THE WRITING DRAGON

I know of no other occupation in which you do so much work and get zilch in return. And then the converse is true. I've read and heard many times of people who decided just yesterday to begin writing a book, like a romance, or a mystery, or whatever. They hammer it out and in a few months, they're done and send it out. And then boom! They're first time authors with a book contract.

There was one such story which I recall. In 1978/79 a teacher by the name of Lucy Phillips Stewart who lived in southern Illinois, had just read a romance novel, and thought it was really bad, and said to her husband, "I can do better." And he said, "Well, give it a try." And she did. In a matter of months, she'd written a Regency Romance, and sent it off to Dell--no agent, mind you--and they wrote back wanting to see the rest. They loved it, and bought it, and she wrote more novels, and I'm sure she retired well off.

Sometimes they haven't even gotten out of high school, and they have a book contract. Such is the case of Christopher Paolini, who wrote Eragon at age 15. At first he self-published and promoted his work with his parent's blessings, and was DISCOVERED by another novelist!
These are just a few examples of people who really had not had all the fun in collecting rejection slips, like a lot of us have.

I'm a Boomer--Baby Boomer--and I began writing when I was 16. I took a creative writing class in high school. I didn't write anything noteworthy, nothing literary. Just some poems and short stories. I liked the class so much, I took it again the next semester. Privately I wrote about my fantasies mostly. I had a big crush on Paul McCartney and my friends encouraged it. Then, one day I told my teacher that I liked writing so much that I planned on becoming a writer.

Did she encourage me? No. Instead she told me to choose another vocation because my spelling and grammar were really bad. Another vocation, you mean like get a job in a factory where I didn't have to use my brain?

Perhaps she didn't know it--possibly no one knew it, because I didn't--that I was dyslexic. I didn't know I was dyslexic until my late 40's. By then it was too late to discourage me. The writing bug had bitten me really bad.

Ignoring my teacher in high school, I went on to college and took another creative writing course. This time the teacher didn't eye my work for errors. He encouraged us all. He was, after all, a published writer, himself. I'd learned as much as I could, had fun learning something for a change. I had moved on from my crazy girlish fantasies and worked on poetry and tried my hand at more serious writing. And I began keeping a journal--I called it a diary, then--and still do to this day.

It wasn't until 1983, when I had begun communicating with other writers, I had a chance to join a writing critique class when I thought I might have a chance to be published, finally. I was writing horror fiction, at the time, and was in contact with another writer who'd had his book published--as well as a number of other things--and encouraged me to take his writing class. We'll call him James, and he lived in the next state over. It was too far for me to drive everyday, so he worked it out that I could stay in his house--pay him room and board. I didn't know where this would lead, because at the time I didn't know he was married, not until just up to the point when I accepted the deal.

I can't say that it was a life-changing experience, but it did give me an insight into a life I hadn't experience before. I got to rub elbows with other writers--all of them authors of one sort or another. But also, I must report, I knew just from the letters he'd written me, and the one time I'd met him for lunch in Savannah, that I would have to watch myself around him.

And rightly so, because he kissed me, right there in his house one day. It wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination. I mean it didn't make my toes curl, or give me a chill down my back, or make me want to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. It was more like being kissed by my paunchy, balding, cigar-smoking uncle. If I had a paunchy, cigar-smoking uncle. If anything, it made me want to turn tail and run.

In my next entry, I'd like to write about this experience--in segments, of course. I call it Not Far Enough