at something close to immortality in a fleeting, ephemeral world.  No one should doubt its status as a very human impulse.  Perhaps, if the reader will forgive the narcissism, the most human impulse.

The whole idea of writing probably started with the first voluntary activity ever taken up by humanity: sitting around the fire at night telling stories.  (I would contend that earlier activities, such as breathing, eating, drinking, hunting, mating, and fighting, are all of an involuntary nature.)  Writing is what I do.  It is what I would be doing even if I didn't get paid to do it.  And I usually haven't.

So, I will use this forum for assorted musings about laying words down, whether it be on a computer screen or on a piece of a dead tree.  Tips, reviews, predictions, rants: all of those and more will grace this space.  But fair warning: if you read them, you might actually learn something.