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Journey of an Obscure Writer




Using a writing philosophy that can’t fail.

Writing always held a special place in my heart, likely because I was raised by a songwriter mother who encouraged my artistic efforts. I wasn't an avid reader at a young age, yet I like to create things.

I remember creating a few role-playing games that no one would really play with me. I created a 9-hole hoola hoop golf course outside our home in the country while living in Tennessee, using Wiffle balls — had the course map to boot. Then, I remember writing my first story or book about three characters going to the big city — I won’t say the name of it because some uncreative hack will steal it before I finally get around to publishing it. Lastly, before I was in high school, I also wrote a few chapters for another book that was going to be a great novel.

After all this initial creativity, I started reading fantasy books and other books required from school and found around the home. For instance, I read a Louis L’Amour book and Stephen King. Piers Anthony was my favorite fantasy author with the Xanth series, but I also read C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.

Interestingly, I stopped writing during high school and about two years into the Air Force, which I entered right afterward. I remember starting to write again about 6 months before getting out of the Air Force. I would write these creative paragraphs of thoughts, which really helped me process my emotions and feelings at the time.

After the Air Force, I dreamed of having a large library full of books and getting my college degree to become a high school history teacher. Little did I know then how real history can’t be taught in public schools. Still, the dream was pure and I did put a good effort toward this endeavor for about two years in college until becoming a dropout.

Essentially, my adult writing began with those creative paragraphs in the Air Force and continued on with journal writings up until I was around 30 YOA. I didn’t want to get married and have children and I wasn’t ambitious to make money with a career, so I had plenty of time to write with a loner lifestyle as a menial worker.

My writing became my purpose in life after I started reading more authors. I read Hesse, Thoreau, Emerson, Kerouac, Kesey, Walser, and others during my early to mid-20s as I played music, worked menial jobs, and scrapped by. I wanted to live a life worth writing about.

Through difficult circumstances, I found myself destitute living in Portland, OR; I was homeless and at the worst low of my life around 26 YOA. It was then that I gave my life back to Jesus Christ, was born again and started living by faith. I gave my life to Jesus when I was 17 YOA, yet took it back when I was 20 when I decided I didn’t believe in the Holy Bible. I remained a truth seeker, which brought me back to the truth, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.

Writing and reading have always been tools for searching for the truth in life and in myself.

This journey may help inspire another writer or be at least interesting to other writers curious about the path another writer has taken.

One of the most pivotal acts as a writer was burning all of my writings from around 20 YOA to 31. This consisted of probably close to 50 journals. My wife also burned her writings from the past. Up in the forest, we stood and watched the pile of journals and papers burning, praying to God in Jesus’ name to renew our minds and make us new creatures in His image.

It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my writings, although they were mostly amateurish, rather it was because I wrote all of those words as an unbeliever who was focused on myself, as some genius writer. Through the smoke cloud of Cannabis, I had an exaggerated sense of my own creative genius.

Other reasons I burnt them was because I didn’t want to waste my time working on them, re-reading them, carrying them around, and having them as my remembrance when I happened to die.

It was liberating, yet a sacrifice as well.

I’ve since done mostly the same thing to most of the musical recordings done during this time (except I threw them away instead of burning them). I made around 8 albums of music before my conversion. Also, I wrote about 3 books in rough draft form, besides the pages and pages of journal writing, poems, and creative stories.

From then on, my writing was going to be purposeful toward my life with God in Jesus.

I’ve found that writing a journal when married is much different. No longer am I writing to just this unknown higher power (as I understood it then) trying to analyze myself and the life around me. Now, I’m one with another person and everything I write must be filtered through her.

Journal writing went by the wayside, yet I kept writing, now online. Only a couple of years since the bonfire, I started writing online and haven’t stopped since over ten years later.

From 33 to now 44 YOA, I’ve written around 500 articles for my blogs and revenue-sharing sites, 1,000 content articles for businesses, and 8 books (7 are eBooks and 1 can be printed as well).

I’ve made an estimated $2,000 from my writings and $20k from selling my copywriting articles.

The latest book I’ve put together is the first one that I feel is worthy of promotion. The others are worth reading and have good messages, yet the writing itself isn’t so great, and they have a narrower audience.
 
Stories From the Lonely Abode
An illustrated collection of 10 short stories and 3 poems. Seen through the eyes of a middle-aged American man…www.amazon.com


Hey, writing takes a lot of work to do well. Honestly, I’ve yet to really acquire the work ethic necessary to write a book well. This last book is a collection of short stories or creative writing stories, not a single story.

Partly, I’ve found that I don’t especially like to sit at the computer all day. I like to be outside working with my hands, playing golf, wrestling with the dogs, or talking with my wife.

Maybe there will be a time in my life when I can sit down and write a book. I still have the desire to write something with a storyline. I always thought about it being self-autobiographical fiction.

There are so many different types of writers and authors. Most of them it seems are more like hustlers; people using AI are these types. Just trying to use words as a tool to make money, market, or gain some type of status — rather than for exploring and analyzing themselves and the world around them.

I don’t write content articles anymore and only did for a time because I needed to make some money between jobs. Otherwise, writing for me is a pure pursuit, a journey to express the truth within myself and how I see the world. If it is interesting, great, if not then it still served a purpose for me at least.

I’ve always envisioned the type of audience who, like me, values the sincere effort of someone who isn’t a respecter of persons, nor desires to gain status in any group. It really isn’t an attitude of “success” as they call it now, rather it is an effort to create and find something unique about myself that I can value beyond comparing it to others.

In this respect, my writing journey can’t fail, as it will always bring the value that I place into it with a sincere effort.

With that said, working toward a structured goal and having a vision of a completed project are still necessary to get somewhere in the ever-rushing stream of life. This means my abstract writing philosophy must find a balance between creative whimsy and the grind of routine writing toil.

This makes me think: Most people who say they are writers or want to be are more in love with the idea than the actual nitty-gritty reality of what it entails. Those who break through and put their money where their mouth is, inevitably find the process isn’t as romantic as envisioned, yet more rewarding than they imagined.

One thing that is apparent, this obscure writer will keep plugging away until God takes him home. One way or another, I find myself back to the keyboard or pen to find again that peaceful method of making sense of this strange world and the infinite mysteries within.

Blessings in Jesus and happy writing.


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