I was probably about six years old when I began telling people I wanted to become a writer. I'm not sure where it came from, but it was an impractical, persistent desire that managed to outlive all the obstacles:
-- As a college English major, reading so much good literature: "I can't write. I have nothing to say."
-- As a rookie feature writer at my first newspaper: "Journalism isn't really writing. I'm only a parrot."
-- As a more seasoned journalist: "I'm a working writer. Just a journeyman."
I never saw myself as a "real" writer. In other words, I didn't write fiction. Until I started living on North Caicos Island. Suddenly, I had something to say -- a lot to say -- about island life. The place gave me new eyes and a new start in my writing career.
While this was a wonderful revelation, it also plunged me into a new, strange world where I quickly had to learn a lot of new rules.
Rule number one was that the actual writing, hard as it is, was the easy part. Now there were all these extra-writing things to deal with if I ever wanted someone else to read what I wrote: the query letter, the agent search, the "elevator" pitch, the frustration of being unknown and unconnected in a world that obviously had all its conventions in place long before I ever cracked open a copy of "Writer's Market."
This blog, this website, is part of those non-writer things that writers must do these days. Of course I eventually want the blog to help me sell Fish Eye Lens when it comes out ... but I'd also like it to encourage other writers and to explain to people how living on an island is quite different from vacationing on an island. I will bounce back and forth between these goals, hoping I don't get too dizzy and that a few of you will want to follow along.
-- As a college English major, reading so much good literature: "I can't write. I have nothing to say."
-- As a rookie feature writer at my first newspaper: "Journalism isn't really writing. I'm only a parrot."
-- As a more seasoned journalist: "I'm a working writer. Just a journeyman."
I never saw myself as a "real" writer. In other words, I didn't write fiction. Until I started living on North Caicos Island. Suddenly, I had something to say -- a lot to say -- about island life. The place gave me new eyes and a new start in my writing career.
While this was a wonderful revelation, it also plunged me into a new, strange world where I quickly had to learn a lot of new rules.
Rule number one was that the actual writing, hard as it is, was the easy part. Now there were all these extra-writing things to deal with if I ever wanted someone else to read what I wrote: the query letter, the agent search, the "elevator" pitch, the frustration of being unknown and unconnected in a world that obviously had all its conventions in place long before I ever cracked open a copy of "Writer's Market."
This blog, this website, is part of those non-writer things that writers must do these days. Of course I eventually want the blog to help me sell Fish Eye Lens when it comes out ... but I'd also like it to encourage other writers and to explain to people how living on an island is quite different from vacationing on an island. I will bounce back and forth between these goals, hoping I don't get too dizzy and that a few of you will want to follow along.