What can I say, I'm aiming high...
But a bit more seriously, I'm glad to finally get the keys to this place; I had a little trouble but thanks to Pawn and Ilan Bouchard, I've made the scene...special thanks to them, I'm ready to get going here. This "Introduce Yourself" forum seems like a logical place to start, so here goes.
Basically, I have a goal. That goal is to become an author. Being forty years old, a "family" sort of guy with the required wife and kids, that seems a tall order. I thought of it that way for a long long time. Then a few things happened that changed my thinking in a dramatic way.
First, I wrote a short story that I posed as "background" on a character named "Dropsy" that I had invented for a sports message board. When I started the story, I didn't see it as any sort of "exercise" in writing--it was just a story, a simple four page yarn that went for the heartstrings. It was a story about a simple man who lived in Wyoming and liked to hike solitary. Well, he breaks his leg out in the middle of nowhere and basically finds himself up the proverbial creek, so to speak. The hook is, as he spends his days trying to save himself, a huge male grizzly bear starts hanging around but shows little interest in anything other than eating berries. The bear seems unconcerned with the man's presence altogether, and as time goes by, the man begins to talk to the bear. Some interesting things ensue and I'll leave that for another day--I may post the story soon and see what y'all think of it. People I know that have read it seemed to like it a lot.
Anyway, I then created
another character for this particular message board--"Defender." Defender was an underground vigilante that had been transported from a future year somehow or another. So the idea was to write a short story, similar to the Dropsy story, for Defender. I don't know what happened but the project grew and grew and then grew some more. Now I have a 650 page manuscript. What was intended to entail no more than five pages evolved into a very rich and complex novel of good vs. evil, loss and redemption. I'm still not sure how it happened...I just kept going and going and going. I'm immensely proud and although I consider it unpublishable for several reasons, it instilled in me the idea that I
could do this--write a novel that
could be published. The project was an unbelievable learning experience, one where I learned just what it takes to be an author. I learned the intricacies of sentence structure, punctuation, and style. I became five times the writer I was when I typed the first word of "Defender."
Now I want to be an author. Now I
believe I can be an author. I've chosen a print shop to copy and bind some copies of "Defender" so a few people close to me can read it and I've set my sights on novel #2, which I have every intention of being altogether "publishable." I'm tuned into what it will take to give me every chance at success, because that's really what I'm after--a career. I know I'm aiming high and I know the odds are against me. But I'm going to make it happen. I need the blockbuster idea, and that's what I'm mulling over and waiting for right now. When it comes, I'll run with it. I'll make it neat and taut, unlike the sprawling complexity of "Defender." I feel I'm up for the challenge and I have every intention of hitting the mark.
Well sorry if I went on and on. I tend to do that and hope I didn't sound overly confident but I have strong opinions about the power of self-belief, in this case, as a thing that is almost as essential to success as the actual raw talent for writing itself. I'll be reading all of your stories, hoping to learn from them and enjoying them as well. I hope to post some passages from Defender to gain a little advice on how my style and presentation come across. I'm very much looking forward to your responses.
Thanks in advance, not only for future advice and opinion, but also for taking the time to read my rather longwinded...
..."introduction." I hope to interact with you soon on the board.
-Defender
