Debo, my man, I can sympathize.

Debo and I have never met. I don't think. If we did, I'm a schmuck and I don't remember. It's totally possible we did at one time. But don't take offense if I don't remember - it's not a knock on your character or anything, which I'm sure is upstanding and morally coherent. It's not you, it's me. My memory, like my writing, is not what it once was.

In this post for the BufBloPoFo, he writes:

Good gods, my grammar is suffering too. I used to be a decent writer.

I, too, used to be a decent writer. In fact, I became a professional writer because since fifth grade the one academic endeavor that always held my attention was the power the written word can have over people. Garv's been getting some positive responses from his writing recently, and I say, more power to ya, buddy. Garv also happens to be a decent writer, and if you're looking for a low-paying freelance gig about 7 hours' drive away, well, the offer stands.

In the early stages of my career I was a reporter. I wrote at least one story a day, and I was always looking for new and exciting ways to tell a story. But that was short-lived. At age 23 I became a newspaper editor, a job in which 99% of your time is devoted to improving other people's writing and becoming involved in every aspect of publishing a newspaper that doesn't have the word "writing" in it. That treasured 1 percent leftover is reserved for your actual writing, though I usually spend it crying alone in my office's closet.

Nine years into a career in writing, I do less writing than I did when I was in school. At age 30 I won my first solo press award, and it had nothing to do with writing. When I do write, I'm not challenged by my higher-ups or my peers. Frankly, the state of newspapers is such that, in today's climate, we don't get the kind of development and support to do the one thing for which we all got in the business. Now add into it the focus we have on the Web and putting our newspapers on Twitter, Facebook, and our own blogs, and Debo my friend, I can feel your pain.

It's not too late for either of us. I know plenty of journalists who burned out and fizzled before they hit 30. I have a lesson I learned from them that may help you: Just do it.

Seriously. That's it.

Just write. Write long. Spend an hour on it in place of something else you do (for me, it's either playing FFXII, or studying beer. I can take an hour off of my beer studies to write. Hell, I should write about beer.) Many of my former coworkers got out of the business but also stopped writing altogether - and I think the world's worse off for it.

What will happen if you write often is this: Eventually you'll stumble across some writing that sticks with you. That happened to me a few years back and as a result I've written six chapters (so far) of a children's book. I'm still working on it and after I've finished FFXII I'm getting back into it full-force.

So get out there and get writing. And if you want some free editing from a guy who's a mild-mannered editor by day and flies around in tights by night, well, you know where to find me.

My question to you is this:

Whatcha gonna do, brother? WHATCHA gonna do when Blogg-o-mania runs wild over you?

P.S. I want that jacket.