Why Do I Write?

For as long as I can remember I have been curious about the process involved in book writing, admiring authors at book launchings and wondering how one could have the discipline and skill needed to complete a story.

  In November of 2016 I came across a story I had begun to write over thirty years ago. The writing appalled me. Distraught over the recent election, I wanted a distraction, so I decided to edit the first chapter of my story to see if I could make it presentable. That didn’t work. Instead, I started from scratch to rewrite the first couple of chapters.

  At first, my goal was to see if I could write one or two chapters of my own story, with the hope that it would read like a published book. Once I began, however, I became obsessed. The story took off, the characters became alive, and I couldn’t stop writing until I found resolutions for the conflicts that had revealed themselves as the story developed.

  A year later I had a manuscript over two-hundred and thirty words long. In many ways the first draft was a mess. During the process, I had written fast and furious in order to meet a self-imposed deadline, and I had no experience in writing fiction. It took over a year of relentless editing and revising until I had whittled the story down to a duology which became the first two parts of my Brain Power series. The following year, I tied several loose ends together to complete the trilogy.

  Since finishing Brain Power, as if any book is ever truly finished, I have written two other manuscripts, Finding Jade and a first draft of my most recent story, Beneath the Ash. Thus far, my writing journey has been a wild ride, alternating between euphoria and despair. Fortunately, the euphoria outweighs the despair.  I live for the thrill of creating a story out of thin air by breathing life into an abstract idea.

  That thrill counters the discouraging moments, those inevitable moments where my confidence is hounded by self-doubts, often fueled by yet another rejection letter. But I’m an optimist, so I plan to keep writing, mostly because it makes me feel alive, and because I’ve found that I can’t really help myself.