My Writing Life

I’m a writer. I can’t tell you how many years it took for me to say that in public. From what I read, that’s not unusual; many writers are introverts and we seldom think our writing is worthy of public consumption.

I find this particularly interesting because I’m anything but an introvert, and I’ve always considered myself to be competent and confident, but I found I was reticent to even talk about my writing in the early years, let alone tell anyone I’m a writer. I’m a bit more comfortable doing so now, until I read the likes of Sherman Alexie, Maureen Dowd, Carl Hiaasen, or Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, along with so many other great writers – then I’m quickly humbled and wonder if I’m whistling in a graveyard.

If you’re a writer, or an aspiring writer, as I come across either interesting tidbits, sage advice, or simply fun websites, I’ll try to add a link, or possibly provide an excerpt as long as it doesn’t mean sharing a cell with OJ for plagiarism.

Writing is an odd vocation or avocation, and while it means one thing to me, I suspect it means something very different to every writer out there. My first bit of advice would be to simply have fun, and keep polishing your craft by reading a wide variety of authors, books on writing, and most of all write with passion; write with feeling, whether your happy, sad, or pissed off, let it flow through your finger tips onto the screen – I assume you’re using a computer if you’re reading this.

I thought about providing a list of books that I’m reading, or have read, but that would become so nutso that no one is going to slog through the list, so I’ll simply try to note what I’ve just read, what I thought of it, and then I’ll take that down when I write the next one.

I mentioned Sherman Alexie above, and I just finished one of his books, The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alexie, as much as any author I’ve read, captures the humor, the love, the pain, all the emotions of being a human being on an imperfect planet. Even though this story, and others, take place on the reservation and invokes much of the Native American culture, there is a universality to life that he uniquely brings to his stories. I would highly recommend this book, and everything else he produces.