Tag Archives: books

Review: Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

Book Reviews, Books, , , , , , ,

This is one of those stories that grabs onto you from the beginning and pretty much never lets go. I was apprehensive about reading this book, because I’m not really that much of a cat fan (more of a dog pet person myself), but the blurb on the cover kind of hit me, and I was intrigued about finding out more about a blind kitten.

One thing that got me right from the start was the same thing Gwen talks about in her book throughout, and that’s the wrong impression someone gets from expectations of Homer right from the start. People expect this little kitten to be helpless, and you immediately find out that he’s nothing but that. He’s resourceful, full of life and pretty much the life of any party because no one ever taught him that he’s supposed to feel sorry for himself, or even that he’s blind. He is blind from the very early days of his life, so he’s never even known what it’s like to see. But he turns out to be the bravest, most resilient little tyke one might ever experience.

The story deals with Homer, Vashti and Scarlett (who are two of Gwen’s other cats), and it specifically deals with the life of Gwen herself. Where the story starts to bog down a bit is when it gets into Gwen’s own story, and mainly during the first half of the book, it really does sort of slow down as we start to experience more of her memoir than the story of Homer and his fellow cat family. Then it moves onto the author’s love life with Laurence, before it moves onto its conclusion.

However, it’s still a strong recommendation from me because the strongest moments of this memoir come from reading about Homer himself and how nothing you do ever stops him from completely enjoying life as it was meant to be lived. A couple of (SPOILERS HERE) critical moments also make up the narrative to where the story becomes where it deserves its bestseller status, specifically every time Homer experiences a new home and has to acclimate, the time Homer comes to the rescue of Gwen (when a stranger breaks into her house), the horrific period that Gwen goes through during 9/11 when the towers come crashing down (and she lives 5 blocks from Ground Zero), and a gut wrenching moment where Homer hits older age and runs into a near death experience towards the end of the book.

Four (4) out of Five (5) stars: 4/5.

Reviewing Books

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Well, today is my final day of teaching for the semester. I doubt I’ll be teaching during the summer (that’s something the full timers do, as they have to do something to raise their pay above $100,000 per year; the rest of us part-timers don’t get hours during the summer, for the most part). This means I’ll have some time to devote to something. I was going to devote my time to writing a new novel, but screw it. Writing is stupid. No one buys my books, so why even try? Instead, I’m going to devote the summer to reading the books of others. And then, who knows? Maybe I’ll kill myself. Not really sure yet, as I haven’t thought that far forward yet, but I’m keeping all options open. Just haven’t decided whether to go with drugs or jumping off a bridge yet. But that’s for another post obviously. This one is about reviewing books.

So, what I did was post on kindleboards.com that I was interested in reviewing the independent books from the various writers there. And a bunch of them jumped up and started giving me their best works, so I’m started buying their books on Kindle, and starting tomorrow, I’ll be devoting my time to doing nothing but reading their books and then reviewing them.

I’m thinking of including the reviews here on the blog, and then I’ll probably build an additional site that’s all about my reviews. And of course, I’ll include the reviews on the Kindle site for their individual books. Plus, I’ll build a set of lists about different genres where I’ll include books that I’ve reviewed.

I figure if no one is ever going to read my books, I’ll contribute this way, and then when I get tired of it, well, I’ll just end it. Sounds like a plan.

The Hardest Book You’ll Ever Write: Book Number Two

Books, Memoirs, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

Some years back, after I finished my first novel, I was faced with a daunting question: Could I possibly write another? For anyone who has never written a first novel, this probably sounds like a no-brainer, but believe it or not, when I came face to face with the blank sheet of book number two, I found myself realizing that I was facing an enemy I had never imagined before.

When I was writing the first book, I had lots of bravado behind me. I mean, I had written a bunch of short stories, and inside me, I knew I had a book in me, so no matter what happened, I knew I was going to finish that first book. But when it was done, after a few months had gone by, I actually came up with the idea for the next book. And then I realized I would actually have to write it.

