I Am a Writer...

I am a writer.  That is to say, I write books.  I do other things, as well, but this blog is devoted to my writing.  Where it comes from, what I'm doing, what I'm enjoying, what is annoying me.  Not so much of the last part, actually.


Why am I a writer?  Well, because it suits me.  I like to tell stories, whether or not I have an audience.  I make up stories in my mind - or perhaps I tend to 'fill in the blanks' on a situation, and it becomes a story.  I write some of them down.  Where do they come from?  All over the place.  I used to carry a notebook around with me to catch my thoughts; I fell out of the practice during a hurried and harried time, but I'm back to it.


What have I been doing?


Well, I wrote my first poem back in fourth grade a few decades ago.  It was so much fun, I kept up with it.  Some of my poetry is enjoyable, some isn't. I  haven't done much of it in years; it is a demanding activity, and my writing skills lie in another direction.  Or maybe I mean that I enjoy channeling the skills in the direction in which they're going at the moment.


I wrote my first novel, as such, around 8th grade.  Hand written in fountain pen.  I still have it.  It's a story about Hawaii in the time of Kamehameha the great.  The title was Born of the Sea.   I followed that up a couple years later with a story that was set in French Canada around the time of the French and Indian Wars.  That didn't have a title, though someone suggested Jaws because some of my characters were rather chatty.


I went to college and a year of grad school.  I was involved in the student newspaper and the fine arts publication, and a number of my poems were printed there.  I wrote a colum - thinking aloud, I guess.  Actually, the colum was rather like a blog.  I did have a following, but it was cut short when I graduated.


Then came The Snowhawk.  That gets a post of its own.  My first full length novel (in three parts, too, so it's a three-fer).  I wrote it before electronic copies and there it sits, not edit-able because it's only in hard copy.  But there are other things about it that have earned it an honest retirement.


I have four novels published and more in the works.  But that's another blog post.