History has overseen increasing democratization in the arts. I know the big shots disapprove of the motley-grotley, but too bad. We live in an era when even a nobody like me can find the time and means to compose whatever possesses my fancy without any regard to remuneration. That is a strange thing, and I don't expect everyone to understand it, but then I don't understand why other people do the things they do. I guess each of us picks a little niche in which we specialize for better or worse. I don't know why I write. I think there is a desire to create something with a permanence that I lack in my trip from existence to annihilation. Most of me will return to the earth, but maybe the remnants of my imagination will persist as, I don't know, electronic charges on a drive somewhere. One thing I have a nerdy faith in is the persistence of data, collected and maintained into perpetuity because people can never be sure whether the data may have some as yet unexploited value, whether for secrets lurking within or aggregate research. One never knows. There will be archeological value if nothing else, increasing every year, and storage is cheap. Many stories can be fit into a terabyte. So the technology is helpful there. And if it doesn't last, then so what? Neither do I.

My stories are my pets, and I like to visit them. They have problems. Some problems are hidden from me. I have difficulty capturing images with precision. The image may be clear in my mind, but knowing how to paint the picture is a different story. I'm a sketch-artist. But I do love my pets. I suppose some of them seem rather bizarre, even if I myself am mundane and ordinary. But why should I plow the same field that everyone else does? That soil is overused, spent, every possibility explored. I prefer to pioneer a different acre of land. The little weird things that have occurred to me over the years that I haven't seen explored in story form, that's what I like to write about. Other writers have covered other topics in an adequate way and I've no desire to compete on their turf. My pets, the flights of fancy and crystals of truth that I have, these are what I like to see preserved, so that I can recapture them whenever I wish without losing any of their details.

When I finish a piece, then begins the laborious process of compressing and clarifying the words. I tend to be verbose at first, but then I go back and mercilessly cull all the unnecessary verbiage. Less often, I add details to the story that I neglected to mention. Sometimes I forget to transcribe some important detail from my vision to the page.

Some people have liked my stuff before. I know because they told me so or gave a rating somewhere. A little bit of water keeps a cactus thriving year after year, even through drought. I appreciate criticism. Perhaps criticism is worth more than vacuous polite praise. At least with criticism, one receives direction. Some things we writers are too near to see, you know. I don't consider myself hostile to criticism, a common stereotype of writers. I remember many big shot writers who just hated their critics. I'm the opposite. I may agree or disagree, but information is a zero sum. One can use the information or disregard it, depending upon one's evaluation of its quality. I have had people tell me harsh things before. It is a zero sum. Of course one should be sensitive to criticism in the sense of receiving all the information transmitted, but not sensitive in the sense of reacting in an emotional way. The reality is none of this matters. All is vanity. We are dust. Once one accepts that, all is simple.