Well, It Has to Start Somewhere

Ah, yes. The obligatory author blog. We do this for the chance of getting an audience before we’ve earned one and just possibly catching the attention of some of the agents we’ll eventually try to woo. It’s not the writing we necessarily want to do, but we carve out the time because art consists of just three of the letters it takes to spell marketability. So here’s my rendition.

I actually tried this once before, over on Facebook and Goodreads to little notice. Back when politics was taking a massive gulp out of our daily lives in ways we’d never seen before and unfortunately still do today. As usual, I got it wrong, posting about whatever popped into my head the moment I sat at the computer. I could look back at the page and tell you what specific “topics” I covered but choose not to. If you’re curious, feel free to look for it.

Twitter was another mistake I used to promote my self-published book ad nauseum. In some cross-promotional nightmare, I followed other authors doing the same thing and created an infinite loop of book ads that made viewing my timeline impossible. Then, I got lucky and opened a DM as I tried to delete them (thinking they worked the same as email), only to release a tidal wave of spam onto all those follow-for-follows that got me banned from the site. It was apparently permanent, because I’ve never received a response to the many emails I’ve sent to explain the situation. I’ve since rejoined under a different name (linked under my picture on the homepage).

So what do I have to offer? Well, as the past two paragraphs have hinted, I’m going to tell you about my failures. About all the ways I’ve gotten writing wrong—for 25 years. No, that’s not an exaggeration, and it’s also over half my life. And that only counts the time after I started pursuing it as a dream/career. Technically, I’ve been writing since I was 13, which I’ll post about at some point. In tenth grade, I discovered poetry as a means of self-expression. I’ll cover that too. Two years out of high school and about to drop out of college, I shifted to long-form fiction. And here we are.

Does that make me qualified to write about writing? Maybe. Maybe not. But it does qualify me to talk about my writing, specifically how I’ve fumbled through this entire pursuit and learned lessons the hard way. About my stubborn impatience. My ignorance. But also my discipline. Because as stubborn as I am, I’ve never stayed down. I’ve learned lessons. I’ve kept pushing. I’ve brushed myself off and kept writing.

And now I feel on the verge. At least closer than I ever have. Mistakes taught me how to write, how to edit, how to build a story, and—as the linchpin to it all—how to create a writing process. So I’m going to share that journey of faceplants here. My plan is to add a post on as many Mondays as the writing and the paying job allow. Each entry will alternate between past and present, the mistakes themselves and what I learned from them.

I hope to see you at the next one.