Writing, a history

I’ve been writing stories since we got our first computer when I was 9 or 10. As a kid, I was inspired by Doogie Howser writing a journal on his computer. That process didn’t last long but it did lead to me writing stories on the computer (you could say this is a return to journal writing).  Most of these early things sucked, as most writing by 10 year old’s do. My earliest stories were cheap knock-offs of Star Trek episodes. By the time I hit my late teens, I started a new story idea that actually resulted in my first complete story, about 28k words. This story spawned a huge number of spin-offs ideas, that I worked onto to varying degrees of completion. I called this “War Without End” series and was basically about a massive space war. There were lots of Star Trek residue with some Star Wars flavor. Not wholly original, but epic in scope.

When college started, my creative writing fell by the way side. I barely did anything for several years. When grad school finished and I didn’t have a full-time job yet, I went back to it. I had a completely new idea for a series that stemmed from my time playing SWG. I called this series “Aristeia”. The idea was based on the Rogue Squadron guild I was in and the characters and people I played with. During this time, interrupted by my semester as a teacher, and continuing after we moved to Texas and I did part-time work as a sub, I completed a 100k word story. It was very heavily influenced by Star Wars and a very bumpy story. But it was novel length and the best work I’d ever done. So I sent it off to some publishers.

I got one request for a complete manuscript off my query letter but everything resulted in rejections. Still, not bad for my first attempt and only quering a handful of publishers. In 2007, I finally found a full-time job, and one I thought I might enjoy permanently. I was happy having work and a real paycheck to supplement my wife’s. Over the years, I came to despise my job, for various reasons I won’t go into here. By fall 2010 I was miserable.

I hadn’t touched my writing since I had gotten the job three years ago. But I still have a deep seated desire to be a writer, to get a book published. After much consideration and long talks with my wife, I decided to take the plunge. In Dec 2010, I quit my job and started rewriting the Aristeia book. Some ideas occurred to me and I started working in some elements to the long term story from “War Without End”, which I may never use. I completely reworked the story and cut as much Star Wars elements as I could (no more Jedi analogues but still lots of starfighter combat). In the end the story was almost completely different than the original, while still maintaining the basic idea and the same characters. Over the course of 3 months I wrote it and reached 105k words. Over the next 3 months, I got feedback from family and friends, and rewrote much of it several times (on beta version 6 now), and it’s now about 110k words.

Now, I’ve started the publishing process, which sadly is the hard part. I’ve sent out queries to 11 agents and two publishers. I’ve received form rejection letters from 9 agents and 1 publisher. I’ll do another round of queries soon. It’s disheartening getting form rejection letters because they tell you nothing. I’m confident enough in my writing that I don’t think I completely suck. But beyond that I have no idea if it’s not polished enough, not a marketable idea, a problem with the query letter or just bad luck. I’m working on book 2 in the mean time though I’m wondering if I should try a completely different story, or try my hand at doing some short stories first.

So that’s the story of my writing career. All wishful thinking so far. I’ll probably share more things as the happen. I’ve given myself at least a year on this trial, and up to three if I feel I’ve made some progress. Self-publishing and E-publishing are still options I might consider when the agents available to query start to run dry. But here’s hoping.