becoming storymaker

Way back in the twentieth century, sometime around 1984, I think, I was reading a book by some Science Fiction or Fantasy author I normally relied on and the story ended so infuriatingly that I hurled the book into the trash and shouted, "I can do better than that!"/p>

Oops! I had just challenged myself! It was put up or shut up time. Damn! Why do I do that to myself?

But I had, and I had a personal computer sitting right there. So I sat down and stared at the screen. Not a word or an idea came to me. Damn!

Then I remembered a dream I'd had not long before and thought it was just weird enough that I could base a science fantasy story on it. And once I'd thought that a story plot began to form in my mind or wherever those things happen. Gosh! And I had names for the characters, well, except for the two main characters.

I sat down and wrote. And wrote and wrote. And finished the damned thing. I walked away both proud of myself and a little skeptical. Could it be that easy?

But I convinced myself that in the course of human history, millions of storymakers had made up billions of stories. Maybe it was a gift but it wasn't that unusual.

And I was hooked. I finished that first story (I'll share it with you but not here, on another webpage) and walked away, and within an hour the beginnings of a second story had come to me.

That's how I think of my storymaking. I don't know where the ideas come from nor why they're so fragmented and incomplete when I begin working on them. But most of them, many of them, work out in the process of passing through my mind and my keyboard into computer files.

I have completed over 800 of them and started over 1200 more.

I have submitted a few for publication, but I don't put much effort into that. I fear it might interrupt the flow from whatever my source is into my computer files.

But damn I like being a storymaker!

Maybe I'll share some more of them with you later.

Connections