When faced with the second book, you find yourself in a very interesting dilemma that seems to go something like this: Well, the first book was a fluke, and everyone has at least a book in him or her, but am I really capable of sitting down and accomplishing the second book? The first book was a mystery/suspense novel that was kind of hard to pin down to its exact genre (you can see for yourself as it can be found here). The second novel was going to be a science fiction book, and although I had written a few short stories that had been published in fanzines (not having yet published in larger magazines), I was trying to convince myself that I was capable of pulling off a brand new genre on the second outing.

For days, I sat down and tried to outline the book, but nothing would come to me, because even though I had the basic idea of this novel, which I was going to call LOSER, I had no idea how to create a world that was so bizarre to me that I would have to invent it from the ground up. Yet, each day, I sat down and tried to tackle it.

And failed.

At one point, I convinced myself that this book wasn’t possible, that my first one had been a fluke. I was sure that I might be able to do another suspense book, or maybe an espionage adventure, but science fiction was definitely out of my capabilities.

At the time, my editor was the wife of a colleague of mine who sat down with me and asked me to explain what the story was about. And for hours on end, I sat down and crafted this amazing story of what I wanted to write. As I talked to her, I kept imagining all sorts of great things that would happen. And then, at one point, she told me to just sit down and make it happen.

So, for the next four months, I sat down in my chair and typed away. My first novel had been written on a typewriter, so this one actually got written on a computer with a word processor that we’d probably laugh at today. But by the time I was done, I had crafted my second novel. And even as I typed THE END, I stared at it, still not sure it had actually completed its journey.

A year later, I sat down and started work on that suspense novel I thought might have been the next novel, and it became my third novel. But each time I wrote a novel after the second one, I never imagined for a moment that I would have trouble finishing a novel again. That second one was the one that broke me of the belief I was never going to be a writer.

And I’ve been writing ever since.

Stop me before I buy more books! And other complaints when it comes to running a blog.

Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

For some reason, I’m a glutton for books. I buy them even when I don’t need them. Case in point: Today. I was at Barnes & Noble just wandering around, minding my own business, when out of the blue BAM! Another book came at me from behind and forced me to buy it. I didn’t even get to the cash register before another book, hiding behind the greeting cards and magazines jumped out WHOOSH! and there I was at the counter with two books I didn’t need. But no matter how hard I tried to get them out of my hands, they wouldn’t leave, and I ended up having to shell out another forty some bucks to the evil cash register lady for the purchase of said books.

I had actually gone into B&N looking for a specific book on Twitter information. I recently realized I had this Twitter account that I never really did anything with, so I decided I would see about optimizing Twitter to see if it might actually benefit my blog. My blog has been one of those underperforming vehicles that has been driving me nuts for some time. I write posts constantly, and I seem to have a massive amount of phantom traffic, but I’ve never really been able to do anything with my blog to make it worthwhile to me. I’m not talking about making money, like others try to do with their blogs. I’m more interested in just getting people to read my stuff, and I’m constantly struggling to do so.

Some months back, I joined Open Salon and started blogging there, and what I discovered was that if I didn’t spam the crap out of people, I really didn’t get any real traffic to my blog. And that bothered me. I decided to stop emailing people every time I wrote a post because I started to feel that it was bothering people rather than letting them know that I had more posts for them to read. I know that I have started to get annoyed at the amount of emails I get from people who post every day (and then email me every day), so I decided I didn’t want to be one of those kinds of bloggers. Unfortunately, the alternative is even worse. My blog is practically invisible as a result.

It’s partly frustrating because it kind of falls into the same paradigm problem I have with my writing career. I know I’m good at writing, but I can’t get a career jumpstarted no matter what I do. So I end up writing for myself or for the wind (or whatever other dorky metaphor fits the situation). My main blog site has been active for years, and it’s almost like I started it yesterday, judging from the amount of communication that comes across it. It’s a lot like my life these days. I get the idea no one even knows I’m alive, even though I’m still kicking and screaming. Just screaming in silence with the volume turned way down so as not to wake up the neighbors.

This Just In! Duane’s 2011 Spending Plan Extension Has Been Approved!

Business, Economics, Memoirs, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

brucoe 

(Brucoe, the one independent member of Duane’s government. He is still undecided on the budget.) 

