We interrupt this blog to bring you this important announcement…

Actually, it’s not that important.

But here it is anyway. I’m writing to tell you that, every time you read something you really like, that really moves you, that you think is really cool, you should feel free to google the author and see if there’s a place to mention this to her.

You can also search on twitter; some authors don’t make it easy to email them, but, they allow twitter comments to be made to them publicly. Twitter comments are short of course. What you might be able to say to someone you bumped into.

Either way, what I’m saying is, feel free to say, ‘hey, I liked X. (insert name of thing for X, the story or novel or show or comic or whatever.)

It makes a difference, in the life of the writer, to hear that.

I guess it’s no secret here that I have had battles with depression, with writer’s block. Tons of people do. The comments I’ve gotten on my work to date, the positive ones, anyway, heh, have made a difference to me.

If you are like me at all, and you try to make things, there will be times when you’re pretty sure that nothing you say or do is worth the doing.

As I’ve gone along, I have collected now, a small series of badges, of sales, of notices, and when the ego collapses, as it does for me now and then, leaving me becalmed in a sea of futility, I find every single scrap of acknowledgment comforting.

I had a friend who was an art director I worked for, who talked about managing designers, and looking at what they’d done, and even if it wasn’t usable, wasn’t anything he wanted to show a client, the fact of it, the proof that work was done, was there, in what he called ‘evidence of industry.’

So I’m pushing t through  my latest collapse, putting words down still, looking forward to feeling better about it again.

Hopefully.

Evidence of industry.