WRiTE Club 2013!!!

Once again, WRiTE Club is going on over at Cruising Altitude 2.0!

Basically it's a short story contest, with randomly selected entries brawling on Monday and Thursday for your viewing pleasure!

The difference from this year and last is that all entries were filtered through a series of experts who narrowed them down to a mere 32.  This means the contest will be far shorter and the entries you read will have met a certain professional standard.

Feel free to head that way and read some amateur fiction!  If you want to vote, you'll need to sign up first (just look for the sign up link below the other voters).  If not, I'm sure the writers would appreciate whatever constructive criticism you have to offer.  I'm trying hard to curb the snark and keep it as constructive as possible... I may have failed at that last year.

I look forward to seeing you there!

IWSG - Backward motivation

I love writing.  I love creating and designing and, frankly, being impressed and falling in love with my creations.

But lately, that's not what's inspired me to write.

I work a lot.  My full time job is IT professional at a tech school.  My part time job is at a kayak business on the Broad River, hauling kayaks around for 10-12 hours in the Georgia sun.
(This isn't including playing bass in a band or fixing friends' computers on the side.  Those don't happen frequently enough to wear at me.)

Both jobs have their perks.
At the best of times I like both jobs, or at least tolerate them. Most of the time they kind of balance one another out.  Just when I'm tired of using my brains all day, tucking my shirt in and being polite, Friday comes around and I'm at the river in shorts only, screaming and laughing, driving a short bus down a dirt road with a trailer full of kayaks, going 40 mph, missing trees by the span of a flea's knees.  Then, just when I'm sick of hauling kayaks around, sweating in the dirt, Monday comes and I'm sitting in the quiet of my office in the AC.

But at the worst of times, I hate my jobs.  And it's this hate that has directed by butt to chair more than once to write and write and write until my fingers ache and the heat of the laptop boils the blood in my legs.  It's at these times that desperation seeps into my work, for better or worse, and I write like I have no choice.  This is, of course, because I have no choice.

Is this healthy motivation?  Is my love of writing simply the product of my hatred of traditional work and schedule?  Are you, too, motivated by what chases you and not what you chase?? 

I'm curious to know.