The older I get the more I think about how much of the writer’s life I’ve missed out on and truly long for now. I am reminded of the years past when I joyfully played Shadowrun and D&D with my friends and we built lives out of our imaginations and sat around a table telling stories. These days and nights and long weekends were the cornerstone of my writing career. They represent that core energy that powered me to write and made me feel like there would always be stories to tell.
There are still more stories to be told and I feel like I need to sink further into that world of writers in order to do so. More than just being about talking to different writers, this is about creating a lifestyle of story where I spend the largest parts of my day thinking about story–not wondering what kind of offense I would run for a particular set of kids should I have the opportunity to do so. Fragmentation of energy and initiative makes for a bad (and by bad I mean unfocused and unfinishing) writer. I am that dude at present, though I should not be and I have so many many many stories I feel I can tell.
No, I will not list them all here. All I can say is that I used to reach into my mind and pull out characters and follow the silver thread from those voices and faces back to their lives and their worlds, chasing down the rabbit holes of limitless universes.
I bound myself up in the world of Shadowrun, and I love that world. Still, being bound by but one world or one genre is not who I am. I need to expand in all directions, stretching and spreading my stories out across the fabric of known space and coating it in the unknown.
I am a writer first. I’ve known for my entire life that I can be anything I put my mind to, but all I’ve ever really wanted to be was a writer. The rest was a financial and research means to the ends of writing. The rest was always hustle. While I’ve spent years forgetting that small (large) fact, I am starting to remember. I am starting to shake of the rust and disappointment of decades and move towards a reality where the pen and my voice become one and move forward.
The time of words is near.
Some Thoughts:
- My, that was heavy handed.
- World Cup. Yep. Nobody here really cares, because America didn’t make the cup. It is a noted fact of exceptionalism that where we are weak we are also forgetful of the substance of what makes us weak.