Happy New Year! It's hard to believe 2011 is already over. I remember last New Year's my resolution was to finish what I started. Well, I can say with confidence that I have succeeded. Since January 2011 I've written four new standalone short stories, an anthology of five stories (now on Kindle), and, as of yesterday, finished a novel I've been working on since I started my journey at Stonecoast in the summer of 2010. It's been a long, sometimes difficult, oftentimes wonderful experience with plenty of roadblocks along the way.
For the longest time I've been my own greatest obstacle when it comes to completing a story. I have what I'd term literary ADD. Whether I'm reading or writing, it's often hard for me sustain momentum and focus to see it through to completion. I've been working on that. And I've gotten better. When I started the novel all the way back in 2010 my mentor was David Durham, author of Acacia. I realize now how little I actually knew about writing. David had kind and encouraging comments, but as I look back I see a jumbled, confusing mess of a novel that didn't know what it wanted to be. Somewhere around the winter of 2011, with the help of SF great Jim Kelly, a real story finally started to take shape, with interesting characters, ideas, and themes. I scrapped a significant percentage of what I'd written the previous semester, did some serious thinking about what exactly I wanted to write, and tried desperately to wrap my brain around the one thing I'd never quite been able to grasp before: the ever trusty outline.
Flash forward one year exactly and I've got 80,000 words of a first draft I'm reasonably proud of. Don't get me wrong, it's nowhere near ready for publication. It needs lots of revision, editing, and polishing. The characters need more development. The description could be better. The prose could be tighter. It needs an additional 15,000 words before it's where I want it length-wise. But at least it's a complete story, and that in itself is a milestone for me. My first real novel. It feels strange writing those words. When I was a kid, the first book I ever read was The War of the Worlds. From the first time I saw that cover, with its pulpy Martian war machines blasting helpless Brits with their heat rays, I knew I wanted to be a writer. The power to build (or destroy) entire worlds, weave complex and engaging narratives, and breathe life into characters was irresistible, the holy grail of a childhood rife with imagination. I can safely say I'm on my way to achieving that dream.
Have I earned the right to call myself a writer? That's a hard question to answer. I've published nothing of note. After all these years I've sold just one short story, in my senior year of college, to a magazine that folded after one issue. I made 10 dollars, enough to buy a combo at Wendy's and have some spare change for a cup of coffee. But who's in it for the money, anyway? I'm doing this for one person. Me. Which brings me to my resolution for 2012. Find an agent. Sell the novel. I feel like everything up to this point has just been preparation. Now the real work begins. I've got a long road ahead of me, but it seems the clouds are finally parting and the sun is shining brighter than ever. So, have I earned the right to call myself a writer?
I believe the answer is, emphatically, yes.
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