February 20, 2009
When you watch the hour and minute hands of a clock, they hardly seem to move…but the truth is, they never stop moving. Look away, then look back, and time has jumped forward. You’ve made progress through the space-time continuum, and you didn’t even realize it till you looked back. That’s the way it can be with writing, too…or with any kind of learning or progress. Sometimes, when you’re waiting impatiently for progress to come, for success to happen, you don’t see it because it moves too slowly. There are exceptions, of course, but for me, this is how it has always been. I’ll work hard on the writing, work hard on marketing the writing, and nothing seems to happen. It feels like I’m stuck in quicksand and will never move forward. But the truth is, I never stop moving forward. I’m always making progress, no matter how infinitesimal the daily increments might be.
I’ve been thinking about this lately, because I’ve been frustrated at how slowly things continue to develop in my fiction writing career. Sometimes, it’s almost unbearable, wondering when the heck things are finally going to start happening. But then, as I’ve done recently, I’ll look back, and I’ll realize I’ve already come a long way. The truth is, though I’ve always had an interest in writing, I didn’t really take it seriously and get the right information and guidance to start making it a career until a workshop I attended in 2003. It was the Oregon Professional Fiction Writers Master Class, conducted by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and others, and it was a true turning point for me. As I come up on the anniversary of the start of that workshop, March 1, I look back and see that I’ve come light years since then. Before that workshop, I had hardly a clue about anything related to a fiction writing career. I just never found or sought out the right resources or people to give me a leg up. So as of six years ago, before I attended that workshop, I was almost a blank slate. I only had a handful of publishing credits, and I knew next to nothing about the publishing industry or the overall creative process.
Now, six years later, I still haven’t sold a novel, but I’ve had a bunch of stories published…some magazine articles…a few essays…and even an entire book of stories! I’ve sold work to Simon & Schuster and DAW books. I’ve written six novels, all of them at least good…a few of them great, I think. Even in the face of the down economy and its resulting cutbacks in the publishing world, I feel closer than ever to breaking through. So I guess I really have made some progress. And I’m having a lot more fun now than ever, even with the career advancing at a snail’s pace. It’s a real kick writing novels and stories, attending workshops, appearing at conventions, and moving toward making a dream a reality. That’s the one thing I fall back on when I’m most frustrated with the slow pace of my career: at least I have a dream, and it gives my life meaning and purpose. It keeps me focused and keeps life interesting.
In closing, here’s another travel photo from the archives. Yesterday, I mentioned my brother, Scott, who’s on a business trip to Israel. In honor of my brother, here’s a shot of the two of us on a whale watching boat at Bar Harbor, Maine, during our big adventure in New England and the Canadian Maritimes back in 1991. What a trip that was. We both got on each other’s nerves like crazy, there was all kind of friction. We’d planned to make it all the way to the Viking ruins at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, but we ended up bagging that leg and going back to Bar Harbor. The funny thing is, we still talk about it and remember it fondly as a cool adventure. Maybe someday we’ll do something like it again, only this time we’ll make it to the Viking ruins. I’d like that.
So this one’s for Scott! Safe travels, bro! And to all of you out there in weekend-ville, see you tomorrow! (P.S., Scott and I are the ones in the middle who look like hippies.)
Bar Harbor, Maine, 1991
