The Book - Part II

This is Jack

The years from 2006 to 2014 is a long time to work on a single book.  But, honestly, it's the last thing on my to do list every day.  Oh, don't get me wrong, writing is a real passion of mine.  But, responsibilities come first, and the primary responsibility in my life has been my wife and my two children. I know, I should put myself higher on the rank of priorities, but it is hard for me to feel like I have that luxury.

The good news is that after all this time, I am close to finishing the book and I am growing more excited every day. So, why am I writing a blog instead of writing the book?  Because if I don't let this tension out somewhere, I mean, unless I want to bore someone talking about a story that isn't yet published, this is the only place I can ramble on about it. 

I found that if I stare at all the pages too long in a single sitting, I start to make huge changes and I don't want to do that. So, at the moment the story is, how should I say... fermenting.  I'm letting it sit for a few days, maybe a few weeks and then I'll re-read the whole thing again and make sure it's all good to go.  I did this once already and found a few days worth of work to fix. You know, inconsistencies and misplaced portions. 

It's a strange story, and like the doll in it, Jack, the story itself has taken on a life of its own.  There are so many people in it who have been inspired by people I know. But, I think what moves me about the story is how personal it has become.  I mean, there is so much of me in it I wonder if all writers put themselves so deeply into their work.

Along the way, I have written on paper, on the backs of flyers and on my computer at home.  For a long while, I found that writing on my ipod Touch using the notepad helped me make use of idle time, like while riding on the bus to go to work in the mornings, and riding home.  Standing in line in places was a good time to write with the ipod Touch.  I probably wrote 20,000 words on that little thing before it died.  Now I am carrying around an iPad Mini, but the draft has moved from a local machine to my email, where I can pick it up, work on it on a tablet - personally, I found my Windows Surface tablet so much more versatile for writing than my iPad Mini. The Windows Tablet came with MS Word already and I plugged in a Bluetooth keyboard and it allowed me to type for hours and hours while I was in the jury lounge waiting to be called to Jury Duty.  (What a wonderful day that was!)

In all, as an unpublished author, meaning I haven't published any books yet, or sold many short stories, I try not to feel daunted by the challenges presented.  Online, I heard that Amazon.com's publishing wing is getting greedy with their new Kindle Unlimited subscriptions deal.  Author's aren't making as much money as before. That worries me a little, but I am hoping to enlighten myself along the way before I put all my chips in the pot.  So far, I haven't found a publisher.  I may search for an agent.  Any comments on finding a good agent would be appreciated.

There's a horrible fear I have.  The fear that I'll die with all my words still in my head.  I wrote a short story, The River and The Woman of Light, which illustrated that fear quite well.  I'll be writing tonight.

Until next time, adieu.

The Book - Part I

You see it in so many movies and read about it in books, you know, that laughable story of the person who says, "Hey, I'm writing a book!" Then around the room heads turn and someone chimes in under their breath, "He's been saying that for years."

It's the joke that keeps on going and nobody wants to hear it. The reclusive and annoying self titled author wants to mean business.  He has every intention of getting to the work of writing that one great, passionate bundle of prose, but something is always getting in the way.  That's how things have turned out. That's me, the guy in the room everyone is nodding towards with half empty glasses, and meaningless, sympathetic smiles. Nobody loves an unfinished author. No really, they don't.

Let me back up a bit. Okay, maybe a lot.  Back in my twenties, when I was married to my first wife, the mother of my first born, I had an idea.  I thought up the premise of what I thought would be a really great story.  I wrote out twelve pages, and they were, for lack of a better word, captivating.  I hate to toot my own horn, but after shopping it around my local group of peers for their thoughts, I resolved that my idea was sound.  I wanted to expand upon it, and they wanted me to do that as well. But sadly, it sat in a drawer for a good long time. The process I began just fizzled out.  Over time, it came back into view, fermenting in my mind.  But I didn't write more down because I was just too busy.  That was 1998.

Life goes on.  my first marriage lasted six years.  It was for the best, after all, my former wife had made a turn for the worse and although an argument can be made that I made a promise for 'better or for worse,' nobody told me how bad worse could be. I emptied my cabinets and drawers and ran away in my car.  For the time being I still had a job working as a carpenter for my ex's family.  That memory clearly reminds me how my ex believed that she owned me, because of that fact.  Working for her family, and not having an education, made it hard for me to make a clean break. That and the fact that we had a child together.  But, let's get back to the story of the story.

After being homeless for two months, living out of my car, a kind friend took me in.  His name is Mike.  Mike is a great guy, despite his issues. I was fortunate that he took me in when he did because I had been growing desperate. Once I had settled in, I found work and had a moment to reconnect with the life I'd lost track of.  There was the story, staring me in the face from the bottom of a box full of other stories, finished stories. I knew I had to finish this one as a book.  But, as I suggested earlier, I'm the guy who's been saying that for years.

Fast forward to 2002. New wife, new life, and I began working in a completely new field.  You know the one, the job where many of the best uneducated, but intelligent, people start out at, Customer Service.  But the biggest hurdle was still to come.  In 2006, I almost died, but instead, I spent eight hours in surgery removing a part of me that had gone bad.  I guess I do that a lot, removing the parts of my life that go bad.  It made me think about all the unfinished stories I still wanted to tell.  Having now remarried and having a second child did more to hamper my time spent writing, so with this uniquely new perspective, the prospect of my own mortality, I decided it was time to finish that book.  And so I began.