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Just to warn you, it’s going to be a long one, so I separated it into two parts. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I ramble a bit as I write this.

This is going to be hard for me to write, but I feel that by sharing this I can help other writers from making the same mistakes I made. Because of my own short-comings and self-doubt, I wasted a lot of time doing nothing when I could have been writing, when I could have been perfecting my craft. Even beyond procrastination and daydreaming there were periods where I felt my path as a writer was going nowhere. I was going nowhere. So more than a few times I quit writing, I quit creating. I quit dreaming.

I eventually moved past my biggest obstacle: me. But I have to admit that because of wasted time I am ten years behind where I should be as a writer. I’ll take this regret with me to the grave.

If you’ve been following me you know how I eventually decided on a path as a writer, that when I was a kid I would take my toys out for the weekend and have a story to tell. Eventually I moved to roleplaying games, telling stories with dice and game books. That led me to reading fantasy and wanting to write fantasy, which led me to the desire to write a book of my own.

So in high school I started a fantasy novel, but didn’t make much headway. I knew nothing about the mechanics that a writer uses to help with building a structure, or putting together an outline, all the really neat tricks that help you start, stick with, and finally complete a project. I had the beginning, a climactic battle sequence, and the most cliché ridden ending that you will read in this life and the next. Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s “Dark and Stormy Night” had nothing on that ending. (Also during this high school period I also discovered poetry, and that would probably be the only constant in my journey as a writer, but honestly I never thought of myself as a poet or even of submitting my poems so I never equated that with my dormant periods of writing – but more on that later). Still it was a start for a fledging fantasy writer who wanted to make his mark in the literary world and become a rich and famous author.

Pausing so we can all get a good laugh out of that last sentence.

Then I go to university and meet other writers and we form our own little group. It started out strong and helped with motivating me, at least in the beginning. But I was a lazy writer, and I couldn’t get the first rule of writing ingrained into me: you have to write every goddamn day.

No excuses, no waiting for a good time to write, because there isn’t ever a good time to write. You have to carve that time out for yourself and no one else can do that for you. Even if it’s just a paragraph, or a short poem, hell even a short line to a poem.   Something, anything, and get it down on paper or type it on a keyboard. I know it’s hard, but even if you just do a paragraph a day, it builds up to something more and when it is a “good time” to write, you have something already in the bag and you don’t have to waste that “good time” on all that prewriting nonsense that all writers do before starting a project.

Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKffm2uI4dk

Well back to that writing group, it eventually petered out. But the death of our group wasn’t what made me want to quit writing the first time. It was a combination of my own laziness and a broken heart. I met a girl in university and I got hurt, and I stopped. It wasn’t an official break (umm writing, the girl definitely broke up with me) where I recognized that I was no longer going to write, I just didn’t do it anymore. I didn’t do a lot of things after that. A lot of my motivation went away. I ended up failing out of the university I was at. I wound up going back home and going to school closer to where I was raised.

Eventually I slowly started making friends who had the same interests as me in roleplaying games. I started running games and creating stories and it brought back my interest in fantasy and I slowly started working on my novel again. And I started a new novel too. This one was supposed to be the start of a series of books based on a character in the genre of male action/adventure, like Remo Williams or Mac Boland. I even started an abortive collaboration novel with a friend that was a sci-fi parody. They all had good strong starts, but again I didn’t pick up on the skills I needed that would help me complete these projects. More than that, my old habits reared their ugly heads and so each project slowly died because I wanted instant gratification. It wasn’t being written fast enough and I would get bored and move onto something new. Or a part of my life got busy and I would hold off on writing and wait until there was a “good time”.

I would hold off, put off, or just think of reasons not to write. Oh sure I had fantasies of what my life was going to be after I published my best sellers. From there the blockbuster movies and TV shows based on what I wrote. Only I never wrote the bestseller. I never wrote the movie script based on my books. I talked a good game, but I didn’t do the work. Again because I was unhappy with my lack of results I lost focus and interest. I also slowly fell out of love with the idea of being a fantasy genre writer. I wasn’t at home in that realm anymore. I lost my comfort zone, and I lost someone very dear to me. And I stopped again, no declaration. I just didn’t want to do it.

Back in school I was adrift. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I had had those stupid fantasies of being a successful writer but without the work they were just pipe dreams. I was scared of what would happen to me. But by some weird quirk there was a spark there that would end up pushing me in the right direction and that I’m following even to this day.

I am of the generation that was using computers that were networked together via BBS (computer bulletin boards) and they connected workplaces to universities and hospitals. We used VAX (virtual address extension) machines or terminals to communicate. This was just before the internet as we know it today was in existence. Groups would form on these virtual platforms and these groups would form based on any number of subjects, from television shows to how to take care of your cat. People communicated by sending out emails to the group as a whole. You could join and start contributing right away. I ended up joining one particular group filled with people who were interested in one particular subject and its subculture and the genres it was originally part of.

This online community would share stories, poems, and talk about books, movies, and everyday culture on…wait for it…Vampires. Yep Twilight had nothing on us; this was started well before those books. We would send out emails with our musings and distribute it to anyone who signed up to be in this group. Yep, we were a kinky kooky group of people who were into horror and we shared with each other many things, including stuff we wrote. You’ve probably heard of fan fiction, stories and writings based on popular existing characters in movies, television, books, and comic books. You could also write stories based on characters you created specifically for the group – this was called Fluff. And we did. Many of us in the group created characters or personas and we would pretend to be these people online. We would introduce ourselves to the group and tell our origin stories; some even wrote more involved tales and crossed over with others and created some impressive pieces of fiction. We would host virtual parties where everyone gathered and had a good time talking and sharing. It was very unique and good harmless fun. Nowadays we call personas Avatars (Yeah James Cameron, we beat you to that subject too), but all due respect in the beginning it was more cerebral. All this was done in text. There were no pictures except those we created with our mind. Oh, and our email address were the length of football fields.

It was during this time I created a character (my persona) and wrote some unusual adventures for him which were quirky and comedy inspired. In the back of my head I felt like there was a bigger story, but I didn’t consider what I was doing with this character serious writing. His name is Perfidious, but I’ll get back to him later.

Other than going back to my “hobby”, I didn’t produce much, except one form of writing I didn’t expect many others to read, poetry. Yet even with poetry I was missing something from my life. That was because the one thing that made me happy when everything else was shit I was not doing. Any guesses? Yep, I was not committed to writing. As to that online community, well I hit some personal snags in life, including a very ill family member and the disintegration of family and friend relationships.

I was personally drifting with no direction so I left that online community behind. It felt like everything was crashing around me, and I realized that I had no desire to write, none. So I decided I was not, nor had I ever really been, a writer. I was just someone who fiddled, I deluded myself in the first place and wasn’t a good writer or a really good human being to begin with. I wasn’t evil or mean or vicious, but I sure as hell wasn’t contributing to society, so I was pretty worthless. Well this is what I thought of me. Why even bother?

So I stopped.