I need a reality stretcher-a device that makes closets and parking spots larger as well as making time for everything we all try to pack into each day.
On the other hand, if it worked the opposite, and reduced reality, that might work as well.
I haven’t been blogging as often because I am trying to write a longer story and I can write this, or I can write that. All the eating, sleeping, and day-job time is already tweaked as much as possible.
Why am I writing this particular story? If I write a technical piece, it’s to share an idea, but stories are different. It’s kind of like the characters are in limbo until I can wrap a story around them. They make it quite clear that their very existence is dependent upon authors doing their part. They threaten to just hang around in our brains until someone sits down and writes the story. Unwritten characters can be persistent—and obnoxious, if they feel it suits their purposes. So far I only see one of the characters for this story clearly—but that doesn’t mean that he will be the same in the final revision. There are others who are “visible,” but just barely. However, the first character is obviously the one who is responsible for the plot.
Perhaps I’ll interview him for a blog in the near future.
sfnowak 
There was a poet and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, who wrote these paradoxical words: “Sorry to write such a long letter; there wasn’t enough time to write a short one.”
I was blessed to have dated one of the brightest girl’s I’ve ever known—who was also a forensic psychologist. Her name is Cynthia Stout. I can actually say she taught me how to enjoy writing in all of its phases—especially “the first sentence.” Before Cynthia, I agonized for years with the pain of writing—until she talked to me about the “pain of pain,” and the “aversion to the aversion of pain”—where the real agony lies.
Professionals do not wait to be inspired to write, just like we don’t have to feel our best to do our best. Writers just start writing—which is where Pascal’s adage comes in: There’s no time to write short and brief. The secret to everything is freedom, and the secret to freedom is courage…to begin.
Cynthia also told me “It’s our resistance to life that makes what we do painful. What if rather than turn away from that which challenges us, we leaned into it?
We all have the capacity to make use of any circumstance, no matter how awful, to create value. This ability to ‘change poison into medicine,’ for example, makes plausible the transformation of even the most daunting work into something that enables us to become much more creative and productive, and happy. That’s the confidence that represents our greatest defense against discouragement. As we accept that, work with it, and learn from it—we also thereby reduce our agony and save that wasted energy for our growth and wisdom.”
Damn, I wish Cynthia didn’t marry that good-looking, prosperous guy who loved her so much and made her so happy.