One Year In

One year ago I took the leap and did something I had dreamed of doing for years: I enrolled in a local community education class for people that wanted to be writers. I had no background in writing unless you consider programming writing (I don't).

One thing I did have was a crazy hyper imagination. Always have. I can't listen to a song without deciding I should rewrite some of the lyrics. I can't watch a movie without spinning narratives of how they should change parts of it. Or I begin imagining the back stories of bit characters and how they could be made more compelling and folded back over the story.

I guess you could say I don't listen very well. Never really have. Sorry world. Maybe... just maybe... all that time I frustrated you will turn out to have been worth it with what I create. Probably not, and that'll be ok if that's how it goes.

That desire to create and imagine was just always there. As a child, I would play with Star Wars action figures every day. But Han wasn't Han and Chewbacca wasn't Chewie. The Jawas were little kids always getting into trouble and trying to stay out of the way of the adult characters in my made up worlds.

We would run the hose all day long in the summer flooding my best friend's yard and the characters would try to stave off the massive natural disaster that had befallen them. I don't think his parents loved that. Sorry Neil's Mom and Dad-- you can have some credit for anything that I turn out capable of creating.

Anyway, that was me. I love other people's stories and always have. So many people have excited my imagination over the years and I am eternally grateful for their vision and creativity.

But, now it's my turn. I had a simple goal when I started: To write the best book I ever read. Don't misunderstand me. The word I in there is very important. I set out to write the story, that if someone else wrote it, I would be happy to just be able to consume. I didn't know what that story would look like or where it would go any more than I knew how things would end up with the Star Wars figures when I was ten. I'll talk more about how the story unfolded out of the assignments of those early community ed classes in another post one day.

I may not have known where it would go, but I knew a couple things about it that I want to get off my chest right up front.

I knew it would be dark and gritty. I knew it would tell the tale of complex people put in impossible situations. I knew it would be hard to predict outcomes, because I don't do formulas. I knew it would have villains that would be capable of surprising with their compassion, and heroes you want desperately to cheer for that will sometimes let you down.

In short, it was going to be messy like the real world is messy. I wanted to make you grimace, cringe (at the character's actions ideally, not at me), and cry. Often. All while being able to see glimmers of hope and growth that you can cheer for as well.

If you want a story that can just make you feel good, run away. I'm not your guy. For those that stay, I'm going to give it everything I have.

PS: I don't use AI in the writing of my books. I don't really judge those that do, because I don't care what other people do. As I've laid out here, it is the thrill of creating that brought me to this point-- I'll be damned if I'm going to give it away. That being said, I do like to feed descriptions of my characters into AI routines to visualize my characters sometimes. It's a fun escape when I'm too exhausted to write anymore, yet too amped up to go to bed. The above image is Elias. He's a nasty guy. One of the worst. I think you're gonna like him.