@ 11:53 PM (25 months, 14 days ago)
10/21/2006
I've wanted to be a writer ever since I was a little girl. I started out writing short stories in my early childhood. As I grew older, in my teen years, I wrote poems mostly and stood clear of writing short stories, as I was made to feel that writing stories as a teen was just lame and nerdy. My family held high hopes that I would win a journalism scholarship and go on to become a famous journalist once my writing dream had become realized. My grandfather hoped I would be the next Barbara Walters. I didn't want to be Barbara Walters; I wanted to be the next Stephen King, Anne Rice, Ann Rule, or Dean Koontz. I wanted to be a successful novelist with a mountain home containing a writing room full of books with some of them being my own; candles lighting every dark corner of my writing studio; a desktop computer positioned fashionably atop a dark wood writing desk from England; and the relaxing sound of Kenny G. in the background fueling my thoughts with everything necessary to pound out another bestseller! My family didn't approve of my dream to become a novelist.
My family believed that world news and current events is what sold out to fame, and as long as the world is going crazy in all directions, there is a paycheck in getting on television to report it. I didn't want to read an author's televised script or take credit for sitting on a stage in front of a camera and news crew reading a teleprompter with scrolling words written by some writing intern fresh out of school. I knew that I could reach a more faithful audience than a news anchor or journalist would reach from a television set, smiling and moving their lips as if they were on some kind of robotic mode of operation. Let's face it, t.v. news squawkers only have the faithfully tuned-in audience of those that are there just to see what fresh gossip has been aquired about Jennifer and Brad, or Katie and Tom, or what weird name a celebrity has named their baby. People tune-in just to hear about fame and fortune beyond their reach (MTV Cribs), relationships that never make it past courtship and basic sex (Oprah and Stedman), villians and victims of crime and murder (CourtTV, Forensic Files), and the reality t.v. shows that force us to cheer for the contestants (Deal or No Deal) or vomit for the game itself (Fear Factor)! Television is all about what's on our mind, not what's in it! These so-called "journalist" people make a living reporting what they are told by writers to say before a viewing audience, and after they leave the stage, they forget what they read aloud to millions of people watching them. As a young girl I knew this then just as I know it now, and even back then I knew that the only way I could talk to people and have them stay with me beyond the "highlights" is to pick a writing genre, give it my all, and keep my readers entertained novel after novel. I told my family I would give the news world part of my talent, and that would be that I would give the journalists and news anchors something to read before bed or in airports to pass the time of flight delay that not even an Ivy League writing intern at their studio could give them and that's a story to either scare the crap out of them or make them run to their spouse and love them with all they have within their heart.
I don't write romance novels, as I believe it is a massacre on the lives of trees to print such wordy porn when looking at a picture book of porn would probably be just as "time served" as a romance novel where the girl always gets her man either forever or in bed. Who cares? I think it's more justified to write a scarey ghost story or booger story, even a make-you-cry-tug-at-your-heartstrings story, because it reaches people with more realism than a 30-year-old attractive single heiress of a million dollar fortune ripping her clothes off to have hot sweaty sex with her gardener! The reality of that is that a gardner might love his wealthy boss lady, but more than likely it's going to be for her money. And an even more realistic idea here is that a wealthy boss lady is not going to stare out her bedroom window in search of a sexual encounter with a low paid gardener, when she can stroll down the street in her millionaire neighborhood to an 80-year-old widower's home, sweep him off his feet, inherit his money to add to what she already owns, and probably hire a much more attractive friggin' gardener! LOL!
My family tried to push me in all sorts of career directions once they realized that I wasn't going to be a face on CNN or one the local news stations. They wanted me to become a number of things. They wanted me to be a nurse that saved lives; a lawyer that sent bad people to prison and gave good people justice; a social worker that saved children from abusive homes and fulfilled dreams of hopeful parents to adopt a child of their own; a teacher that gave children a future and reached out to the learning challenged to show them there is light at the end of the tunnel. All my family wanted me to do was save people and save lives, and my only dream was to reach people through words.., my books! After my family realized that nothing they could say or do would change how I felt about writing, they gave in. My grandmother bought a Brother typewriter and who do you think got the first try at using it? That's right, it was me! I bet I pounded out--single fingered no doubt--about 20 pages of a short story that my grandparent's later read and bragged about saying things like, "Our grand-daughter is going to conquer the world as a novelist!" All it took to get their confidence that I could definitely write a novel was a 20-page short story about a young girl roughing it in the 1800s.
I am almost 30 years old now, with 3 children, a husband, and 2 house cats, and I assure you that I've written more than my share would-be novels at my desktop computer over the last 6 years, and none of my work has ever made it past SAVE on my computer unless of course it was an article that I submitted as an attachment via e-mail to a magazine or Internet website! LOL! I never submitted anything to a novel editor and it's been solely out of fear that I haven't done so. I've been afraid of being routine. I've been afraid of being old-fashioned. I've been afraid of rejection. I've been afraid of all sorts of things, but one thing I'm not afraid of is submitting my thoughts online to a Internet population that I've never met in my entire life, let alone a world of magazine subscribers. Yes, you, the Internet reader of this very submission, I do not fear as much as the novel editor! Ask me why I fear a publishing house editor and not the thousands of people that might stumble across this Web blog or subscribe to a magazine and you'll have an answer that I, myself, have not been able to come up with as of yet!
You want to know my deepest fear? Of course you do! Everyone wants to know the deepest fear of someone other than themselves! My deepest fear is that I am afraid of being labled as a writer of one genre, and if I were to ever write outside that genre, I would flop and never write another seller. Stephen King is a horror novelist, as is Dean Koontz. The both of them know what to sit in front of their computers and write about. ...They know what sells for them. ...They know how to reach an audience. ...They know what they were born to do as writers. Anne Rice has made her living and created her fame as the vampire novelist. Ann Rule obtained her celebrity name as being the true-crime novelist writing about infamous criminals such as Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgeway. She knows what people expect from her when she comes up with a story and/or submits a book to a publisher. Me, I have no clue what readers would expect of a new novelist nowdays. Are they expecting a better horror writer? Are they expecting to be swept off their feet by a direct romance novelist? Are they looking for another author that exposes peoples lives in true-story fashion? What are people looking for in bookstores nowdays, and what do they want from a new writer?
I sit in front of my computer day-after-day thinking of stories to write about. Sometimes I only write 10 pages of an idea; sometimes I write a paragraph or dialogue that popped into my head while doing a chore or activity that day. I always keep a pen and scrap piece of paper handy so that if I should be folding laundry and an idea occurs to me, I can reach over, grab my pen and paper, and write down exactly what popped into my head. I might use the idea for a novel. I might include the dialogue, scene, or paragraph in a novel. I might just save the entire thing in NotePad on my computer where it will sit for 5 or 6 years until I have a use for it one day. Who knows? Either way, I'm a writer and I'm here. I'm here to write about whatever pops into my head and entertain all that read my blog with my creations and my thoughts. I might offend some of you, humor some of you, influence or inspire some of you, or I might just gain some of you as a fan. Either way, I'm here and I'm writing. Let's just hope that one day I write something absolutely wonderful that I will confident in submitting to a novel editor that wins him or her over in a great and fantastic way, and a big fat check will come in the mail for me so that I can reap the wonderful rewards of all of my efforts!
