The dilettante's approach to writing.

I read over a few months worth of blog posts yesterday (which shows I have time on my hands.) I noticed that I had 3 or 4 either starts or outlines of viable story lines. A couple of which I'd already forgotten.

This is the way much of the 25 year hiatus went. I'd get an idea, jot it down or write a page or two, and then forget about it. Sometimes I'd get as far as a few chapters.

It took me five years of writing and rewriting to get my first book written. When Star Axe was accepted by Tower Books way back in 1979, my Dad challenged me to replicate the achievement and he'd buy me a new typewriter--one of the new-fangled Smith-Corona daisy wheels. Top of the market back then. I'd already started Snowcastles by then and it was quickly accepted.

Anyway, I've never lacked ideas. Whether they're good ideas is a whole 'nother question. There's the old saying that everyone has one good book in them. (Maybe...but not everyone can write it.)

I'm sort of proud of the diversity of my efforts. I haven't followed the same formula, that's for sure. Maybe to the detriment of my so-called "career."

I actually feel kind of sorry for authors like Lee Child or Robert Crais, who have to write the same book 30 times. (I'm sure they're crying all the way to the bank.)

Coming up with ideas and letting them hang there is a dilettante's approach to writing. Dare I say that is what happens to most people who "want" to be a writer? Ultimately, it's very frustrating and unfulfilling.

The last story I tried to write, "Ruby Red and the Robots," wasn't finished. Followed by all these ideas that have gone nowhere.

I seem to have settled into the No Man's Land of the dilettante-ism all of a sudden. It seems to be part of a cycle. Even as I was writing heavily for the last six years, I knew that the time would come.

Interestingly, the difference between this fallow period and others is that I'm not drinking. I think I used to try to substitute discipline for alcohol. Not that that worked very well.

So I'm trying to figure out the path forward. Like I said, I'm not sure that just writing another book under the same regime will do me any good. Something has to change, I'm just not sure what.