It’s been a while since I last posted here and a lot has changed. Well, maybe not that much, but it feels like a lot. Enough that it’s going to change the way I’m approaching blogging, and writing in general (but more on that another time).
I finished working at Verizon in June last year, after 14 years with the same company. Since then I’ve been writing and doing a few other things. As of tomorrow I am once again employed and that’s going to take some adjustment. It’s a part-time role which suits me because I can carry on taking Oscar to and from school, and still have time to write and publish.
Even working part time, I’m going to have less time to spend on writing and publishing though, so why am I back to blogging, you might ask. Well, the simple answer is that I like writing here, and that’s a good enough reason. But it’s also because, while not having traditional employment, my time became sprawling. Things that I used to be able to do in a couple of hours took whole days. Returning to blogging feels like a way of fighting against that tendency.
While I’ve been away from blogging I have also been thinking about my upcoming writing projects and there are going to be some changes there. All for the better, I think.
Anyway, just wanted to check in and let you know what’s going on. I’ll be posting more regularly going forward so you shouldn’t have to wait so long for my next post.
I have been writing stories since I was a kid. I can still remember lying on the floor in front of the TV with my new Ghostbusters notebook and pencil and writing a story about how Slimer became a Ghostbuster. That would have been when I was around seven years old.
It was all just for fun, but that was all it needed to be.
Many years later, I was still writing, although school and socializing meant I didn’t have as much time for it as I used to. I wasn’t reading so much either. Honestly, if things had carried on the way they were, I probably would have given up on the whole writing business.
Then I read The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition.
If you’ve read it, you know it’s a big book. Certainly the biggest I’d read up to that point. I went through the whole thing in a single weekend, and I was hooked.
From that point on, I read every Stephen King book I could get my hands on. There were a lot. I raced through them all. Some I loved more than others, but every one of them had something special about it. I started reading interviews, and then tracking down the books that he loved, and reading them as well.
And a funny thing happened along the way. It wasn’t just a love of reading that returned; it was writing as well. Suddenly, I was taking the idea of becoming a professional writer seriously.
After that I was buying the writers digest, submitting stories to magazines and following King’s advice from On Writing. I was on the journey that would lead me to where I am today and wherever I will be in the future. None of it would have happened if it wasn’t for Stephen King.
