719. Yeah, So I Started Blogging Again...

Greetings, reader:

This is my 719th blog in about five years (the first seven hundred are on myspace.com - I might copy and paste them to over here at some point). I stopped blogging last semester for the most part. Life was happy and graduate writing work consumed most of my time (the previous dozen or so postings on this blog are of the assignments I completed in the Fall).

Long story shortened, it's a new year so I'm blogging again. If you get a few minutes every couple days, check back if you like, and hear what I have to say. I promise to be innovative and thought-provoking, or - at very least - entertaining.

I think it's logical at this moment, my return to blogging, to simply outline some of my goals as a writer for this new year:

1. Sell both of my books. One's a memoir. Two's a novel about veterans who survive a chemical attack. Am I crazy to set this goal? I think so, but I'm close. One agency has already expressed interest in the second book and I've had a lot of interest for my memoir (interest that ultimately became rejections, but I'm doing something right to be able to stand out from all the other thousands of assholes who are trying to get books published too). Recently I sold a scene from my memoir to www.worldhum.com, which will be posted online very soon, and that credit will likely aid my goal of publication even more. That's all I've ever done with my life since leaving the Marines: take one success and exploit the hell out of it. Hmm, where did I learn to do that?

2. Continue doing my very best at Hopkins. I earned very respectable grades last semester, and I hope to maintain that momentum. It's hard down there because I'm tremendously outclassed. The majority of my peers are older than me, and they are business professionals - often times working writers - who actually have careers and real lives. I'm just some unemployed kid (sustaining myself off of the GI Bill) who shows up to class all haggardly looking with my red beard and long hair. I'm pretty sure when I speak in class everyone thinks, who the hell is this guy?

3. I hope to complete a book of poems. I want rewrite all the stream of conscious junk I've written over the years and approach them again, this time while considering line length, rhyme, and metering. I think that would be cool and rewarding.

4. I want to make some money with my words. Like enough for sushi. That would be cool.