YEAH...I'M A WRITER

You may not know this, but I'm a writer.  Of course, that may be obvious, since I'm writing this blog. But I've written many other things, published things, and even got paid, which, I guess, makes me a professional.

But up until this year, I've never felt comfortable calling myself a writer. I've said that I like writing, but writing and being a writer imply two different things. I don't know why, they just do. There is no pressure in writing, because a lot of people do it.  It's a pastime, a hobby, a diversion. But to be a writer, the stakes go up. For instance, many of you are now looking at this post to find every grammatical, spelling, and punctuation error in order to make judgments on my abilities. "He split the infinitive and he calls himself a writer?"

When you identify yourself as a writer, people want to know two things: what have you written and what are you writing? As far as the first question goes:

• Besides a semi-regular blog which has been highlighted on web aggregate sites and ministry networks, most of my stuff has been unpublished short stories, plot lines for television shows, skits and plays.
• Two collections of original, serialized super hero stories (kind of like Marvel and DC, without pictures).  I still have them (The O'Neill Factor Serials and The World of Galactic G) and if a major publisher wants to take the characters and basic plots off my hands, give me a call.
• An almost finished novel that is trapped on the floppies from a dedicated word processor. Sadly, the processor is obsolete and its proprietary software is not readable by modern computers, so I cannot retrieve the masterpiece (and the fact that some of you don't know what a "floppy" is pains me).
• In high school, my friend and I wrote a short story that was to be the foundation of gospel publishing empire. A friend who owned a printing press gave us a deal on 100 copies. We gave them away and...that was the end of that.
• A critical thinking workbook for the college where I was an instructor. I got paid for this, but sadly, the cover designers spelled "college" as "collage," which makes me cringe to this day.

So what am I writing now? A novel. I've let a a few people in on the plot, mostly to get their expert advice in their fields.  They will get a free copy of the book.  I'll even autograph it. But I'm not too open to share at this point because it is a work in progress. The basic plot is the same, but its execution has shifted gears several times since I started writing it. I have no prospects for publishers. I have no extra money for independent publishing. I don't know when I will finish and I don't know when you'll be able to pick it up from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

I've been working on this novel for several years. But up until now, writing has been a diversion, a hobby, a pastime. But now it's different. Things have changed.

Now...I'm a writer.

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