Resolution 1 - Write and Get Published

When I was a boy, and people asked me that standard question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, I cycled through some of the typical answers…fireman, cowboy, and for some reason, I seem to remember I told people for a while I wanted to be a motorcycle when I grew up (yes, it's bizarre, but I have no recollection of what my little-boy brain was going through at the time). I don’t recall, however, telling anybody I wanted to be a writer.

By the time I was in high school, though, it was clear to me – I wanted to be a writer. Whatever chain of events led me to such a desire are lost to history. I’ve found stories that I wrote when I was still a young boy, maybe 9 or 10 years old, that are respectable, even though the topics are pretty common. There was an adventure with Lassie (the collie) and a trip with some green aliens on a flying saucer. By the time I was settled into my miserable high-school career, I was writing poetry (don’t all teenagers?), starting mystery and suspense stories, and constructing essays that explored my views on everything from feelings about girls to religious convictions to the problem of excessive violence in the world.

In 11th grade, I believe it was, I signed up for a typing class. Those were the days before word processors or computers, so all the paperwork in an office had to be spaced and centered and lined up on manual or – if you were fortunate – electric typewriters. I had no interest in being a secretary; I just wanted to learn the keyboard well enough to type my poems and stories.  The school year, in those days, was divided into six-weeks for the purpose of reporting a student's progress (or lack thereof).  By the end of the third six-weeks, my grade was down to a not-so-respectable…zero. That’s right. I was typing away every day, but I didn't complete a single class assignment – for the entire six weeks! Finally, my teacher told me if I wasn’t going to do the assigned work, I might as well just go to the library. Fine, I thought. So, for the next two weeks, I sat in the library reading. Then one afternoon, Ms. Smith showed up at the library. Framed in the doorway, arms akimbo (she didn’t come in – I was sitting near the door…in case friends walked by), she said, “I’ll tell you what. You come back to class, and do half the class assignments. The rest of the time you can write whatever you want, and I’ll count that.” I walked back to class with her, and by the end of the term, I actually passed with a 76, and had lots of story starts, poems, and essays.

After high school, I went into the Marine Corps. I spent the next 3 months at Parris Island, South Carolina, undergoing the grueling program of training to become a United States Marine. Most of the writing I did for those months was in the form of letters home. During the few minutes of free time we’d have in the evenings, I still wrote a little bit. After boot camp, I had electronics and avionics training. Along the way, my interest shifted to comic art. I still wanted to be a writer, but more than that, I wanted to be a comic book artist, or maybe even an animator.  I still wrote, occasionally, but most of my creative energy was spent practicing drawing superheroes, silly animals, or Disney characters.

Through the years, writing has always been a very pleasant obsession. I don’t want to mislead anybody – I don’t write enough. Never have. During college and seminary, I wrote a lot of academic papers, and along the way received frequent compliments on my writing, and a few suggestions that I should be a writer.  If I had been more focused and disciplined, I might have had several best-sellers by now. Actually, my writing (much like my music…more on that another time) has mostly been a very private thing. With fits and starts, I have begun projects, filled notebooks and folders, written and re-written, and had things published in school papers, church and denominational newsletters, and local newspapers, but I haven’t been the successful writer I dreamed of becoming all those years ago.

It’s time. I have been actively working on a novel, and I have several other projects in the works. “What’s your book about?” people ask. “Uh, I guess you could say it’s a contemporary fantasy.” I don’t like to talk about my work. It has been encouraging to find out I’m not alone among writers. Most, if not all, writers of any merit don’t talk about their work in progress very much, unless it’s something under contract to a publisher and they want some advance publicity. I found an imperative in a book I recently bought, another inspirational book for writers, Page after Page, by Heather Sellers, but I will have to paraphrase, because I can’t find the exact sentence again, after looking though the book for 10 minutes – don’t tell people what you’re writing. Yes! I had to show this to several people, I was so excited.

Writing is hard work! There is no way around this. I confess, I avoid it more than I do it, but I am going to change that nasty habit this year…this month…this day! I am a writer. Even though I have no books on the best-seller lists, or essays in prestigious journals, or a short story published in the New Yorker, I am still a writer. Just like I am a musician. I don’t have any albums out. I don’t play with a band or perform in concert. But I play instruments, and I sing, and quite frankly, I’m not half bad at it. Same with writing. I’m not half bad at it. But this year – I will write. I will publish!

