Diary of a Writer - 1

The first book I remember reading was "Amityville Horror". I was somewhere around fourteen when I read that. The next time I read a book all the way through, I was twenty. I was out of work and living with my real father and he had Louie L'Amour's, "The Lonesome Gods" laying on the table. I was so bored, I finally picked it up and started reading it. The next evening I finished it and my passion for reading Westerns had been born. I am not sure if there is a Louie L'Amour book I have not read.

My friend once told me I should try writing a western, since I read them so much. So I tried. Then I tried again. Then I tried again, and again. That was when I realized two things. One is that without maps of the old west, my geography would be so messed up in my books, that I would look like nothing more than a hack. Second, I realized that writing a novel by hand was near impossible. Computers were not real popular at the time and I did not own a typewriter. So the idea of writing was pushed out of my head.

Years later, I was out of work again This happens a lot in the Automotive Engineering field, you need to understand. I was laid-off and flat out broke. I finished my current book and had nothing to read. So, out of desperation, I took my cowboy pride and stuffed it in my back pocket and asked my brother if he had any books I could read. My brother, you need to understand, was into reading Fantasy, and that is a far cry from a good Western.  He handed me Robert Jordan's "Eye of the World", the first book in the "Wheel of Time" series. He might as well have given me heroin as fast as I became addicted.

Several years after that, my life changed in many ways. I met my wife, got a new job in the engineering field, where I worked on a computer, and found I was bored at lunch times. That was when it all began. The first week at the job, I did not know what to do with myself at lunch. I didnt like playing the games on the computer and it wasnt football season, so I didnt bother buying the paper for the sports section. So one day I made a decision. I would write my own fantasy novel.

You see, Fantasy did not limit me like westerns did. I didnt need maps to the old west. I could make my own world up. In fact, I did not need to be an expert on anything as I could create whatever I wanted. Fantasy did the one thing that no other genre could have. It freed my imagination.

So I wrote for a half an hour every day at lunch. For years I wrote. I am not a fast typist! I wrote and wrote until about three years later, I finished my first book of 350 pages. I sent it out to several agents and did not get back a good response from any of them. One response in particular got me wondering however. They said they would never touch a first time authors manuscript that was so long. Seriously? 350 pages was too long? Imagine my surprise when I realized I had the formatting messed up and did not have it double spaced and such. My book was truly over 750 pages. Looking back, I realize the book simply was not good enough anyway. It is amazing how much practice helps. With every book I have written, I can actually see the improvements.

Now I feel I am ready. The last book I wrote, Hell in a Storm (Book-1 of the Demon Siege Trilogy), was the first novel I wrote, where I think someone would enjoy it, but even with that book, I think it gets better as it goes and is best at the end. I am currently working onbook-2, which is currently titled "The Descent of Darkness", and I believe this book is better than the first. It is currently at 48,000 words and growing closer and closer to being finished. And that is the hardest part of writing. My greatest struggle.

I am not a rich man. Quite frankly, I am very poor. I work as many hours as my job will let me and between a fulltime job, my wife and family, and the dog, I am very restricted to when I can write. Like before, I write for a half an hour every day at lunch. Some days I will punch out at the end of the day and sit back down and write for another half an hour before I go home. Most evenings I will write for a bit before I go to bed. Too many of those evenings, however, are stolen from my writing to answer emails for my blog "Michigan Spiders".

Oh how I love writing. There is nothing I would rather do for a career than write. I know I will get there some day, but it will take some time as my limited time for writing holds me back from getting my books out there. The more I write, the more I want to make it a career. The more I want that career, the more I hate working my engineering job. The more I hate working my job, and want to write, the more of a struggle every day is. Let me assure you. Right now, my life really sucks, in my own mind!

Well, here is to unaccomplished goals. For without them, what goals would we have to strive for? Hopefully I will be finished with a Descent of Darkness, soon. I have big plans for the third book of the trilogy.