Today, after a marathon session involving his partisan stuffed animals, Duane Gundrum has declared that he has come to an agreement to continue his spending plans for the next few weeks. Up until this time, his conservative stuffed animals, led by Scruffy the Bear, were holding out for more cuts in collections from his job at the Piggly Wiggly Convenient Store. However, after promising that Duane would cut back on discretionary spending, specifically Root Beer flavored Laffy Taffy candy bars, the conservative bloc decided it would fund Duane for a short period before he would have to reexamine his finances again.

Liberal leader Elmer the bean bag frog pointed out that Duane has been making numerous sacrifices this year by avoiding payments of his electricity bill, his cell phone bill and normal expenditures of necessary pornography at the Double Juggs Adult Bookstore. In Elmer’s words: “Duane has been suffering greatly during this period of downturn, and thus, we couldn’t see any other areas in which he could cut,” even though conservatives claimed that there were areas of spending that could be curtailed, such as iPhone apps, “special” massages at the controversial Madame Wong’s Swedish Massage Parlour, and random purchases of Twinkies and Ho-Hos.

elmo darth 

(Liberal representative Elmo during a particulary tense negotiation session with the conservative whip.) 

Members of both parties recognize that without a dedicated budget agreed upon by all members, Duane will continue to barely function economically and further discretionary spending may suffer as a result. There has even been a fear of insolvency with gas purchasing and difficult to cancel Netflix memberships.

This is the third time since both parties could not come up with a budget that Duane has been forced to push a spending plan into the new fiscal year. It is hoped that a consensus can be reached by the Stuffed Animal Lobby that is influencing finances in Duane’s government. We will keep you informed of further developments.

In other news, girls still don’t want to date Duane. We go to Angela in Grand Rapids for more on this continuing story…..

women 

(A random selection of women willing to go on the record as “not interested in dating Duane”.)

Memoir Books Are Being Slowly Replaced by Lazy Writers

Books, Memoirs, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


I was in the bookstore the other day looking over the selections of books when I came across a really interesting book of which I had heard nothing so far. But it looked intriguing. It was called Moby-Duck, and as you can see from the picture with this article, it is about a man who goes on a quest to discover what happened to 28,800 bath toys that were lost at sea.

So, why am I talking about this book? Well, think about the story involved in this book. The author, Donovan Hohn, actually put forth a lot of work to find out what happened to these rubber duckies and bath toys after the disappeared. In essence, he went on an epic quest, like the infamous Moby Dick to find what happened to these items. In other words, he went through a hell of a lot of work to get the story that he later transposed to paper so that the rest of us could experience his adventure.

My point is that so few people who write memoirs these days actually go through this amount of work in their adventures before sitting down and writing their “memoirs”. Instead, they suffer one bad relationship, have a bad drinking problem, or do something singularly simple and then try to convince the rest of us that it was actually an epic journey to get from one place to the other. I guess you could say I’m getting a little sick of these kinds of stories that really have no great master journey to them, no odyssey, yet are treated as if they are the epic adventures of a lifetime.

We need more writers out there who are willing to go through a little bit of work to actually come back with the story they need to tell. Instead, we get lazy writers that try to profit off of their innane adventures. And we keep buying this crap because none of us are willing to demand more from the writings that we read.

I felt this way some time ago when I was writing one of my earlier science fiction novels, Thompson’s Bounty, which was about a Coast Guard cutter that gets sent back into the 17th century. When I first started writing the novel, I actually tried to just crank it out without really knowing much about my subject, other than having watched a few old movies about pirates. Then it dawned on me that I wasn’t ready to write the novel. So I contacted the Coast Guard and requested some in person information, which led to going out with a cutter crew for several days over several weekends. It also led to a bunch of long conversations and tours on a Coast Guard base where very knowledgeable people gave me first hand information about the subject I was writing. In the end, I wound up with a book that told the story I wanted to tell instead of one that was peripheral and out of context.

Recently, I’ve been working on a novel that I originally wrote decades ago that takes place in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Originally, I kind of winged it through the story, but after doing my thesis work on the August Coup in the Soviet Union, I finally had the premise, place and event that really made up the background of the novel I wrote years before. So, I’ve been sitting down and tackling that book from the start, realizing that I now know a lot more information than I first did when I wrote that book back then.

