Were You Born to Write?

If you scored...

70-100% You were born to write.

50-69% You like to write.

30-49& You can take writing or leave it.

0-29% Writing is not for your perhaps you should take up painting.

This is a quintessential question of all writers. Are we born to write? The Greeks would say it is unnatural and perhaps it is. But I remember when I first wanted to be a write. I was in the 4^th grade. I absolutely loved books. Being of English decent, I was exposed to both American Literature and English Literature. Then I learned other languages and then I experienced other culture literatures. So I loved to read. I think I was maybe 9 when I read the Bourne Identity and found out what the best sellers list was in the States. In the Summer I would read a book every couple of days. I read the book Misery by Stephen King in 4 hours.

And as I grew so did my ambitions of being an author. I wrote my first full length fictional novel the summer of 1982. I wasn’t old enough to drive and was not in High School. There were only type writers back then. I hand wrote it first and then typed it. My parents were less then thrilled. They thought I was a dreamer who needed to come down to planet Earth. So the book got shoved into a drawer. I found it five years later and I was embarrassed about how badly the book was written. I realized then that as an author each year I would grow and loath my previous writings. I would only be happy with my next project and only as I wrote it. My work would be antiquated the minute it was complete.

Over the next several years I was continually discouraged from being a writer but I was allowed to enter writing contests as it might prove I was skilled as a writer. I won several contests and some prize money but mostly my work was published. Because there were limited contest I had to be able to write across genres which I did quite successfully.

And writing served me well in my academic pursuits although admittedly I always had someone to review my work as I am an exceptionally poor speller.

By 1993 I was a college graduate and I had completed three children’s books. There is an impossibility of getting published when you don’t have an agent and usually agents will only take you on when you are published. Had won contests and was published so this wasn’t as much an obstacle for me as it was for other writers.

While I hadn’t managed to publish this particular children’s book series, Hollywood came calling about producing the books into children’s movies. But of course they didn’t just want to produce this book into a movie they also wanted me to do a whole bunch of work on projects that belonged to other writer. Actually I was being asked to rewrite other authors work without their consent and without having my books produced into movies. I felt an ethical challenge especially when the producer told me she was mentally ill. It became hard to differentiate whether she was telling me the truth or involving me in something less then wholesome. It had been a year and we had no signed formal papers so there was no deal.

I returned to finish my graduate degree at a State University. I had done considerable research and made advancements in my field of expertise so I was asked to finish my PHD at a State University. I also had the writing talent which many students didn’t have. So writing had always been my ticket to academic advancement. Within a month of being in graduate school I was approached by a publishing house from Texas that was backed by Oil. They wanted to publish my children’s series. I also had already converted it into television plays and I had written several screen plays I the interim. It was all but a done deal when the price of oil fell horrifically and my book was dropped. Amazing because the price of oil has been up the last decade and I have never heard from that publishing house again.

Would it have been nice to have my children’s series published or my screen plays bought? Sure. It would have provided economic security for me and my son. We would have loved the book tours as well.

But writing has always given me a place to vent my feelings. Writing comforts me and is my therapy. It makes me peaceful in some of the most horrific times.

So I know writing is a part of my soul. And where I have not been embraced as a celebrate author I could not be anything but a writer. The question is whether I am a professional technical writer, a fictional writer, a screen play writer or a professional journal writer.

If I began publishing today I would have enough material to never have to write another thing in my life. Although, admittedly, I would still insist on writing new material. I was born to write and it is the one constant in my life.