• About Quota

    From the MacBook of James Black:

    My daily writing is rarely ideal: emails, journal entries, marginalia, more emails, blog posts, and tweets (gawd, how I love to tweet!).

    I wonder how all this daily writing has shaped me as a writer, if it helps or hinders the big stuff I'm trying to accomplish. Is there some art in these artful distractions?I should be writing a novel or something. (Oh, that's right--I am.)

  • Recent Tweets

    • RT @S___Elliott: It turns out, despite our flaws, writers are always optimists. // True for me. 7 hours ago
    • RT @saeedjones: In other news, I'm tired of people saying that they're "just keeping it real" when, in fact, they are just being rude. //Yep 10 hours ago
    • RT @alexanderchee: Someone please tell the Secret Service the Salahis got in using white privilege. 10 hours ago
    • If these queens are lip-syncing for their lives, their time may be up. Um, the song tells you what to do: Work! 1 day ago
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  • About

    Most of us write more than we realize. But do we get to do the kinds of writing we'd like? What do we enjoy about the kinds of writing we must do? I need to write more. The purpose of this blog is to encourage me to do just that. But my daily writing is rarely ideal. Does the mundane stuff help or hinder my development as a writer? I also want to hear from you. What do you write? What challenges do you deal with? Please share your thoughts by posting comments. Include a brief excerpt if you'd like.
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  • Meta

Jane’s Meme: Learning to Write

My friend Jane invited me to her meme about learning to write. The assignment is to write about three contradictory practices that helped in my development. Mine aren’t necessarily contradictory, just not obviously connected, but they overlap quite a bit.
1.
I aced my senior composition project in high school. Grades don’t necessarily reflect what students learn, [...]

Stand for Equality

While it seemed that everyone else at the National Equality March in DC wanted to see Lady Gaga, my Starstruck Moment happened when Lt. Dan Choi’s personal space overlapped the orbit of mine. There are a lot of people I respect, but I usually don’t lose my shit over any of them. Choi’s a rockstar. [...]

Blood and Rainbows

I feel tentative about reading other writers’ blogs because when their writing is really strong, I get a little depressed. It’s sort of the “wish-I’d-written-that” syndrome, but not necessarily that simple. Reading good writing makes me feel and think with such intensity that I have to stop reading for a while.
There’s something inspiring about that [...]

FWIW: Can’t Not Write.

After receiving my most recent rejection via email, I fired off manuscripts to four journals yesterday. One sent to triage; four sent back to battle–those are good odds, right?
Perhaps not. According to the editor, the journal that rejected me accepted fewer than 10% of the work that was submitted. One of the journals I contacted [...]

Can I Help You Find Something?

You’re looking for something, so you type some search terms and get some blog called Quota. You’re pulled in by the elegant prose and can’t help but admire the depth of the writer’s insight, but you wonder why the Web 2.0 oracle directed you to some whiny writer’s blog when you were looking for a [...]