That’s sort of the thing I’m talking about with the kind of reading I’m coming across these days. So much of it can be so much better than it is if authors would take the time to actually do the research that would make their books that much better. I remember a great scene from Billy Crystal’s Throw Mama From the Train when a woman in his creative writing class is describing a submarine story she wrote, and he comments that maybe she should actually know the name of the device she’s describing if she wants to be taken seriously in a story that involves submarines. I take his advice a bit further and say that maybe some time should be given to exploring the lifestyles and events that lead people to the moments that occur in novels so that the reader believes the author is the right person to be writing the story.

We seem to have a lot lazier writers these days with a lot of the stories and memoirs I read, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle for that. We can demand more substance, research and work. We just generally don’t. And we’re the ones who suffer as a result.

Bristol Palin to Write the Book of Her Life…I Can’t Wait….

Memoirs, Writing, , , ,

Nothing depresses me more than to see that a woman who is 20 years old, who has done nothing special with her life other than live in the shadow of her overexposed mother who is writing her life story. As someone who has done a “little” more than the young girl who was on Dancing With the Stars, bought a house in Arizona and got pregnant during her mother’s vice-presidential bid, I’m constantly amazed that a company like Harper Collins is willing to shell out real money to fund a “book” from someone who is no more special than any teen girl across the planet. Probably much less significant, to be honest.

Yet, big book companies constantly churn out this drivel to us, as if this is what we want to read. The other part that bothers me is that somewhere, somehow, there are people who are actually going to buy what she writes, being almost as excited as someone rushing out to buy Snooki’s next bestselling book.

As a writer, this is one of the things that has depressed me like pretty much nothing else can. I’ve lived most of my life in a Jack London-ish belief that you don’t really start writing great life stories until you’ve at least lived a few of them. So I spent my life trying to do just that, and now that I’m on the winding down part of that life, my writing feels great, but the writing industry passed me by, contracting books with White House party crashers instead of actual novelists and people who tried to go the old route of living and then writing, rather than doing something sensationalist and then thinking that was the groundwork for a great writing career.

I know I’ve complained about this sort of thing before, but is this what writing in America has come down to? Are we so foolish in our pursuit of stardom that this is what we’re going to pretend is important enough for us to buy and read?

I’d write a book about it, but considering I haven’t pulled any Charlie Sheen shenanigans lately, I can’t guarantee anyone would want to read it.

The Act of Searching for a Literary Agent

Memoirs, Social Networking, Writing, , ,
Decisions...decisions....

There are few activities that make me want to claw my eyes out with a spork, but a couple immediately come to mind:

1. Having to explain the special theory of relativity to Sarah Palin.

2. Having Sarah Palin explain the special theory of relativity to me.

3. The natural desire that most people have to claw their eyes out with a spork that comes naturally any way.

4. Having to search for a literary agent to represent my novels.

As much fun as the first three might be to explore, I’m going to talk about number 4 right now because, well, that’s really the one I wanted to talk about when I started writing this post. Now, that can be a problem for me whenever I start a post, because I might start with a desire to talk about literary agents, and next thing you know, I’m discussing cute fuzzy bunnies. You know, the cute little ones that are always jumping around, stealing your wallet and…wait, I wanted to talk about literary agents. That’s right. Back to my original subject.

You see, I’ve been looking for a literary agent for about as long as I’ve been able to write. I’ve had one of those weird writing careers that most other writers can’t relate to because they’ve either a) Already got a successful writing career and really don’t care one iota what I have to say about anything, or b) they just don’t seem to understand how everything went so bad.

Years ago, and I’m talking back in the prehistoric days, when you had to actually use your telephone to connect to the Internet. No, let’s go all out on this one. I’m talking about the days when you hooked up your modem to your telephone and there was no Internet because Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet. Yes, that long ago. Anyway, back then, when we were still using stone tools to build Deloreans that would travel back in time, I had a somewhat growing writing career where I wrote lots of interesting stuff and these strange people called “editors” would accidentally mail me checks after publishing those stories in their magazines. Some of my stories actually became series of short stories where people would get out pen and paper, write me nice little letters about how my character was obviously being handled incorrectly because in Issue #17, the hero had used the Quantum Destabilizer Unit on him, which meant that in Issue #43, there was no way that he could have phased into the neutramatter universe to chase after the Viscuous Ant Man, one of his mortal enemies. And then they would put a stamp on that letter and go back to reading their next issue of Peter Parker the Spectactular Spiderman, which was “so much more superior than that crappy story you keep publishing in that magazine that must be run by some deranged lunatic.”

