"But when it comes to fiction, the writer's only responsibility is to look for the truth inside his own heart. It won't always be the reader's truth, or the critic's truth, but as long as it's the writer's truth - as long as he doesn't truckle, or hold out his or her hat to Fashion - all is well.

I have now written three drafts of a post I'm trying to get just right, and have been fighting with over the course of about a week, and every draft (while making minor improvements) seems so far from where I ultimately want to wind up, that it's discouraging.  Sometimes the words just don't want to come.  Sometimes too many of them come, but they're all the wrong ones, or they're wearing the wrong outfits, or they showed up to the party three days late.  It's a good reminder that writing is a craft, and that you have to work at it.  Of course, I'd rather that the words just showed up, appropriately attired, when and where I want them to, but that's not always the way it works.  So, tonight, because time is running out to actually get something up, you get this instead - a post (whose title is probably longer than the actual post) about how I'm having trouble writing the real post, and I get to go try to coax the words out of wearing sombreros and galoshes for a little while longer.  


*Stephen King, Full Dark, No Stars