I was twenty-one when I wrote my first novel. I’d written several dozen short stories by then and a few really long stories, but I was full of trepidation about attempting to write a novel. I had never published anything, though not for lack of trying. I’d garnered hundreds of rejection letters from magazines large and small, and covered two walls of a bedroom with rejection notes from The New Yorker.
The year was 1971. After two years of vagabonding I rented a little room in a former hotel in Ashland, Oregon during a very cold winter. I was nearly out of money and beginning to think I should go back to college. I was writing songs, working at odd jobs, writing stories, and feeling unpleasantly stuck.
At that time there was only one little bookstore in Ashland. I’d go there every day to read books and get warm and gawk at the young woman who worked there. I was afraid to ask her out because I had no money to spare.
One day I happened upon a little paperback edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle and read half the book standing in the bookstore. I bought the book, took it back to my room, finished reading it, and knew I was ready to write a novel. The chapters in Cat’s Cradle are only a page or so in length. There was nothing at all daunting to me about writing a book with very short chapters, so that is what I decided to do.
To make a long story short, within a few years I had turned into a compulsive novel writer. Over the next thirty years I wrote twenty novels. Some were published by big publishers, some I self-published, the others I threw away. When I wasn’t writing a novel, I felt out of sorts. Out of identity.
When I was fifty, my commercial writing career kaput, I decided to stop writing novels and find out who I was when not working on a novel. I wrote very little for the next three years, during which time I went through a massive identity crisis. I spent much more time on my music than I ever had before, patched together a minimalist living as a gardener, secretary, and editor-for-hire, and found life perfectly okay without working on a novel.
On my fifty-fourth birthday, I put pen to paper and began writing something that turned into a novel. Since then I have written many more novels and several hundred essays and stories, though I am no longer a compulsive writer.
I write when the spirit moves me, not when my intellect tells me I should.
fin
My new novel Good With Dogs and Cats is now orderable from all but a few bookstores on the planet and is widely available online as a paperback, audio book (Apple or Audible) or e-book.
Our new album of songs Ahora Entras Tu, piano and cello collaborations, is available from many online music sites. And Pooches and Kiddies, the sequel to Good With Dogs and Cats will soon be published!