Poking with a Stick

So it's been over a month since I posted to this blog, a month and 1/2 since I edited any of my work and two months since writing anything new. As of a week ago I was completely convinced that this new re-launch of a supposed writing career was dead, but here I am this morning trying to reboot, negotiating with myself some way to get back into the game.

I'm starving for legitimacy. I think this is much if not all of my problem. It's not the business, since traditional publishing is no longer a barrier to 7 figure success. Just ask Amanda Hocking. Jesus, I only need $500 a month to live comfortably!

It is the marketing aspect of the book business that I can't stomach, though. Peddling my wares like a snake oil charlatan. I'm letting it get in the way of my writing. Here I am, sitting on two novels and a novella and I am so close (but oh so far) from the finish line.

But it's back to that legitimacy song and dance again. The deal I've verbalized (in my head) this time goes like this: I just need to edit the books I have written and put them on Kindle. If they take off or even mildly sell (I would be happy with selling just one book!) then that may be the motivation I need to write another book. My research won't stop. I don't research just for my books. I research because I love to learn and explore, just not in an overly academic fashion. Well, I use a pretty studious methodology, I just don't like the limits placed on me by academia (can't use Wikipedia? How stupid is that? Stop trying to protect your book sales).
 But maybe this burden in me to write, to create, will finally be quenched if I get several books out there available to the public and they don't sell. I could say I tried it, that I put out the effort - crap, I've already written three - and then go on my merry way just researching and learning for my own sake and piecing together a coherent theory of Everything. But, what if my books take off? What if I start moving units like Hocking. I've read her book. I don't see any difference between her writing and mine. There are plenty of errors throughout it, both grammatical and editorial. I'm never going to please everyone. It's not possible. I doubt there is a single person on planet earth that I'm pleasing now - without writing. I think you and I both know there is no possible option a serving my God in a modern church setting. Can't be a preacher. Can't be a missionary. No thanks on the bible teacher. What else is there? Of course. Writing. It is the perfect fit. Not only does it allow me to be creative, to venture down a path (several paths) on a journey that I started as a kid, but it allows me to wear any hat I want to. I can be a doctor. I can be an assassin. I can be a mill worker. I saw that job posting for a psychologist. I think I'll apply for that job. ;-)  So far I've been several men God uses to start the last revival on earth. I've been an angel sent to earth on a covert mission. I've been a young woman who falls in love, sees ghosts and loses nearly everything and everyone around her. I've been a truck driver in Alaska and someone who inadvertently plays with time and loses. I could be a priest charged with guarding fallen angels for judgment. I could be a young girl who must fight to keep her soul from being swallowed up into a gnostic abyss. I can be God, creating whole worlds, inhabiting them with people of my own choosing. Vessels of good and bad and maybe in between. Caricatures etched in the sand.

Feeble it may be, I think I need to resign myself to the reality that, with all its ebbs and flows, writing - being a writer - it is my life. It is my vocation.

Amazon Author Central - Great People !!!

So last night I discovered Amazon's Author Central and signed up for a page. Then I discovered they had my name listed fully [First, Middle, Last] and I don't use my middle name anymore for my writing, so I emailed them, asking to take my middle name out.

Within 24 hours my middle name was gone and the person working on my ticket even set me a personal email telling me it was done. She said she loved reading my bio and that she was "also waiting!" [It's the same bio that is on this website so look to the right] Needless to say, that was a great boost for an otherwise pretty crappy day. No typical theological ranting, no denominational slamming: just the purity and simplicity of witness and edification. Two people passing by, ever so briefly communicating with one another, surely never to cross paths again for the rest of our lives - and, yet, we managed to both impact each other with words. And that's all it takes. You don't need money or vast organizations. All you need is words - maybe a paragraph will do, maybe just a sentence, maybe all it will take is a phrase. In this case, it was the simple message at the bottom of my bio:

I await the return of Christ.....