Writing...

Writing

I write. That’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. Only I didn’t know it.

Writing is something I can't not do. I control my fingers on the keyboard and what comes out on the screen. I control the movements of my pen on what comes out on the paper. I control what I write down. I do not control the thoughts that come into my head or my need to write them down.

In writing, I control what stays and what doesn’t. I am the great adder and subtracter. I control when I start and stop and when I’m finished. But the when and why of what comes into my mind—nada.

Writing is like a muscle that requires daily exercise. It atrophies quickly though I’ve rarely missed a day in twenty years. Like a muscle it needs to be stretched and pushed to grow.  And much like a sport, I need to practice it over and over and over…

Sometimes I feel like I’m chasing something, trying to keep up with what’s coming out. My fear—I won’t catch up. I won’t get there—wherever there is—and what I need to write down will escape. Other times I feel like I’m drawing from a deep well, impossibly deep in the abyss of my imagination. So deep that I find places of divine beauty and profane horror, of grace and disgust, of joy and sorrow, of happiness and sadness that pours out on the page before me.

It must come out. I must take it out. Whether I chase it or pull it. It’s there for me to take. Sometimes the words fall into sentences and sentences into story. Sometimes they don’t. I keep learning. Whether I’m out of breath or out of strength matters little. The story wants to be told, needs to be told and wants me to tell it.

Whether I’m wide-awake or barely conscious. The words come. The sentences form. Sometimes they’re together. Sometimes they’re in pieces. Oh, the dream to write a sentence without feeling it needs to change. But still they come for the story—the all-important story.

It’s always about the story. The story that combines the inside with the outside and the stuff that’s in between. It speaks to who we are, our uniqueness and our humanity.

Writing is a gift, and at times, a confused curse. Being relentless to that taskmaster is what I do. It matters little whether it comes from within or outside. It’s not for me to discern.

As Robert Frost once said, “Writing a poem is discovering.” Writing is discovering and all that accompanies the discovery.

Writing is what I do. It’s what I’ve always done, not that I knew it. I know it now.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet?

To Tweet or Not To Tweet?

I don’t know that there’s a right answer to this question but if you’re not asking yourself the question, you might want to consider it.

Two years ago I was not part of the social media scene. The corporate world that I was part of did not take to this “social thing” kindly. It was new, unknown and seen as unnecessary—a frivolous notion from youth and daydreamers. It was not what serious business required. At best it was a fad—a fad I might add that’s passed its 10^th birthday.

I could all but see the pages of history turning. Hearing those repeated phrases from the past “it won’t be here long” or “it won’t last” or simply “it won’t work”. I wondered. Was it like that for the car, the plane, the radio, the television, the computer, the internet … I think so.

If my world hadn’t been reinvented, I’d still be of that thinking too… maybe…

Packed with the passion and love of writing and my 10,000 hours of practiced rejection, the writing world has become my new home and social media a close neighbor. Twitter resides next door.

The social media world came by force. My publisher said either I hire someone to do it or do it myself but I had to be part of it. I also was quickly learning that “word of mouth” and “they’ll tell two people and so on and so on” were more myth than reality.

I started with LinkedIn. It seemed closest to where I was coming from. It was a way to introduce my business contacts to The Actor (my STARBook award novel) and my new author world. It became my “webpage” with all of my media links (print, video, radio and TV interviews) along with my itinerary of book events. Facebook followed close behind because “everyone is on Facebook”. I’ve found it difficult to expand to any level significant outside of friends and family as so few “share”. Enter my new neighbor—Twitter.

With little idea on how it worked outside of the 140-character message length, I was reluctant to get more acquainted with my new neighbor. It was my son that gave me the final push out the door with the introduction, “Dad just get an account. You’ll figure it out.”

And how right he was.

I’ve been through a lot from the beginning stages of picking who to follow through the “too-numerous-to-count” stages of tweeting and what to tweet. It’s become one of the most active means I use to promote my two books The Actor and The Drive In.

Now with every tweet going to more than 70,000 followers when asked ‘to tweet or not to tweet’ my answer today is an emphatic ‘its better than not’.

TDG

What Would You Do ...

It's been some time since I last posted. Lots has gone on in-between but I thought I'd start back with some of the thoughts I've had over that time.  

What Would You Do ... if you knew you couldn’t fail?

It’s a question that both plagued and fascinated me after first hearing it said years ago. Its sentiment has never left me.

It seemed, from what I’d come to accept, like an ideal I could never achieve yet its very essence came in the incessant two words “why not?”

I think this was mostly brought on because I was bored with what my work life had become. It wasn’t my passion or what I loved to do which I now believe is inextricably linked to what our purpose is here on this planet. I worked hard. I did well. I liked what I did or had come to find a way to like it “enough”. I pleased those around me. And I kept busy—very busy. Being busy can mask a lot of things—important things—but not the questions, “is this it? is this all there is?”

I don’t know that I was looking for something I hadn’t already found. I just hadn’t found a way to put it all together.

I discovered writing as a teenager while playing in a band. I wrote most of our music and lyrics. When the music thing didn’t happen, I went off to engineering school and subsequently a career in the profession. Strangely, I never stopped writing and took it up in earnest a couple of years after graduating. I began to think of myself as a writer who worked as an engineer. But the rejection of my writing never stopped coming. So much so that I had come to the conclusion that “author” wasn’t going to part of this lifetime. But “never say never”. During a family trip to the west coast of Canada to take our daughter off to school, I realized, despite all my years of writing, I didn’t have a keepsake for my family. Everyone knew dad’s dream of publishing a novel yet all I had to show for it was 8-1/2” x 11” pieces of paper. Then and there I decided. I had to at least accomplish that. Thinking of a surprise hardcover of one of my novel length works under the Christmas tree, made things change. I found a publisher, worked with a couple of professional editors and halved the length of my original 800-page manuscript. Today, I like to say I not only transformed the story but I transformed my life—as that writer who worked for so long as an engineer is now a full-time writer. Not only do I have a keepsake for my family but a novel I want the world to read.

I no longer ask, “Is this it?”

And I have an answer to “what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail”.

I’m doing it!

TDG