Stop me if you’ve heard this one. You wake up one morning and realize that you’ve turned the big four-uh-oh. You panic as your stroll down memory lane leaves you feeling empty; like you haven’t done enough or haven’t done anything at all. You remember everyone telling you that it isn’t too late to climb that goddamn mountain. So that’s what you do. You start planning out how you’re going to climb that goddamn mountain. Hi there! Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the person I just described.
The only problem I had was that I couldn’t figure out what sort of mountain to climb. I thought about it for several years with nothing coming to mind. I was getting frustrated because I wanted to do something worthwhile. The answer only came to me when I remembered my fondness for telling stories. As a kid, I would spin these long yarns like how I saw a UFO or my midnight conversations with ghosts. No one believed me of course, but then again, grownups can see right through a child’s imagination, can’t they?
Eventually, my love of storytelling turned into a love of comic books. I was so enamored with them that I wanted to become a comic book artist. Artists like Todd McFarlane and Jack Kirby were my heroes. I had dreams of people buying the comic books that I drew. I wasn’t a professional artist by any leaps or bounds, but I was good and with a few more years of practice I would have turned pro. But I put those dreams aside to learn computer programming and web design. Over time, I lost my artistic skills. To say I was heartbroken over that is an understatement. I can’t begin to tell you how devastated I was.
But I never lost that love of telling stories. I thought, maybe I could find another way of expressing that love. It didn’t take me long to consider writing. I’ve had people through the years tell me that I had a way with words. I thought, why not give that a try? I didn’t get into writing thinking that I was immediately the best. That just never happens. You always start off at the bottom of the barrel and you have to work your way up through practice and dedication. Stephen King in his book On Writing said that there are two commandments writers need to follow if they are to get published – read a lot and write a lot. Okay, I’ll perfect my word smithing by reading a lot and writing a lot. Again, there were more questions. What shall I write about? What shall I read? I struggled with that until the answer hit me.
I’ll blog about my experiences with the books that won the Pulitzer Prize for best novel or fiction. Yeah, it sort-of popped into my head like that. There was no rhyme or reason. There wasn’t any deep searching. It was read the Pulitzer winning novels and blog about it with an audience. That was it. After several years, I was able to come up with my mountain to climb.
I’ve always wanted a blog. In fact, I’ve tried to blog a few times in my life only to fall flat. Let me just say that blogging is very difficult. You have to be consistent. You have to be clear. Most importantly though, you have to have something to say. This is a challenge that I am excited to tackle. And I am excited to go on this journey with all of you.