The New Year...So Far

We're heading for the two week mark of the new year, the point where I understand many people start falling by the wayside on those ambitious resolutions. That's just one reason why I never make any. I have resolved not to resolve -- and that's the only one I keep. However, I do have some serious plans and resolute intentions for this year, and I am sticking with them. I actually began before the new year, but I plan to keep the momentum going throughout this year -- and beyond.

Getting in Shape

It's about time to check the classifieds -- I want a treadmill. This may be the time when all those good intentions are wearing thin, and those people who splurged on fancy exercise equipment have decided to cut their loses. Don't know where I'm going to put it, but after taking a run on a chilly afternoon it's taken days to shake the cough (actually, I still haven't shaken it). I'd love to be able to run in my office with some good, inspiring music blasting from my Bose speakers. Fortunately, we do have a new exercise bike -- the kind with the pedals out front -- that I got for my wife, who recently had knee surgery. We are putting it to good use.

I'd bought a new weight bench a few months back, and immediately hurt my back and was in such pain I couldn't even assemble it. Then my oldest son came over and put it together -- but we had no weights. We finally went to Academy Sports & Outdoors and got a set of steel free weights, and I was like a child at Christmas (even though we got them a few weeks before Christmas). It still took a couple of weeks to get going, but thanks to my youngest son -- who has been using them -- I worked out one afternoon, and I've been doing it ever since.

I've lost about 15 pounds, dropped two pants sizes, and my musculature is re-appearing with surprising definition. And I'm feeling good (except for the tendinitis in my left arm). I'm not eating nearly as much, and I don't miss it. A couple of weekends ago, we had to go shopping. I needed new clothes! From size 40 to size 38, and I'm on the way to 36! Pardon me if I sound a little boastful, but I feel I deserve it. This has taken weeks of hard work and determination -- and I am a little proud.

Writing

I've been writing for years, but I've never had the focus to stick with a project longer than a modest poem -- not counting journal entries and the occasional blog. Now, however, I am actively working on my first novel. I've enlisted a bakers dozen of some of the most intelligent and wonderful people I know to be readers for my book, and I plan to be ready to shop for an agent by April. Now I feel like I can really call myself a writer.

In case any of you were wondering why my blog hasn't been updated in nearly a month -- now you know. But...I hope to do better with posting. I started this blog as an outlet to share my writing and ideas, and I don't plan to abandon it.

Best Wishes to My Blog Readers

To all of you who've been faithful readers, and to those who stop by from time to time -- and to those of you who may have just now discovered my little home on the Internet -- I wish a very blessed, peaceful, and successful 2008.

First Steps...

My grandson, David Jeremiah Garcia, began walking yesterday. Oh, he's been standing on his own for a few weeks, and he's taken a very tentative step or two, but yesterday he took a step while reaching for me, and doing that sneaky grownup thing, I moved back just out of reach. David kept stepping, and I kept moving back, encouraging him forward the whole time. Then I reached out, picked him up, gave him a big hug and kiss, and said, "You walked!" He smiled and wiggled a bit. He knew he'd just done something amazing. Needless to say, it made me feel good that the first walking David did was to get to me -- his Papa. We then called Mama and Grandma in from the yard and showed off for them.


This whole experience has been a reminder that we are constantly learning to walk, in one way or another. There are all sorts of steps we must learn to take. First we learn to balance ourselves and stand upright. Then we hold onto something and practice getting one clumsy foot in front of the other. Then someone we trust lets us hold onto their hand while we practice for the real thing. At last comes the day when we let go and take those anxious, uncertain steps and walk.


That is how it has been with so many aspects of my life. When I went to Marine Corps bootcamp, the first thing I had to look for after getting off the bus was the famous yellow footprints. We had to learn how to stand all over again -- heels together, feet forming a 45 degree angle. Then we had to learn how to walk, together -- left...left...left, right, left! "Don't bounce, this ain't a dance sweethearts!" "Get in step, get in step!" "The other right foot!" For 13 weeks I learned how to walk, until I was able to march off Parris Island as a United States Marine.


The latest walk for me, of course, is my writing. I've been learning how to balance, and how to take a few tentative anxious steps. Now, all of a sudden (or so it seems) I am walking -- stumbling and clumsy, yes...but writing! David just learned how to walk, and he will spend the next couple of years perfecting his steps. Soon he'll be walking without even thinking about his steps; he'll only be concerned with where he wants to go. He's given me a refreshing shot of courage, because I know that while I'm having to pay too much attention to my steps right now, before long I'll write and only be concerned with where I want to go.


