A Book Completed

Tired out from intensive writing, I took a break to read and reorganize. My break lasted over a year.

Eventually, while I no longer pursued publishing Star of Justice, I figured I might as well write another book. The first attempt had been quite successful. This time I would pace myself and try to keep a life as I wrote.

The only problem was I couldn't write another book. I started one and got stuck. I started another one and got stuck. By the third book, I was getting nervous.

I had thrown everything I could think of storywise into Star of Justice. Maybe I was a one-book wonder.

A year or so later, I borrowed a book from my brother called How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. Card is a prolific sci-fi writer, so he should know what he's talking about. He frightened me.

He warned that a writer must publish or cease being a writer. Without the permanence of a published manuscript, a writer faces an eternity of rewrites, revisions and editorial changes for a story that is more or less done. Writers are by nature perfectionists, yet writing itself is not a perfectible act. No one can reach a "pinnacle" of writing ability. "But, like fools, we keep trying" (David Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China) unless we publish and move on with our next story life. Yes, we will forever see the mistakes in that first book. There will always be mistakes.

I didn't want to believe Card, so I kept trying to write without trying to publish. I continued to fail. Eventually, I stopped trying to write because I didn't want to try to publish.

Which brings me to this year. This year, while listening to pointofview.net, I heard about Roaring Lambs. I was interested -for the first time in a long time- about writing. I made preparations to go. I went. I planned how to make the best use of my time while there. I think I made the best use of my time while I was there. In fact, the first speaker pretty much set the tone for me. I'll be writing about what I learned from Dr. Gene Getz later.

The result is this blog, and seeking out writing contacts, and doing research on self-publishing and marketing. I've also added an actual plan toward submitting Star of Justice to a publisher. This time, when it gets rejected, I won't put it back into a drawer. I'll submit somewhere else. If I have to, I'll self-publish.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still a Type B, but for some reason, I seem to be willing to act Type B+ about this.

Maybe I'm growing up.

'Bout time.