Strange. I haven’t written anything since last Wednesday or Thursday. Now that it’s time to get some stuff ready for the morning, I find that I don’t have it in me. My writing muscles won’t flex. They’ve atrophied. It’s great to take time off, but I find that this is sometimes the result — I forget how to write.

The solution? I spend an hour or two “freewriting”, simply jotting whatever is on the top of my head. Like this. Most of what I produce during this time will be unusable, but that’s okay. The point is to get the writing muscles working again.

The real trouble tonight, however, is I’d really rather be watching a movie. Turns out we don’t own Raiders of the Lost Ark — which is what I’m craving — so I guess I’ll get back to work instead.

It feels so good to finally break through a barrier. Or two.

The last week has been awful. I haven’t been able to write. I sit and stare at the computer screen, but nothing comes. “I’ve lost it,” I think. “I’m doomed.”

I try to find other things to occupy my time, but all I can think about is that I cannot write. I had 4-1/2 days during which nothing came. It was like pulling teeth to get even a basic weblog entry done.

“There’s a lot of fluff around here late,” one Get Rich Slowly commenter noted. No kidding. Believe me, I know it.

Yesterday afternoon, I could feel things changing. I had lunch with Michael Hampton, and the conversation jarred something loose. It removed whatever had been obstructing the writing process. I took the long way home from Monmouth, which also helped. I exchanged a bunch of e-mail with Lauren Muney. I went to bed early.

Today I went to work for the first time since noon on Friday. I expected to be making sales calls with David Gingerich, my replacement, but he had called in sick. I stayed in the office to answer phones, but it was slow. What I really did was write. And write. And write. And write.

I wrote four posts for Get Rich Slowly and four posts for Get Fit Slowly. In many cases, I took articles I had begun to piece together last week and rework them to final form. Before, I would look at these pieces and want to give up. I just couldn’t see how they were supposed to end up. Today it was easy. Today I could see how to get from point A to point B.

I also took my bike into the shop to get an overhaul. I’m ready to ride.

Now I’m sitting in my favorite chair listening to XM 81 (BPM - dance music), waiting for my sweetheart to come home. We’re going to Gino’s. I’m going to have clams.

And to think that two days ago nothing was going right…

Yessir, this full-time writing stuff is going to be amazing.

On Sunday, I generated ten blog posts on various topics. (None of them for foldedspace, sadly.) Today, I produced 28 single-spaced pages for an e-book project. The mind boggles. (Of course, much of that material was refurbished from previous bits, but still…there was plenty of new stuff, too.)

When I’m able to work without interruption, I get a lot done.

Unfortunately, we have four cats. This may not seem like an issue on the surface, but it is. At any one time, there’s at least one (and sometimes two or three) cats who want my attention. They drove me nuts this afternoon!

Eventually I had to banish the beasts outside. For three hours they pawed at the window and gave me their most forlorn looks. I ignored them. I got stuff done. Then I let them in and they were up on the table, begging for attention. Poor things.

I’m at an interesting place in my life, a place it had never occurred to me I’d reach. My little personal finance blog has taken on a life of its own. It’s a business. It’s a brand. Sure, it’s a small business and a small brand, but that’s a start.

But what do I do next? For a long time, I’ve believed that a book was the next natural progression. But what sort of book? I have three discrete ideas kicking around in my head — which one do I pursue? And how do I find a publisher? (This morning on the drive to work, I found the seed for a fourth idea.)

The answers to these questions have become a little more clear during the past several weeks. I’ve had conversations with about a dozen very smart people, all of whom have opinions on this subject. Some believe a book is The Answer. Some believe a book is A Mistake. All of them are wildly supportive. Whom do I believe? How can I know which path is best?

Fortunately, I don’t have to decide just yet. I have time.

My favorite advice so far has come from the bold Penelope Trunk, who is a force of nature. “You’re fat, right?” she said. Penelope is not one to mince words. “The best thing you can do right now is get fit. If you get fit, you’ll gain confidence. If you gain confidence, and if you look good, you’ll be in a position to do whatever you want. You’ll have flexibility.”

I laughed at the boldness and simplicity of her suggestion.

“I’m not joking,” she said. And she wasn’t. “Don’t do a book. Get fit. Spend all your time working on your site and exercising. In the months it takes to do this, be thinking about what Get Rich Slowly can do for you. Brainstorm ideas. A book is not the way to go.”

Though I’m not convinced a book is a bad idea, I think Penelope’s other suggestions were fantastic. Some of them were mind-blowing, actually. Her vision for my site is even bigger than my own. Talking to her made me realize that perhaps my goals are too modest.

In any event, the next few weeks are going to be filled with a lot of soul-searching and introspection. If you see me deep in thought, it’s only because I’m trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life!

Trivia: I’ve written the word “exercise” (or some form of it) several times over the past few days. Every time I’ve misspelled it “excercise”. Where did that come from? I never used to do that.

