The Author
I was two or three years old, sitting on the roof, overlooking the expanse as a bird would from the branch of a tree. I wanted to be an explorer, like Jacques Cousteau — the French oceanographer and filmmaker, who for me didn’t exist then. And it happened, though not exactly as I had envisioned.
Years later, as a freshman in high school, I had what some may call an epiphany — a writer. Yet I never acted on it and became involved in other things as a teenager. After several short experiences in the workforce, I went back to school and studied technical writing, which created the baseline for the explorer.
Technical writing has a discipline that features clear and concise language, with not a word more than the reader needs. It works for business letters, but not for prose. When writing Purpose Unknown, I met my first obstacle: length. Publishers want at least 80,000 words for a novel, and I only had half. Maybe that was all I had. My literature instructor thought as much. See his comments in Dream People on this site. So, I went to nearly 130,000 words, and it was as difficult as a narcissist trying to be an altruist.
The cutting is where I excel, and I went to nearly 107,000 words. Then, I saw the contrast. Effort is caused by two competing desires: conciseness and the expanse of expression. Technical writing is work. Writing fiction is a joy, and now that I don’t have to work for the money, I can enjoy being the writer I discovered in high school.