David Jeremiah Garcia, I love you, and Papa's so proud of you! Now I want to succeed so you can be proud of me.


[Photo: David Garcia holding his Papa's hand at the Milledgeville, GA, Christmas parade, December 2, 2007]

The Write Gyro

Earlier today, while at work, I wrote some journal entries on loose-leaf, and – as is so often the case – I bemoaned my lack of writing progress, and I just wanted to analyze that here for a while. I am inflicted with a serious writing avoidance gyro that diverts me from most of the opportunities available for me to write. since it has never shown up on any of the many MRIs or CAT scans I’ve had across the years, I’m not sure where that gizmo is physically located, and prospects of having it surgically removed are practically nil. The only solution I see is to implant another gyro – one that pushes me into writing opportunities, even when none seemingly exist. The new gyro I will simply label as “Write Gyro”, and the old gyro will be hereinafter known as “Wrong Gyro”. Hence my new mission will be to discriminate continuously between “Write” and “Wrong” and always to follow what is “Write”.

There are many avoidance behaviors that lead me down the “Wrong” path:

Problem – I surf obscure points on the Internet that, although sometimes seem interesting (but much of the time do not), do little to enrich my time. It furthermore occurs to me that I frequently use these diversions as an alternative to stimulation. I become passive letting the Internet do most of my thinking for me.

Solution – Actually, there are two. First of all, I could altogether avoid random surfing – which will be incredibly hard to do, since I have a terrible case of OCD. Second, and preferable, in my opinion, is to dialog with what I find, to use it to let my fingers return to the keyboard and chase down thoughts as I form words in my word processor. Much like stream of consciousness writing, this could be called “stream of consciousness surfing”.

Problem – Snood! For those who may not know, Snood is a computer game that you can download for free. If you want to play unlimited games (and I don’t exaggerate), you pay a one-time fee and have a lifetime access code. Snood begins with rows and columns of colorful Snoods in 4 shapes and varieties, and you have a Snood launcher with which you aim and launch a Snood toward the wall of Snoods. Three in a row, and they vanish, and when you remove a row of Snoods holding others, they drop, thus clearing the way deeper into the wall of Snoods. The more you drop off, rather than just make vanish, the more your launcher is re-charged. If your power goes dry, the wall descends toward you one level. The object is to clear out the entire wall of Snoods. There are several levels, Child, Easy, Medium, Difficult, and Evil being the basic (I always play the Evil level, because I want to battle against evil). This is really a game of strategy, and it is actually categorized as an educational game – but it is also addicting. Now to defend myself, I mostly play Snood while I’m listening to audio, because I can’t do one thing at a time. I was an obsessive multi-tasker before the term was coined.

Solution – Instead of dropping Snoods, drop letters. Approach a little playful writing like dropping Snoods. Get addicted! Loose all inhibitions and let the words pile up. Let audio stimulate thoughts and reactions. It actually does anyway, but I just need to respond. Active listening taken to a new level.

Problem – The myriad distractions: the kids who keep barging in to tell me about the latest micro-detail of a videogame I’ve never heard of, or who decide there’s a shirt I must wash “right now”, or who want to know why there are no clean glasses (I’m obviously the only one in the house who can wash a glass). The piles of clutter (because I’m obviously the only one in the house who can pick up anything weighing over 5 milligrams – especially if it’s lying in the middle of the walkway through the house), etc.

Solution – I could move and not leave a forwarding address, but I’m sort of very, very attached to this bunch of folks around here. I could pick up a baseball bat, slam it into my open hand while growling and letting foamy saliva drip from my face, but that one doesn’t scare them anymore. But the only thing that is going to work here is – focus. Pick up what I can. Listen for a reasonable amount of time, but then let it be known I’m a video game know-nothing and always will be (at least about any games beyond Snood) and I’m very comfortable in the skin of a video game know-nothing. But – stay at it and WRITE.

Follow the “Write Gyro”, and in the end everything should come out all write.

NaNoWriMo progress: Ha ha ha ha ha...! Seriously, just over 23,000 words behind at this point, which means I need to come up with just over 48,000 words before November 30th becomes history. 3000 words a day will do it!