Anyway, my point is, at one point I had a bit of a writing career. And then I contacted an agent, who read one of my science fiction novels and LOVED IT, saying she wanted to represent me and was planning to use my writing to make herself us rich. And then she got into some kind of accident involving a head injury (this isn’t a joke here), disappeared for a couple of years, and then came back and no longer recognized my name. So when I contacted her, after realizing she was looking for clients again, she asked me to send her a current copy of whatever I had recently written. So I did. And then she contacted me again, asking me to send her a copy of whatever I had recently written. So I wrote her and told her I already did. So she contacted me again, asking me to send her a copy of whatever I had recently written. After about the fourth time, I got the hint. I probably wasn’t going to be represented by her because I was in some kind of Twilight Zone of continuous emails about sending a manuscript that was getting tired of being sent through the ether.

So, I’ve been looking for an agent ever since. And for some reason, even though I’ve written 12 or 13 novels (depends on if we count the erotic novel, involving the midget, the monkey and the same sex trees that were in love with each other), I can’t seem to get past the query letter stage with any of these agents. It’s like the whole world moved on without me, and I don’t seem to live in it any more. I send out my stuff, but it’s not even making a dent these days. Some of my latest writing is phenomenal (just ask my mommy), but I can’t even get an agent to read any of it.

So, Oprah, please tell me what to do? Oh wait, this isn’t that show, is it? So, um, imaginary reader who I keep writing these blog posts imagining you exist, please tell me what to do? Should I give up writing? Join the Army? Marry Peggy Sue? Return all of those diet Dr Pepper cans to the supermarket for their redeemable values?

I’m so confused and unsure of where to turn….

"Did somebody call for a cute, fuzzy bunny?"

My Comparison of Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color vs. the Amazon Kindle 3G

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"I love this book by Duane. I wonder if he's single."

I’ve owned a 3G Kindle for a few months now, and I’ve been pretty happy with it. However, being the tech junkie that I am, when I heard that Barnes & Noble was coming out with a color e-reader, the Nook, I took a quick look at it and then decided it was something I was willing to try out.

I blogged about my problems with buying it in the first place, specifically the dork who worked at Barnes & Noble who told me it could hook up to my computer and transfer my books that way (because I don’t have a wifi connection at home). Turns out he was full of crap, so I have to actually go to a place with wifi in order to download any of the purchases I make. Not a big deal, but a bit annoying when you were planning otherwise.

Right off the start, I have to say that the Nook looks really nice, especially in color. That, however, does bring a couple of deficiencies as well, specifically a very long download time, whereas the Kindle downloads almost instantaneously. Not a huge deal, but somewhat inconvenient. I’m sure if the Kindle had a color version, I’d be going through the same problems, although I have yet to try with a grayscale book on the Nook to see if that’s much faster.

The Nook is a lot heavier than the Kindle. Kind of inconvenient if you’re holding it up for a long time. Never really thought about that until I actually had to do it.

The biggest difference is in choice of content, and I’m really hoping that changes soon. The Kindle has so many choices of things to buy and download. When I bought the Nook, I was looking forward to all sorts of color books and magazines, but their selection is sparse, if almost devoid of content. There are so few magazines who have signed up with the Nook that I find myself really stretching myself to find something I actually want to download. But I wanted to at least see one, so I went with Consumer Reports, which costs $2.40 a month. It’s not bad, but to be honest, I’d never have bought it if it wasn’t the only choice of some content that I wanted to look at. That’s not a good sign when it comes to buying magazines.

My hope is that because the Nook Color is so new that more magazines are right around the corner thinking about signing up. But so far, on the “Coming Soon” list with Barnes & Noble’s Nook content, I don’t see any magazines planning a future launch. If that doesn’t change, the Nook is a doomed product.

