The title of this blog entry is a play on words. I have been thinking, conspiring, dreaming, living and exploding creative energy for a series of novels that begins with “The Calling”. Once I flesh more of it out (it literally has been playing in my brain for about three years now, so I make no promises about when this will occur) I will be posting exerpts, ideas, and information on the progress.
The reason that the title is a play on words is that I have been a writer since before I could read or write. I was always living out imaginary stories, then my mother would write my plots for me as I drew pictures or created collages to go with them. By the time we had our first computer I was filling up floppy disks with my words, and of course I am guilty of killing many poor defenseless trees through printed pages and filled notebooks.
I started writing my first novel The Storm Before my Calm in 1996, I was sixteen years old and in love for the first time. After six notebooks, that were passed around in the classrooms of my high school, I then went about writing up the notebooks into a computer manuscript. This process took me until 2001. Hundreds of pages, harddrive crashes, moments of insanity, and less than twenty rejection letters led me to self publish my baby. I have come to terms with The Storm not being “perfect”, it is what it is, and I could never write it again. It is a specific moment of my life and how I felt at that time, and it was and is a true telling of one boy’s passionate love for a girl and the drama that ensued. There will always be a special place in my heart for my little novel that could.
As time passed and I grew into an adult I realized that becoming a world class writer was going to take work and experience. Trying to get a creative writing degree turned into a painful exercise in what not to become, my creative writing professor. After an addiction and a realization that I had been suffering from depression for the majority of my life (post my mother’s death) I began my career as a Psychology student. As my journey continued I realized my calling was to help people, and that writing would have to take a back seat until I could procure my other calling which would allow me to support my wife and future family better than being a starving artist.
I am not surprised that now on the eve of my graduating from college that the creative juices are flowing again. My writing used to be manic and impulsive exercises where I felt at times I was possessed by a demonic muse that would not be happy until I typed out The End.
Now that I am older, more educated, and healthier, I am ready to write again. My buddy Ryan and I went shopping for a dignified old school journal, we picked out a leather one with one of those leather strings to tie it up. I’ve been writing in it ever since, deciding life stories of characters, dynamics of factions and writing out scenes that just won’t stop playing in my head like a record scratching over someone’s favorite song.
So as Eden Monaghan, my protagonist, finds his calling, I too am experiencing the comfort and knowledge of my calling(s) and the benefits that come when we realize just exactly who we are and what we are meant to do.
The creativity coming now, at this juncture, just shows that my demonic muse can be patient, but is ready to cash in my promise that once I was done with one calling I would pick up where I left off with the last one.
The reason that the title is a play on words is that I have been a writer since before I could read or write. I was always living out imaginary stories, then my mother would write my plots for me as I drew pictures or created collages to go with them. By the time we had our first computer I was filling up floppy disks with my words, and of course I am guilty of killing many poor defenseless trees through printed pages and filled notebooks.
I started writing my first novel The Storm Before my Calm in 1996, I was sixteen years old and in love for the first time. After six notebooks, that were passed around in the classrooms of my high school, I then went about writing up the notebooks into a computer manuscript. This process took me until 2001. Hundreds of pages, harddrive crashes, moments of insanity, and less than twenty rejection letters led me to self publish my baby. I have come to terms with The Storm not being “perfect”, it is what it is, and I could never write it again. It is a specific moment of my life and how I felt at that time, and it was and is a true telling of one boy’s passionate love for a girl and the drama that ensued. There will always be a special place in my heart for my little novel that could.
As time passed and I grew into an adult I realized that becoming a world class writer was going to take work and experience. Trying to get a creative writing degree turned into a painful exercise in what not to become, my creative writing professor. After an addiction and a realization that I had been suffering from depression for the majority of my life (post my mother’s death) I began my career as a Psychology student. As my journey continued I realized my calling was to help people, and that writing would have to take a back seat until I could procure my other calling which would allow me to support my wife and future family better than being a starving artist.
I am not surprised that now on the eve of my graduating from college that the creative juices are flowing again. My writing used to be manic and impulsive exercises where I felt at times I was possessed by a demonic muse that would not be happy until I typed out The End.
Now that I am older, more educated, and healthier, I am ready to write again. My buddy Ryan and I went shopping for a dignified old school journal, we picked out a leather one with one of those leather strings to tie it up. I’ve been writing in it ever since, deciding life stories of characters, dynamics of factions and writing out scenes that just won’t stop playing in my head like a record scratching over someone’s favorite song.
So as Eden Monaghan, my protagonist, finds his calling, I too am experiencing the comfort and knowledge of my calling(s) and the benefits that come when we realize just exactly who we are and what we are meant to do.
The creativity coming now, at this juncture, just shows that my demonic muse can be patient, but is ready to cash in my promise that once I was done with one calling I would pick up where I left off with the last one.
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