Broken Fingers
October 19, 2007Welcome to Broken Fingers!
While I’m not sure yet where this blog will go, I wanted to create a place that I could share with the world my thoughts regarding writing, the writing industry, and most importantly, getting published. While I have a general purpose blog already, on my personal web site that I’ve written myself, I wanted a place where I could just get my thoughts out, without having to worry about a lot of the ugly little details that my own web work sometimes requires. (There’s a fairly simple story behind this desire: When I first got interested in creative writing, I didn’t have a word processor or even understand what one was — I was 13! — so I started trying to invent something that would allow me to write my stories, and that lead me into programming, which lead to web programming, etc…) This is that place.
So, ultimately, this place, Broken Fingers, is about pure writing, without the programming aspects of my life. Hopefully, I’ll say a few things that catch your attention and possibly inspire you. If not, well, at least you can have some fun calling me an idiot. 
Either way, my words will be here, and you can read them as you please.
Please feel free to leave me some comments, link to the site, and/or give me advice as you see fit. Oh, and porn, don’t forget to leave me lots of spam porn links… 
Just kidding!
“Broken fingers” seems like a highly appropriate title for a blog devoted to writing. After 20+ years in the trenches of literature, I’ve got nerve damage and arthritis in my hands–there was a while there when I had to put ice on them to get relief at night–and very little money in the bank to show for it. Why do we put ourselves through such torture? What insanity drives us to our desks every morning for another session of abuse?
“Writing is the pain I can’t live without,” Robert Penn Warren once said. I hear ya, Bob…
Thanks for writing Cliff! I agree, Broken Fingers is an appropriate title, and although I haven’t gone through the physical pains of writing (fortunately), I feel like I have gone through them metaphorically. At the 1997 San Diego Comic-con, R. A. Salvatore (my favorite author) spoke these words about writing: If you can stop, then stop. If you can’t, then you’re a writer. In my years of writing and failing to get published, I’ve found that these words are very true. Every time I thought I’d just give it up, I found myself wanting to create through the written word. It’s an addiction that I don’t really want to be over.