So far, there are a few children’s titles that are in color, so if you have kids, it might be a decent purchase, if not a bit expensive. But there just aren’t enough. My hope, again, is that because it is so new that so few publishers have been pushing content to it, but are planning to do so in the future. If not, again, the Nook is doomed.

Price: The price of the Nook Color was $249. With a cover and tax, it cost me about $300. That’s a bit on the high side for me, even though I was willing to pay it just for the convenience of trying it out. Yeah, I’m kind of stupid that way. But if there is not more content released, I just bought a $300 paper weight, and that will piss me off.

The Kindle 3G is $189, and while there is a wifi version for $139, I had to buy the more expensive one because I don’t have wifi at home. For the extra $50, it was worth it. And the amount of content is wonderful. I subscribe to the Washington Post for $14.99 a month (think that’s the price), and it’s definitely worth it to receive the newspaper each and every morning. I had trouble finding this newspaper on the Nook, but others, like the New York Times are on it. Again, the selection was abysmal at best.

Break down:

Barnes & Noble Nook Color (positives)

It’s in color.

There is some unique content (through Barnes & Noble’s PubIt! program, which is a lot like Amazon’s self-publishing for the Kindle).

That’s about it.

This one goes to 11

Nook (negatives)

Heavy

Expensive ($249)

Not a lot of content available for it.

Battery life is pretty low in comparsion to the Kindle (massively low). A charge seems to last about 8-10 hours, according to their documentation. The Kindle lasts all week long and that’s with a lot of use. Again, that might have something to do with the color.

Downloads take a long time.

Kindle (positives)

Fast downloads.

Lots of content. LOTS of content.

Price is $139 (for wifi version) and $189 for (3G/Wifi version)

Lighter than the Nook.

Battery lasts a long time.

"It was the best of times...it was the worst of times...(line?)"

Kindle (negatives)

Not in color. That’s really about it.

******************************************

A final note is that even though I’ve said mostly bad things about the Nook, if they can get past the problem of lack of content, it can become a powerhouse in e-readers. Customers at Barnes & Noble appeared really interested in the product, and a friend of mine keeps talking great about it. But without increased content, especially content that uses color, it will fail horribly.

One area where it could shine, and is almost untouched, is graphic novels. If comic book companies would realize that they now have a way to present their work on an e-reader, and embrace the Nook, both could do a wonderful job in selling this to the most desirable market out there, the teenager/young adult market. But I’m fearing that Barnes & Noble has handled the e-reader in almost the same way Blockbuster handled online movie distribution against Netflix. It is doing too little too late. As long as Barnes & Noble continues to appear to always be one step behind Amazon, they’re going to fail horribly as a book company, which is a whole other issue itself. But it’s in online content and e-readers where the final battle for dominance is going to take place. If someone could go back and tell Blockbuster to embrace the mail market when it didn’t, it could have changed things so much against Netflix. That’s where we are with the e-reader market. Barnes & Noble has a chance to push ahead and dominate. But history tells me that the results will be so much different.

If we choose the wrong e-reader, North Korea wins!

Taking a Break from Writing to Talk about Writing

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As most people who know me already know, I’m in the middle of writing a new novel. As this is November, and the start of National Novel Writing Month, I’m sure a lot of people who wouldn’t normally say so can say that they are also writing a new novel. And that’s great. But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about me.

This isn’t my first novel, nor do I believe it will be my last. I’ve written 13 (or 12, depending on whether we use new or old math) before, and I’ve been generally happy with the novels I’ve written. For me, each novel is a new adventure into the whole discipline, and it’s mainly that I want to talk about. Because I think people are kind of missing the point of writing a novel in the first place.

Over the last few years, there have been quite a few novels written by celebrities who don’t normally write novels. Mostly, they have been quick turnarounds that went from conception to print in the time it takes to make a press release. As a result, quite a few of them have been dreary, dismal affairs, and mostly they’ve been non-events, much like the television show of the same name. Publishers realize they can make a quick buck by having a celebrity announce a novel and then they’ll publish it and hope that that celebrity’s fans rush out and buy it, thinking that because they like how someone acts, models or sings that they’ll also like how they write.

