The Journey Begins

When did I know I wanted to be a writer? 

 

1980 -- (I think my brain cramped just typing that) -- I was in the 5th grade and everyone in the class was required to submit a short story/book for the state's annual Young Authors competition. While most of my peers whined, complained and dragged their feet, struggling to come up with the minimum 1000-word submission in the three-weeks we were given, I cranked out more than 3000 words in a single sitting on a Saturday afternoon. Of course, there was a 2500-word maximum, so clearly, I had already exceeded the guideline and had yet to finish the story-line (... yes - for those of you who know me and are snickering right now - it's a lifelong pattern of long-windedness which I blame on my Irish heritage). For better or for worse, when I'm inspired, writing has always been effortless.

Forty years later, I can reflect on a successful thirty-year career ... but not as a professional writer. In the last fifteen of those years, however, I reached executive-level positions for two well-known national nonprofits where I had the opportunity to do substantial business writing and corporate communications (as well as some personal blogging) which was often satisfying ... but not the same.

The desire to write fiction, however, would still resurface from time to time - like a recurring itch that pops up inexplicably, drives you mad for an indeterminate period of time and then disappears just as mysteriously as it appeared. My method of scratching that itch varied from spell to spell, but, having been employed in the corporate world from the moment I graduated college, finding the time to commit to a good, healthy, satisfying scratch has been challenging.

At the end of 2014, there were a few months where I had a break between positions and I could feel the itch coming on, but wouldn't give myself permission to scratch. It was like hearing the haunting words of your grandmother echoing in your head, "Don't scratch that! You'll just make it itch more. Leave it alone!" While sage advice for a mosquito bite, it probably shouldn't be applied to these metaphorical-type itches. Well ... not all of them, anyway.

As a diversion from scratching during those few months, I drew up outlines for several business books for which I had compiled the knowledge and expertise over my career, suppressing the urge to scratch the fiction-itch for fear I would make it itch more. I'm sure, someday, I will turn those outlines into solid books for the corporate audience, but even if one of them becomes a bestseller, it won't compare to the satisfaction I experience writing fiction.

Have you ever been struck by an itch at the worst possible time, in the most awkward spot to (gracefully) reach?

Tuesday, May 28, 2019, was the start of the most horribly-timed, problematically located, insatiable-fiction-itch which would birth the epic Two Truths and a Spy series, beginning with the novel, The Marylebone Intersection.

Coming off of the three-day Memorial Day weekend, concluding with a solid night's sleep Monday night/Tuesday morning, I have an unusually long, incredibly vivid dream that, uncharacteristically, remained in my long-term memory, nagging me throughout the day. For the sake of brevity (a word I obviously define differently than the rest of the world), you can jump to my Process post to see how I've leveraged technology during my 90-mile-daily-round-trip commute to sustain the creative flow while working a full-time 60-hour/week job, but essentially, that dream would feed the architecture for what has grown into a trilogy (the Collision Countdown trilogy) within a larger series. The dream itself...? Now in Chapter 8 of what will become book 3, Head-on Collusion.

When I finally began to capture this developing saga someplace other than my head, I wondered (having never written a novel-length book before) if it was going to be a challenge for me to the 65,000-word benchmark. After writing 4000+ words in my first one-hour writing session, I stopped worrying about reaching a novel-worthy word-count. However, it did not stop me from obsessing over word-count entirely as I watched the estimated word-count (based on the outline) outgrow the appropriate range for a novel (65,000 - 110,000 words) in record time. It's a 5th-grade-flashback come full circle as the estimated word-count for The Marylebone Intersection now hovers at 185,000 words ⁽¹⁾ ... and that's after having moved three story-lines out and into their own books (and a second trilogy)!

Hopefully, they are not just words in volume, but words of substance. Words that draw you in and leave you wanting for what happens next in the lives of these characters. I often find myself wondering the same thing and take great delight in being the one who gets to satisfy that wonder first as I capture this story that seems to have a life of its own.  

Let the journey begin!

(1) word-count updated 04/01/2020