The snowflake method for writing a novel seems needlessly complex. In general, I think elaborate mind-mapping systems for writing are counter-productive. When I write a story, I have a clear picture of who my characters are — I don’t need to write pages of notes about what they eat for breakfast. At the same time, however, the method fascinates me. While I think a novel might break it, perhaps I could use it for a short story.

Amy Jo — who has re-opened From a Corner Table, by the way — forwarded a link to Write-a-Go-Go, a site which challenges people to write 36,000 words in 3 months.

Welcome to your new challenge. Ready? 36,000 words sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? 144 manuscript pages? But when you break it down to 1,000 words, three times a week, isn’t that something you can do?

This got me to wondering: is it something I can do? Is it something I already do? I don’t know. But because I’m a geek, I knew could find out. A little digging turned up a word count plugin for WordPress. I installed it and voila! Now I have word count stats at GRS.

I average 29,300 words per month at Get Rich Slowly. It’s not as easy to use plugins with Moveable Type, so I’m not going to try to calculate my word count here. I suspect it used to be in the 25,000 word per month range but has probably fallen to around 15,000 words per month. Do I write another 5,000 words per month at my other sites? Probably. I think it’s safe to say that I’m publishing 50,000 words per month. I’m writing 1,500 words per day. (I’m actually probably writing double that — I figure half of what I write never sees the light of day.)

How much is 50,000 words per month in real-world terms? According to this guide to average manuscript lengths, novels are generally between 25,000 and 150,000 words. A 50,000 word novel would be 200 pages long. I’m writing the equivalent of a 200-page book every month.

Holy shit.

Now, there are a lot of considerations that go into writing a book that I’m not having to cope with. Short articles are much different than a book-length manuscript. I’m not saying that one is harder or that one is easier — they’re just different.

But still.

I’m writing a book each month.

The mind boggles.

It was late last year that I realized I could potentially make a living writing for the web. It was today that I knew that this was true. I make a modest (but decent) income at the box factory. But for the last week, my web income has equaled my income from my real job. Scary, huh?

Now this is just one week. Though I’m making good money from my writing, there are many ups and downs. But even the lows are higher than I could have imagined. On November 25th, I made $29.29 in web income. That is the last day my earnings dipped below $30. My best day was last Tuesday: I made $169.90.

Over at 2blowhards (still one of my favorite blogs), Michael writes:

Planning on getting rich writing sci-fi or fantasy novels? Think again. Tobias Buckell writes that the average advance for a first sci-fi or fantasy novel is $5000. Five years and five novels later, the average author is pulling in around $13,000 per novel.

I used to want to get rich off writing sci-fi or fantasy. Then I decided I just wanted to get rich off writing books — I didn’t care what kind. More and more, it’s clear that I may never publish a book (at least not in the traditional sense)! I’m already making twice what a sci-fi novelist makes, and I have complete control of my content. There’s little motivation for me to change directions at the moment.

Some people — and perhaps you’re one of them — look disdainfully upon web income. “You’re not making money from writing,” is a common observation. “You’re making money from advertising.” I can understand this delineation, but it’s not one that I make.

I am writing, and publishing that writing, and it’s making me money. I don’t feel guilty about it. I don’t feel as if I’m compromising anything. Did I ever dream I’d make a living writing about personal finance? Nope. But now I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing.

PB passed on a fun little meme: write a story in six words. It will probably come as no surprise that I’ve fretted over this for more than a week. I want my six-word story to be beautiful and perfect. Unfortunately, this is all I could come up with:

It rained Friday. She went anyway.

I found this exercise fascinating, actually. When given such a severe limitation (”only six words!”), it’s impossible to provide standard story-telling staples, such as “a beginning, a middle, and an end”. (There are exceptions, I suppose, such as the famous, “I came. I saw. I conquered.” Note that in Latin, that phrase actually comprises just three words!)

Articles present another problem. “A” and “the” are wasted words in a situation like this. This makes stories like “the cat chased after the dog” — there are two wasted words there!

As near as I can tell, Caterina started this meme several months ago citing the oft-quoted six-word Hemingway story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I don’t normally forward memes, but this time I’ll make an exception to tag Matt, Frykitty, Nicole, Michael, and Rich.

This one’s for my little brother, who wanted to know how many people visit my Animal Intelligence site every day.

