Lost

See, this is the thing:

I know I can write novels. I've written three and while they may not be up there with Dickens, they are just as good, if not better than most of what's out there on the shelves in Barnes and Nobel.

I've been trying to get them published/represented for ages now and just keep getting one rejection after another. No big deal, except now I have the unmistakable tinkilings of a fledgling story in my brain. I also know I can't ignore it forever.

Writing something that big is a drain. It's just as hard as any work I've had to do (including farm work) but it's also something that I can't contain. That said, it's also something that hasn't given me any substantial consequence. Yes, once I'm holding the printed manuscript in my hands I feel like I'm king of the world, but then comes the tedious and discouraging job of submitting it over and over to get rejected over and over.

And now-a-days I find my life packed to the brim with all kinds of stuff- stuff which I've purposefully placed in my life in order to allow me to write. My night job and my new job as a sports editor both allow me to play with my passion, but in a way that doesn't follow where I feel I should be.

Sometimes I want to just screw it all and get a 9-5 job with benefits and just forget about all the characters and stories in my head.

This new one is an end of the world type story following a group of people who got thrown together at a music festival. Lots of interesting and strange people follow festivals around between the blue collar guys who put everything together and the flighty artistic musicians, and the guys who follow behind in vans to sell bootlegged merchandise, and the dead-set fans who follow their favorite band. I think that the theme of so many odd people who make up this very unusual sub-culture all being thrown into a dangerous-possibly supernatural-situation could make a very compelling story.

And I feel that story in my head and it's going to come out.

I guess in the end I'm a writer. I'm always going to be a writer. If I die with a hundred unpublished manuscripts then I'll die with a hundred unpublished manuscripts.

I'd just like to see something come from it is all.

I guess I look at my dad who has struggled all his life and finally finds himself in the situation he wanted to be in since he was a young man. I just have to be patient. Maybe my dues will take 20 years to pay. Who knows.