The Ben Esch Website

Time for a little confession.  Despite being,

A)  Born and raised in America
B) Fluent in English (author's note: and this is in spite of spending several of my formative years in Texas)
C) An English major
D) a professional writer

I still have no goddamn idea how to use a semicolon.  And I still use them all the time; like; I'll just get flustered and start throwing them into sentences; cause I think they make me look smart; and I'm in a shame spiral about not knowing proper punctuation; and; balls. 

Every time I turn in a book, I wait for my editor to call me and yell at me for having shitty punctuation, but as of yet, that hasn't happened.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe since I got a book out there, people confuse my grammatical ignorance with "artistic flair" or something.  And I'm cool with that. 

But for those of you who actually want to know how to use a semi-colon, I recommend you check out this webcomic.  It's by a dude called "The Oatmeal" and it prominently features bear fighting and party gorillas, and maybe if my teachers had tried teaching me grammar with a little more of that, I might have paid a little more attention.  

NEXT BLOG: 

In which I talk about writing word goals and such will be up super quick. 

Hey readers,

Okay, time to work in some writing advice again.  I know it's been a while since I've done this, and that's mainly because I feel like a huge jackass giving advice about something that routinely kicks my ass, but seeing as I'm a writer and this is my website, we're gonna give this thing a shot. 

Cool.  So, I've been writing for a living for about three years or so now, and I still haven't been able to get much of a routine together.  I know, I know, this is kinda embarrassing, and it's something I've been working on and bumming myself out about ever since I decided I wanted to be a writer. 

Now, I think there are a lot of reasons I've had trouble getting a routine nailed down.  Sometimes I tell myself it's because I'm a creative free spirit that can't be contained by a schedule, and though it sounds kinda pretty and all, it's complete bull shit.  Hemingway had a schedule.  Roald Dahl had a schedule.  And there's no way I'm more of a creative, free spirit than the dude who came up with James and the Giant Peach. 

So, what's the answer then? 

There's a possibility it's because I'm lazy, and that might be true, but I think it's something a bit deeper than that. 

My theory:  I still work like I'm in college. 

What does that mean?  When I was assigned a paper in college, I wouldn't start it early and chunk off a page a day like a responsible person.  No, I would wait until the last day, and then I would power out the entire works...usually sometime between midnight and when the coffee shops opened up again at 5 in the morning. 

Working like that was a rush, and I usually did some pretty good papers, but it built up some bad habits that I took with me when I started writing fiction. 

Instead of working a steady, sustainable pace on my books, I would usually just get all hopped up on Peets and write 20 pages in a night.  Then I would sit back and wait for my hands to stop shaking and marvel at what an awesome writer I was. 

Except I wasn't an awesome writer the next day.  Or the day after that.  Because I was too wrecked from spending all night freebasing coffee and being hunched over my laptop like a troll. 

Killing myself one night might equal twenty pages, but I was good for approximately zero pages for the next week.  So, that put my weekly page total at 20 pages. 

But, if I would have just taken a couple hours in the morning and busted out a more manageable six pages, that would give me 42 pages at the end of the week. 

So, I would have been twice as productive and with a lot less caffeine abuse besides. 

Jerry Seinfeld understood this and here's a super cool article about how he keeps himself writing and motivated every day. 

Did you read the article?  Seriously, click the link.  The rest of my blog will make a lot more sense if you do. 

For the past few weeks, I've been marking my calendar for every day I write and so far there hasn't been a break in the red X's.  My page total is climbing pretty steadily and I haven't been up at 3 AM once.  Okay, maybe once, but that was only because I had a lot of quality programming backlogged on the TIVO.

So do like Jerry Seinfeld.  Get a calendar.  Mark down some X's for days when you write and watch the pages grow.    

AND IN NON WRITING NEWS

Here's a clip from Troll 2.  Because I love you, that's why. 

You know, I was a little on the fence about France until I saw this. 

I found this and bunches of other neat stuff over at iwatchstuff.