During my first four decades of existence, it's regrettable that I rarely seized the opportunity to write creatively despite a life filled with writing. The only notable exception that I can recall from my childhood was a series of whimsical newspapers I wrote for the amusement of my immediate family. The brief newspapers combined current events with my random thoughts at the time. I can not remember any creative writing whatsoever taking place in elementary or middle school until I was in the seventh grade. Most of my writing up to this point was either essays or reports for class assignments or the never-ending "lists". I think it's safe to say that I've been a somewhat compulsive list writer my entire life, whether it's keeping tabs on a sports team roster (or league), listing favorite movies, listing my former cassette tape collection or an endless array of other topics. I'm learning to harness that energy now for the creation of my fiction.
It was during seventh grade that I began writing what can best be loosely described as "V" fan fiction. I was an avid fan of the two science fiction miniseries and the subsequent television series. I was also bored out of my skull in class despite finally having classes that provided academic challenge. To the amusement, torture and perhaps occasional entertainment of a precious few classmates, I penned a half dozen or so five-subject notebooks worth of 'pulp fiction'. The plots and character development were as thin as the notebook paper they were written on, crude parodies of the science fiction I was a fan of. When I was writing the novellas, there was shamefully more focus on eliciting a reaction from classmates than crafting good fiction. In fairness, I doubt they had any literary value or potential.
By high school, I was doing plenty of writing but it was mostly dry essays and term papers for honors and advanced placement English. Two assignments that stand out from the reams: a 'Philosophy of Life' paper and a short story that I believe was titled "Like A Brother". The Philosophy of Life paper was probably the first class assignment that truly allowed me to write the way my brain thought. The paper earned an "A" from the infamous Dr. Godbold with the comment, "One of the most lucid and thoughtful and provoking philosophies I read." I can only hope that a piece of my future fiction earns similar praise some day but I start my journey with far more modest goals.
The short story was also a proud accomplishment. Not only did it earn one of the highest marks in the class at the time, it was my first fictional work that had I judged to have any literary merit. It was a story I solidified as scenes in my mind over many days then ultimately wrote it in one sitting as I 'watched' it. Unfortunately, I made no copy of the story and the original was lost by my teacher rather than returned after summer break as I hoped. In the years that followed, I made a number of attempts to recreate the story but each effort felt inferior and ended up in the trash.
Six years of college produced many more reams of technical lab reports, term papers and various other writing assignments completely devoid of creativity. When I finally enrolled in a class with creative writing assignments, I found my Composition professor's feedback to be rather scathing. While none of my work was particularly memorable even by my own standards, I was still shocked by the harsh reception to what I did write in that class. I don't remember any specifics of the critiques but the overall impression certainly left its mark on my ego at the time.
Perhaps my two most noteworthy writing samples from the college years came as I completed my Masters degree in Psychology. "The Self-Report Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule: Reliability and Validity" is a thesis that was delivered without acclaim. Fourteen years later, it looks rather paltry considering the countless hours that went into researching, writing and editing it. Ironically, what did receive surprise acclaim months earlier was a lengthy resignation letter I wrote when leaving an internship to concentrate my focus on coursework and my thesis. Multiple readers of the letter independently gave me praise for how well it was written.
My love of hockey did afford me the opportunity to write creatively after college. I ran a minor league hockey fan website called "The Unofficial Web Site of the Trenton Titans" for several years. From its humble beginnings, the web site grew to several hundred pages of text (in addition to the hundreds of fine photos provided by Peter Bronsteen). Beyond the player profiles and countless lists, I wrote a non-stop stream of rants, game recaps and articles, some of which scratched the surface of my underlying creativity. In its heyday, the web site probably had just over a hundred faithful followers. During this time, I also wrote a few articles covering the Titans for "Just Hockey" magazine, one or two of which may have shown some hint of writing potential.
Yet, throughout the decades, I wrote very little fiction despite a cavalcade of ideas racing through my mind more often than not. Some of the ideas grew to near Walter Mitty proportions and lasted for many months but they never managed to escape to find the light of day in print. I made a handful of false starts writing stories over the years but nothing that ever amounted to more than a handful of pages of fiction that were soon abandoned. The true potential remained untapped.
Now, the troll has finally escaped from the dungeon. After years of developing the characters, plots, subplots, history and the rest of a fictional world, I have started writing my first novel, the beginning of a planned saga of at least four or five novels. I finished writing the first very raw draft of the novel last month and have begun the long process of editing and polishing it. I expect to finalize the first draft for external consumption sometime in 2011.
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