When I Started Writing Stories.

Photo by Dan Foy 

Thinking about when I started writing stories. I can’t remember exactly when it began. Some time in elementary school. Actually it’s the only thing I did. I refused to do math or science or history or anything else. I’d just doodle on the white paper they gave me and tune the teacher out.

Lots of parent teacher conferences. 

Suggestions of Ritalin. (My folks ignored those.)

Shameful report cards.

But come English I always wrote stories and I got good feedback from the kids when I read them to the rest of the class.

Well…usually. A gory horror story left everyone in shocked silence. And I think it lead to another parent teacher conference. I don’t know. There were so many of them I can’t keep track.

I guess I was a troubled little kid, but now a lot of the edges have fallen out of my mind in a Vaseline of nostalgia and it seems I turned out all right.

Then sometimes I remember bad stuff.

It’s funny old days seem either wonderful or terrible according to my mood while the present is a steady middle.

Maybe that’s the way it always was.

Fun

                                                          Photo by Tom Hodgkinson 

Trying to have fun, but I don't know how. 

When I was a kid I didn't have that much fun either. 

Kid's are supposed to have fun and then you put away your childish things, but to tell the truth I didn't have that many childish things to put away.

I guess smiling with my wife is the best thing I've got going for me in the fun area. It's no wild disco, but I like it.

Writing stories is fun, sending them out is okay, but that's more business.

I don't know if anyone reads them or doesn't, but the process of making them available--well,  I wouldn't say it's much fun, but it's valuable.

If I was an actor I'd get applause. I could gauge how well I'm doing by how much applause I got.

A writer doesn't have that. You kind of just hope.

Not trying to be negative here, just trying to figure out how to have fun. 

So writing is fun, getting readers has the potential to be fun, if I'm getting them, which I have no way of knowing. At least I'm getting published sometimes. You figure someone's got to be looking at my stuff at some point.

I guess I won't really know if anyone's reading my work until I get a book of my own. If it sells, I'll have some idea.

Of course, people buy books, but don't open them...

Fan mail?

I've had a few nice comments over the years in comment sections.

My wife's made nice comment's, but she's my wife.

So I started out trying to think of how to have fun. Now I'm worried about my author career, which isn't fun at all.

How to have fun, how to have fun, how to have fun...