Writing isn’t normally like that. Even people who are really good at writing short subjects are not very good at writing novels. Yet, everyone who has a bit of education, or has written something short, is convinced that he or she is also going to be a great novelist. My own history is filled with the numbers of people who all thought this, and as I have been writing most of my life, it has always been really annoying, irritating and frustrating.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Not everyone can write a novel. Nor is everyone really supposed to. Yet, quite a few people are convinced that they have something to say, at least until they sit down and actually try to say it. Then they flounder for a while until they either give up or churn out a piece of crap that they should have put back into a drawer the second it was completed.

Having said that, I would also like to say that writing a novel is something everyone should actually try. I know that sounds a bit contrary to what I was saying before, but I really believe this. Not because everyone should be published, but because I think writing is a great exercise in expanding one’s own capability of communicating.

I see the process of writing novels as an education. While I’ve written tons and tons of short fiction, I think my real growth of a writer has come when I have actually sat down and tried to write a novel. My first novel was an exercise in frustration, as I lost the last 80 or so pages of it due to a fluke accident and had to rewrite the ending to what I thought was the greatest piece of work I had written to that date. I almost gave up writing that day. But I sat down and finished it again.

The second novel was probably the hardest novel I ever wrote because I kept telling myself over and over (while writing it) that book number one was a fluke, that I was a fraud, that I really shouldn’t be writing another novel. But I finished that second novel, and it told me that I was capable of doing more than one. The success of that moment is hard to describe unless you’ve experienced it yourself.

The third novel was my first attempt at writing what I thought was an “important” nove. I had finished my suspense novel and my science fiction/psychological novel, and now I was going to sit down and write something serious. Never happened. My third novel was in fact my fourth novel, because the third one was tossed into a drawer where it lives to this day. In the end, I wrote a thriller, and it was definitely the right choice for number three.

From that point on, I started to push out novels at one and two a year, no longer thinking about whether I should write, but when I should. I continued on this path until I had quite a few novels under my belt. A couple were published, but mostly the act of writing was more important to me than the act of publishing.

And then I stopped writing. I had been dating a woman who had a degree in psychology and was someone I considered much smarter than I would ever be. At some point, she criticized my writing, and I realized that if I couldn’t please her with my writing that it wasn’t worth my time. She told me she was going to be writing her “novel” one day, and even though she never wrote word one, I was always convinced that of the two of us, she was the one who deserved the writing accolades.

And then she dumped me. For several years, I kind of floundered in my inability to write another word. And then I started writing plays because someone asked me to. And I wrote a lot of them. And then they started being performed, and I discovered a humorous talent I didn’t realize I had. In the beginning, I was writing a lot of humor as a balance to the anger I was feeling about how that relationship had betrayed me. And then I started to heal, and the humor continued, so I kept writing more. And people liked it.

Then I sat down and wrote my next novel, which was my first comedy. It took me five years, and in the end, I had what I still consider to be my greatest achievement in writing.

After that, I didn’t know what to do, so I sat down and finished a novel I had started many years before. And it was a very good one.

Which brought me to NaNoWriMo, which is a project where you write a novel in one month. I had this idea for a novel running through my head for years now, and I just never got it started. But then the contest came around, and I decided, it’s time to be the writer I know that I am.

So I started writing, and it’s still building upon itself today. I’m 27 pages into a novel that I consider quite important to my career of writing.

Because that’s the thing I hinted at in the beginning. Each novel is an examination of the writing I am capable of doing today. And that’s what a writer should be doing with his or her writing with each and every project. Sure, we can write drivel if we want, but a writer should sit down and try to reinvent his or her own writing each time a new project begins. The masters of writing reinvented the writing process each time they brought out a new book, and we study them to find out what they were thinking. That’s what a writer should be doing today…reinventing the very nature of writing. Each time you sit down and write, you should always be thinking, “I couldn’t have written that novel a year ago, but I sure can today.” And then ten years from now, you will be writing things you never could have written today.

That’s the reward of writing and one always worth striving for. Let the celebrities write their crap. The rest of us should be struggling to put forth the very best we can of ourselves. To do any less is a waste of time and a failure for the future novel one might one day be able to write, if only able to take that first step today.