On writing

When I started this blog in April of 2001, I had two purposes in mind: To keep up my HTML skills in the hope of getting a job, and to keep up my writing skills in the hope of eventually getting paid to write–preferably in fiction. I’ve had one short story published, and some nonfiction, but fiction is where my creative heart has always been.

I’ve been writing fiction since the ninth grade, when my kind, elderly English teacher, Mrs. Edna Barr, took the short story I gave her, read it, immediately put it into the magazine she was preparing for Parents Night, and then asked if I had anymore for her. (I did.) I’ve been wanting to publish my novels since college. I attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers workshop in 1990, where I lived, ate, and breathed writing for six weeks. But nothing really worked for me in those years.

I have had many setbacks along the way, most of which are a bit too personal to describe. Suffice it to say that my biggest obstacles were partly self-inflicted, partly my having to conquer some inner demons. Well, the damned demons are rotting in the ground and smelling up the place. I’m back on track with my writing.

Two years ago, while driving down Route 288 in Chesterfield County on a warm Saturday morning in the spring, something that I call Lightning From God hit me. It was a story idea, and it seemed like the best idea I’d ever had. As soon as I got to the G.’s house, I asked Eldest Boy for a notebook and started writing things down. I continued to write as the children followed me from the kitchen to the deck and back again, then I wrote some more during the lacrosse game. And I turned those ideas into prose. I wrote a few hundred words, then a few hundred more, and then–I did what I’ve been doing for years. I stopped. I didn’t push forward. I put the story away and went on with my life, regretting again that I couldn’t push past my writer’s block.

There was something different this time, though. I just didn’t want to fail again. I didn’t want to succumb to the same bad patterns. So I did something about it. I found a way past my old patterns. This time, I am going to finish the novel. This story is too good, it’s too marketable, too enjoyable, and it has the potential to fulfill my long-held dreams. So I’ve been working hard, moving past every block I throw in my way, or that life hands me. I’m about to hit the halfway point in mid-February, and I’m on target for my personal deadline of May 31st.

That is part of why the posting on the blog has fallen to such low levels. Every word I write here is a word taken away from my daily output. If I had to, I’d shut down the blog if that’s what was needed to finish the novel. Things are going to change even more around here, as I shift my focus away from Israel and Jewish issues and toward my writing.

I have never given up on the idea of supporting myself with my fiction. Never. My classmates at Clarion cut out a headline titled “Publish or Perish” and put it on my dorm room door.

This is why. I first read this Langston Hughes poem in tenth grade, and have never forgotten it.

Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

May 31st. That’s when the first full draft of the novel will be finished. Coming this summer: The Darkness Rising, Book One in The Catmage Chronicles. I’m holding fast to my dreams.