I crunched some numbers this morning, just for the fun of it. At my four active web sites (active as in “I post to them at least once a month”), I receive the following traffic.

foldedspace.org: ~35,000 visitors/month, ~1200/day over the past month, 9200 in the past week [traffic at foldedspace is holding steady — on the rare occasions that I have an entry picked up, traffic soars for a month or two, but then it settles at around 35,000/month again] — foldedspace has ~350 subscribers (who are all you people?)

fourcolor.org: ~1100 visitors/month, ~40/day over the past month, 280 in the past week [traffic at Four Color Comics is holding steady — traffic would improve substantially if I actually posted content] — I don’t track Four Color Comics subscribers yet

animalintelligence.org: ~800 visitors/month, ~30/day over the past month, 310 in the past week [traffic at Animal Intelligence is growing slowly but surely — I am happy with this site's current state. It's working exactly as intended. I post to it when I find something good (or when people send me things — Frykitty, I'm saving your cockie story for Valentine's Day), and don't feel bad if weeks go by without something to put up] — Animal Intelligence has ~25 subscribers

getrichslowly.org: ~105,000 visitors/month, ~4000/day over the past month, 42,500 in the past week [traffic at Get Rich Slowly is growing quickly — there's no question that this is my primary focus now] — Get Rich Slowly has ~5,000 subscribers

In an ideal world, each of these sites would be growing quickly. But an ideal world doesn’t have all sorts of internet distractions. Or people wanting boxes. Or grapes to prune.

One of my goals for the next month is to actually bring Vintage Pop online. I just got Bibliophilic renovated the other day! Then I’ll have six seven active blogs (plus the flotch, plus my top-secret personal blog).

I’m a madman.

Addendum: In the past few days, I’ve resuscitated Bibliophilic and Money Hacks, which is a companion to Get Rich Slowly. Bibliophilic is averaging 4 visitors/day and Money Hacks is averaging 6 visitors/day. Bibliophilic has 2 subscribers; Money Hacks has 20.

Near home it’s squirrels. Even on the rough-pocketed side streets, it’s squirrels, and often with the crows pecking at the corpse. “I have a theory,” I tell Kris. “I think the crows raise the squirrels. They nurture them. They bring them to fatness. Then, when they’re good and ready, they herd the squirrels into traffic. Squirrel is a delicacy for crows. That’s my theory.”

Sometimes it’s cats, too, but not very often. Cats are generally smarter than that. They don’t freeze in the face of oncoming traffic the way a squirrel does. Cats get it when they’re making some mad dash across traffic. They’re too cocky about their speed and agility, and they don’t quite make it.

There aren’t many cats around our place, but once you get toward Canby, it’s the cats for sure. Just on the bluff, near the fruit stand and the trailer park, that’s where you start to see them. And then down toward the Foursquare Church, and certainly after driving through town, heading out into the country again. The cats hit me in the gut. “That was somebody’s pet,” I think. “That was Toto or Simon or Nemo.”

But once you get through town, it’s more than the cats. Mostly it’s skunks and coons, depending on the time of year. It used to be the possums, but frankly I don’t see them much anymore. But I see the skunks and the coons. The coons make me sad — though not like the cats — because I think of them as smart. It makes me sadder still when it’s not one coon, but two, as it sometimes is. Sometimes it’s one coon in the middle of the road and one coon at the side. “Husband and wife?” I wonder. “Do coons mate for life?”

Today, at the bottom of Good’s Bridge, it was a deer, lumped in the middle of the road. I came upon it fast in the melting light, and at first I thought it was a body. A human body. But it was a deer, a small doe, slumped and bleeding from the head. It was in the center of the road, which is a good thing, because otherwise maybe it would have been human bodies, too, and twisted metal and shattered glass.

It was a deer at almost the precise spot where a week ago it had been a horse. I didn’t know it was a horse. I drove past in the morning, and it was a mound on the side of the road, like a pile of barkdust maybe, or a pile of dirt. It was covered in some crazy-quilt blanket, and I thought, “That’s odd.” But I didn’t know it was a horse until Nick got to work and said, “Did you see the horse?” “What horse?” I said. “The one at the bottom of Good’s Bridge,” he said, and then I knew it wasn’t a pile of barkdust or a pile of dirt.

But you know what it never is? It’s never dogs. I don’t get that. It must be dogs sometimes — I hit a dog once. But why isn’t it ever dogs on the road? Do people pull them off? Maybe they’re just not let loose outside like they used to be.

About a month ago, I drove from Custom Box to Sandy, by way of Estacada. Turning off the highway, heading up the hill toward Sandy, traffic had slowed to a crawl. “What gives?” I wondered, but then I saw: up ahead two dogs — a silky Golden Retriever and some little mixed mutt — were strolling down the middle of the road, following the striped line. It was like they were out for a pleasant walk after lunch. The Golden Retriever walked evenly, following the striped line; the little mixed mutt orbited around it. Traffic in my lane crawled along behind. Oncoming traffic came barreling around a blind corner to halt abruptly and then creep past the pair. That’s how it went: a car came barreling around the blind corner, and I held my breath because I was sure one of the dogs would get it, but the car would brake hard, stop, and then creep past. The dogs didn’t care. Traffic followed the dogs for a quarter mile before the pair found a side street they preferred and ambled off to find whatever it is they were looking for.

I wonder why it’s never dogs.