I have been asked not a few times by not a few people why I should bother to write things for posting on the Internet. It isn't a stupid question. Why would a busy entrepeneur and new father who is often pressed for time fritter away days composing a multi-thousand word treatise on the nature of cheeseburgers for neither pay nor glory, anyway?

My standard stock of replies has up til now run something like this:

"I enjoy writing, and any excuse to practice is a good one."

"Writing for an intelligent, impatient and critical audience forces me to keep my writing tight, topical and entertaining."

"I benefit from the traffic driven to my website by posts containing popular keywords, and by swollen PageRank from inbound hyperlinks from sites I frequent, and the sites that syndicate their content."

"It's a fantastic way to procrastinate."

But now, I have a new, more compelling reason to justify my efforts casting my typing into the void: I am currently in negotiations to have one of my K5 articles published in a book!


I am now significantly less concerned by all of the things that were weighing heavily on me earlier this week (solidying my autumn schedule, finding the money to upgrade my editing system, filling out mortgage applications, unholy audio problems plaguing my unfinished animated short, and on and on). There is a spring in my step.

Naturally, this imminent publication will be no great boon. My share of the profits and royalties will likely amount to just a handful of nickels, divided between me and the other authors in the anthology by count of pages. Never the less, I am elated by the affirmation of my meagre skill. I will buy copies of the book for my parents, and let them gibber over me like a pet squirrel. I will gaze at the spine of the book on my shelf, and dream of being handed handsome advances for fabulous novels.

In truth, I am a world away from being a professional typist. It takes just about everything I have to keep going as a self-employed professional commercial artist, and I'm not sure I should spare the focus to pursue this pipe-dream held in common with so many literate and semi-literate souls. Focus is important. If I ever expect my business generate the income I need to carry my family forward through the decades, I can't be lollygagging by the side of the road smelling the intoxicating narcissistic aroma of publication fantasies...

On the other hand, it is unlikely that I will stop writing any time soon. Maybe the dream isn't so pipey after all, if publishers are troubling to contact me to ask for my wares.

But that's another point: my wares are slow in coming. A quickly breeze through my writing archives will show that I barely manage to cough up one or two solid pieces of writing per year, with perhaps a slight spike over the past few seaons. A few handfuls of people have taken the time to write to me about non-fiction pieces like The 10 Day Shimmy, The 25 Day Loaf and The Sweet Funk of Revenge with encouraging comments and friendly praise. And yet each piece of fiction takes an agonisingly long time to become expectorated from my brain. Last year I barely managed to choke out Wile and Weird Flotsam, and this year I've already spent four months working at an unfinished short story I am alternately convinced is the best thing I've ever written, and the worst. At this rate, I may be ready to try writing a novel after another thirty years of constipated shorter efforts.

One thing is certain: Kuro5hin has been instrumental in keeping me writing. If I had not found a willing audience here, I may have hung up my typing fingers in the closet next to my karate outfit, my rusted sabre and my electronics kit. And so: my thanks to Rusty, and my thanks to anyone who has ever bothered to read my postings here and had something to say, good or bad, -1 Hide or +3 Encourage. Thank you. Because of you I've kept at it, and now someone is going to set some of my rambling to paper.

I have procastinated enough. I have re-writes to type, to find a way to roll hyperlinked contextual information into the body of the article itself. I am due to transmit my changes to the publisher come Monday. As the situation progresses I will keep K5 abreast, and when the book comes out I'll likely buy a ad here for it. (By the bye, this is the piece of writing in question.)

Moral of the story: posting writing on K5 can have positive effects in the real world. Whoda thunk it?